Tom Archdeacon: Mean streets helped shape Wood
Mar 11, 2007 2:19:01 GMT -5
Post by Admin on Mar 11, 2007 2:19:01 GMT -5
www.daytondailynews.com/s/content/oh/story/sports/college/wsu/2007/03/10/ddn031107arch.html
Tom Archdeacon: Mean streets helped shape Wright State's Wood
By Tom Archdeacon
Sunday, March 11, 2007
DETROIT — A couple of days earlier — as he'd pulled his sweat-soaked shirt over his head and walked off the Wright State practice court — you couldn't help but notice the bold tattoo that stretched from one shoulder blade to the other.
NO REGRETS was inked in big letters beneath a street sign that read: "6 Mile" and "Eureka."
"That's where I grew up in Detroit," DaShaun Wood said. "It was a tough neighborhood. You always wanted to hurry and get home from school because you knew trouble was waiting along the way.
"A lot of people never escaped those streets. With me, it was different. That made me stronger. I wouldn't change none of it. That's what the tattoo's about. I have no regrets. Those streets made me who I am."
So then, who is DaShaun Wood?
• Today, on this Selection Sunday, Wright State's point guard — the Horizon League Player of the Year and league tournament MVP — will be saluted as the man who put his team on those tattooed shoulders and carried it to the school's first NCAA tournament in 14 years.
• He's also the kid who grew up on Detroit's East Side — on Eureka Avenue — just down from a car-seat factory in a worn-out neighborhood where many of the abandoned houses have their doors and windows covered with plywood.
So when he said trouble was waiting, what did he mean?
DaShaun's dad, Sheldon Wood, explained that the old man who originally owned their home was tied up and robbed in a home break-in.
And the guy who lived next door, Sheldon said, "just lost his mind one day, set his house on fire and ran around the roof butt-naked screaming about Adam and Eve."
DaShaun's grandma, Birnell Wood — who used to live across the street, but has since moved from the neighborhood, as has Sheldon — tells another tale:
"One day I hear, 'Bam! bam! bam!' Sheldon was painting the house, and I had to yell for him to get down. Somebody was shootin'."
Sheldon smiled as she re-enacted the scene while sitting in her apartment at a nearby senior-citizen center:
"You know that's just the sights, the sounds of everyday life here. Somebody shooting, somebody screaming, a car screeching. Life ... it can be pretty tough sometimes."
And when the conversation turned to specifics, his smile faded. This family knows tough times.
DaShaun's mom, DeAnn Lynch, was one of those people who couldn't escape the streets. She died three years ago, Sheldon and DaShaun said, from the ravages of constant drug use.
• A third snapshot of DaShaun came on Wright State's Senior Night last month as he took the Nutter Center court with his dad.
"He was real proud," DaShaun said. "We've only had one other person in the family go to college. And for him to see me — somebody he raised and guided — turn out how I did, I don't think I've ever seen him happier in his life."
Trip back in time
Opening the series of locks on their now-empty house on Eureka, Sheldon led the way inside for a brief trip back in time:
"When we moved in here, I didn't want them subjected to some of things I was. I grew up three or four miles away, and going to school, different gangs controlled each side of the street. Every day was like ducking through a mine field. They were taking everybody's lunch money and gym shoes. To survive I joined the Chain Gang."
A high school athlete himself, Sheldon said things changed when he met DeAnn Lynch.
After high school, he got a job with the water department in Detroit. DeAnn, he said, took classes to become a medical assistant and was "doing well." He said DaShaun was about a year old when they moved into the house on Eureka.
Sheldon led the way back to his son's old bedroom, then to a window and pointed to the fence that divided their yard from the neighbor's.
"One day I hear his mom scream," he said with a laugh. "She's looking out, and there he is — he must have been just 7 or 8 — doing back flips off the top of the fence. I went out and stopped him, and by the time I got back inside, he was flipping again.
"That's him. You say something's too dangerous, too tough, that he shouldn't try it, and he works and works to prove you wrong."
With that, Sheldon led the way to the basement, which was mostly empty except for a plastic bin that held old clothes and 10 basketball trophies.
Although tarnished and forgotten, they still trumpeted DaShaun's early basketball prowess: "Cleveland Middle School Best Defensive Player ... N.Y.C. Roundball Riot 13-and-under ... Grant Hill Champions' 13-and-under MVP."
Studying them, you also noticed how some were engraved to DaShaun Lynch, others to DaShaun Wood.
"That was his mother's doing. He was always a Wood," Sheldon said.
DaShaun said there was a time early on when he and his sister lived with their mom and went by Lynch: "Back then they nicknamed me Lynch Mob." But as drugs caused DeAnn to drift out of their lives, he said they went back to being named Wood.
"Let me say this right off: DeAnn was a great woman who loved the hell out of her kids," offered Sheldon, who said he and DeAnn split up when the kids were young. "People got to understand that not everybody on drugs is trash or garbage. She just got hold of something she couldn't turn loose."
He said as things escalated, she went up to a year without talking to the kids:
"The only times I was really mad was when I knew she was missing out on the best part of their lives. Her son was getting basketball awards. Her daughter was in a dance, and she wasn't there. You can hear about things later and see the articles, but it's totally different sitting there watching your child and sharing it.
"For a long time, even when the kids knew she had a problem, they didn't want to believe it. But I think it really hurt DaShaun that she never saw him play. He held it in, though. He never really wanted to talk about it."
'She always cared'
Finding a private spot in the Setzer Pavilion practice facility the other day, DaShaun did talk about his dad's tough love, his grandma's help, his basketball maturation and his mother.
He talked a lot about her:
"The thing about my mom, she always cared. It didn't matter if she only had a dollar, she'd give it to us.
"All the time we asked her to stop, and for the most part when she hung out with me and my sister, she wouldn't drink beer and do all that stuff. But when you get addicted, it's really bad. It takes control.
"And yeah, it hurt. Your mom is the one who gave you birth, the main person you look to pamper you. But Dad was there, and when he was working, I tried to be the mom as much as I could."
His father, DaShaun said, "wouldn't let me mess up. I could do the littlest thing, and he was there correcting me. Early on, I thought all the rules — the being in the house at 9 p.m. — was nothing but punishment. But as I got older, I began to understand."
WSU coach Brad Brownell said DaShaun's early lessons shine through today: "He's more mature than a lot of kids. I'm sure part of it came from taking care of himself and having to grow up fast."
DaShaun never had to shoulder more than he did in his freshman season at Wright State when DeAnn died.
"She had just deteriorated so much," Sheldon said. "The dirty needles had given her hepatitis and a few other things, and it just shut her body down."
DaShaun rode back to Detroit with a WSU assistant coach, and along the way he said one thing haunted him: "I felt like I'd failed, that I should have helped her get out of her problem."
Former head coach Paul Biancardi was there for the memorial service, too, and after DeAnn was cremated, DaShaun returned to school and immersed himself in his other love.
Bright future
The basketball court was the one place DaShaun Wood always seemed to be able to control his destiny — except for one incident.
"Back then, kids rode fancy bikes with spoked rims — the same kind you see on a Cadillac — they call them Deeds," Sheldon said. "Well, DaShaun used to say he could beat anybody at his middle school, and next thing I know he brings some guy over here to play him for his rims.
"I told 'Shaun, 'I ain't crazy about this idea,' but sure 'nuff, he whupped that other boy and got those rims.
"Then one day that boy showed up again with five or six other guys. They all wanted to play. So DaShaun drops his bike in the yard and goes off to take each one on.
"But while he's playing, the others tip back here and steal his bike. I'd told him that that boy was never gonna let him get away with the rims. They caught him sleepin' and taught him a rule of the street: Protect what's yours."
Soon, DaShaun was doing that, first against the bigger guys who tried to run him off the court at the nearby Lasky Recreation Center, then at two Detroit high schools, his final two years playing for coach Ra-Redding Murray at Crockett High, a team he led to the state finals as a senior.
Back then, many recruiters thought he was too small — just as some pro scouts earlier this season said they feared the 5-foot-11 senior was too slight for the NBA.
"That's changing, and I'm not surprised," said Murray, now a scout with the Detroit Pistons. "He's a leader, he's super tough and he comes through in the clutch. He's going to play somewhere at the next level. And don't be surprised if you see him on an NBA roster next year.
"When you suffer from small man's disease, sometimes it's tough to find people who know how to read you and understand what you're about."
So maybe he should just shed that shirt so everybody would know what he's about. That would give them a good read. Right across the shoulder blades:
NO REGRETS.
Tom Archdeacon: Mean streets helped shape Wright State's Wood
By Tom Archdeacon
Sunday, March 11, 2007
DETROIT — A couple of days earlier — as he'd pulled his sweat-soaked shirt over his head and walked off the Wright State practice court — you couldn't help but notice the bold tattoo that stretched from one shoulder blade to the other.
NO REGRETS was inked in big letters beneath a street sign that read: "6 Mile" and "Eureka."
"That's where I grew up in Detroit," DaShaun Wood said. "It was a tough neighborhood. You always wanted to hurry and get home from school because you knew trouble was waiting along the way.
"A lot of people never escaped those streets. With me, it was different. That made me stronger. I wouldn't change none of it. That's what the tattoo's about. I have no regrets. Those streets made me who I am."
So then, who is DaShaun Wood?
• Today, on this Selection Sunday, Wright State's point guard — the Horizon League Player of the Year and league tournament MVP — will be saluted as the man who put his team on those tattooed shoulders and carried it to the school's first NCAA tournament in 14 years.
• He's also the kid who grew up on Detroit's East Side — on Eureka Avenue — just down from a car-seat factory in a worn-out neighborhood where many of the abandoned houses have their doors and windows covered with plywood.
So when he said trouble was waiting, what did he mean?
DaShaun's dad, Sheldon Wood, explained that the old man who originally owned their home was tied up and robbed in a home break-in.
And the guy who lived next door, Sheldon said, "just lost his mind one day, set his house on fire and ran around the roof butt-naked screaming about Adam and Eve."
DaShaun's grandma, Birnell Wood — who used to live across the street, but has since moved from the neighborhood, as has Sheldon — tells another tale:
"One day I hear, 'Bam! bam! bam!' Sheldon was painting the house, and I had to yell for him to get down. Somebody was shootin'."
Sheldon smiled as she re-enacted the scene while sitting in her apartment at a nearby senior-citizen center:
"You know that's just the sights, the sounds of everyday life here. Somebody shooting, somebody screaming, a car screeching. Life ... it can be pretty tough sometimes."
And when the conversation turned to specifics, his smile faded. This family knows tough times.
DaShaun's mom, DeAnn Lynch, was one of those people who couldn't escape the streets. She died three years ago, Sheldon and DaShaun said, from the ravages of constant drug use.
• A third snapshot of DaShaun came on Wright State's Senior Night last month as he took the Nutter Center court with his dad.
"He was real proud," DaShaun said. "We've only had one other person in the family go to college. And for him to see me — somebody he raised and guided — turn out how I did, I don't think I've ever seen him happier in his life."
Trip back in time
Opening the series of locks on their now-empty house on Eureka, Sheldon led the way inside for a brief trip back in time:
"When we moved in here, I didn't want them subjected to some of things I was. I grew up three or four miles away, and going to school, different gangs controlled each side of the street. Every day was like ducking through a mine field. They were taking everybody's lunch money and gym shoes. To survive I joined the Chain Gang."
A high school athlete himself, Sheldon said things changed when he met DeAnn Lynch.
After high school, he got a job with the water department in Detroit. DeAnn, he said, took classes to become a medical assistant and was "doing well." He said DaShaun was about a year old when they moved into the house on Eureka.
Sheldon led the way back to his son's old bedroom, then to a window and pointed to the fence that divided their yard from the neighbor's.
"One day I hear his mom scream," he said with a laugh. "She's looking out, and there he is — he must have been just 7 or 8 — doing back flips off the top of the fence. I went out and stopped him, and by the time I got back inside, he was flipping again.
"That's him. You say something's too dangerous, too tough, that he shouldn't try it, and he works and works to prove you wrong."
With that, Sheldon led the way to the basement, which was mostly empty except for a plastic bin that held old clothes and 10 basketball trophies.
Although tarnished and forgotten, they still trumpeted DaShaun's early basketball prowess: "Cleveland Middle School Best Defensive Player ... N.Y.C. Roundball Riot 13-and-under ... Grant Hill Champions' 13-and-under MVP."
Studying them, you also noticed how some were engraved to DaShaun Lynch, others to DaShaun Wood.
"That was his mother's doing. He was always a Wood," Sheldon said.
DaShaun said there was a time early on when he and his sister lived with their mom and went by Lynch: "Back then they nicknamed me Lynch Mob." But as drugs caused DeAnn to drift out of their lives, he said they went back to being named Wood.
"Let me say this right off: DeAnn was a great woman who loved the hell out of her kids," offered Sheldon, who said he and DeAnn split up when the kids were young. "People got to understand that not everybody on drugs is trash or garbage. She just got hold of something she couldn't turn loose."
He said as things escalated, she went up to a year without talking to the kids:
"The only times I was really mad was when I knew she was missing out on the best part of their lives. Her son was getting basketball awards. Her daughter was in a dance, and she wasn't there. You can hear about things later and see the articles, but it's totally different sitting there watching your child and sharing it.
"For a long time, even when the kids knew she had a problem, they didn't want to believe it. But I think it really hurt DaShaun that she never saw him play. He held it in, though. He never really wanted to talk about it."
'She always cared'
Finding a private spot in the Setzer Pavilion practice facility the other day, DaShaun did talk about his dad's tough love, his grandma's help, his basketball maturation and his mother.
He talked a lot about her:
"The thing about my mom, she always cared. It didn't matter if she only had a dollar, she'd give it to us.
"All the time we asked her to stop, and for the most part when she hung out with me and my sister, she wouldn't drink beer and do all that stuff. But when you get addicted, it's really bad. It takes control.
"And yeah, it hurt. Your mom is the one who gave you birth, the main person you look to pamper you. But Dad was there, and when he was working, I tried to be the mom as much as I could."
His father, DaShaun said, "wouldn't let me mess up. I could do the littlest thing, and he was there correcting me. Early on, I thought all the rules — the being in the house at 9 p.m. — was nothing but punishment. But as I got older, I began to understand."
WSU coach Brad Brownell said DaShaun's early lessons shine through today: "He's more mature than a lot of kids. I'm sure part of it came from taking care of himself and having to grow up fast."
DaShaun never had to shoulder more than he did in his freshman season at Wright State when DeAnn died.
"She had just deteriorated so much," Sheldon said. "The dirty needles had given her hepatitis and a few other things, and it just shut her body down."
DaShaun rode back to Detroit with a WSU assistant coach, and along the way he said one thing haunted him: "I felt like I'd failed, that I should have helped her get out of her problem."
Former head coach Paul Biancardi was there for the memorial service, too, and after DeAnn was cremated, DaShaun returned to school and immersed himself in his other love.
Bright future
The basketball court was the one place DaShaun Wood always seemed to be able to control his destiny — except for one incident.
"Back then, kids rode fancy bikes with spoked rims — the same kind you see on a Cadillac — they call them Deeds," Sheldon said. "Well, DaShaun used to say he could beat anybody at his middle school, and next thing I know he brings some guy over here to play him for his rims.
"I told 'Shaun, 'I ain't crazy about this idea,' but sure 'nuff, he whupped that other boy and got those rims.
"Then one day that boy showed up again with five or six other guys. They all wanted to play. So DaShaun drops his bike in the yard and goes off to take each one on.
"But while he's playing, the others tip back here and steal his bike. I'd told him that that boy was never gonna let him get away with the rims. They caught him sleepin' and taught him a rule of the street: Protect what's yours."
Soon, DaShaun was doing that, first against the bigger guys who tried to run him off the court at the nearby Lasky Recreation Center, then at two Detroit high schools, his final two years playing for coach Ra-Redding Murray at Crockett High, a team he led to the state finals as a senior.
Back then, many recruiters thought he was too small — just as some pro scouts earlier this season said they feared the 5-foot-11 senior was too slight for the NBA.
"That's changing, and I'm not surprised," said Murray, now a scout with the Detroit Pistons. "He's a leader, he's super tough and he comes through in the clutch. He's going to play somewhere at the next level. And don't be surprised if you see him on an NBA roster next year.
"When you suffer from small man's disease, sometimes it's tough to find people who know how to read you and understand what you're about."
So maybe he should just shed that shirt so everybody would know what he's about. That would give them a good read. Right across the shoulder blades:
NO REGRETS.