It’s been over 11 years since DeShawn Stevenson was selected 23rd overall by the Utah Jazz in the abysmal 2000 draft, and he’s still signing his name to the back of NBA paychecks. While that may not make his career one of the most illustrious of the decade, it does mean he’s accomplished something that only half the players selected in front of him were able to… and it appears that by the time it’s all said and done he may stick around longer than any of those 22 players. Born in 1981, DeShawn is the youngest of the bunch, and he’s the only one coming off a season during which he proved that his defense and three-point sniping can help lift a team over that final hurdle.
Despite a troubled upbringing and a few run ins with the law, DeShawn has held it together and carved out a niche for himself in the NBA. He’s not going to drop your jaw with a spectacular finish at the rim, but he’ll knock down that open jumper. He’s not going to rise up and swat an opposing player’s layup into the 5th row, but he’ll make their best player fight harder than he wants to to get to his spots. DeShawn very rarely does anything that will land him a spot in a highlight reel, but he gets a yeoman’s job done. There will always be employment for a guy like that.
For this reason, I’ve come to like DeShawn. He’s the NBA’s working man, and I can appreciate that–that and the fact that he’s a character. As much as I appreciate the way DeShawn plays, he boggles my mind, though, because this is not at all the player he was touted as coming straight out of high school in Fresno, CA. As a matter of fact, longtime Kansas Jayhawks coach Roy Williams once dubbed Stevenson his most gifted recruit ever. The claim seems ludicrous when you consider the caliber of the players that Roy coached at Kansas (Paul Pierce, for example), but the 30.4 points, 9.7 rebounds, and 6.2 assists that Stevenson posted as a high school senior support it. So do his game-high 25 points in the 2000 McDonald’s All American game, and his Slam Dunk crown.
As a matter of fact, Stevenson was a competitor in the NBA’s 2001 Dunk Contest as well.
Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine him dunking at all, let alone getting up like that. His name doesn’t appear on CBSSports.com’s dunk-o-meter, so I’m going to assume that means he never scored from above the rim even a single time last season. Although he used to show glimpses of explosiveness, he didn’t dunk much in his Magic or Wizards days either. I don’t remember his time with the Jazz, but he hardly even played there.
Stevenson’s pre-draft hype compared to his NBA career reminds me of Tyson Chandler. Chandler was supposed to be this seven-foot phenom with guard-like ball handling abilities and a jumper; turns out that only the seven-foot part was true. He’s become a serviceable big man, but he’s never shown anything close to what he was said to be capable of.
Watch the highschool version of DeShawn repeatedly enter the stratosphere in the following mix…
Like I said, once upon a time, the young man could fly. Old news? Yes. Forgotten news? I think so… when’s the last time anyone spoke of DeShawn Stevenson and it wasn’t about him getting arrested, having odd tattoos, or waving his hand in front of his face?
If you watched until the end you saw the off-glass lob. Damn! Just goes to show you that everyone who makes it in the league is, as Dickie V put it, “special, special, special.”
