Just a note: In the "state final" edition of the Bee (once known as the "early edition"), this story takes up most of the front page of the Sports section...
http://www.sacbee.com/kings/story/480726.html
The same ol' Kev
Kings guard Martin may come from Zanesville, Ohio, but he's home here now
By Sam Amick - samick@sacbee.com
Last Updated 5:56 am PST Friday, November 9, 2007
Story appeared in SPORTS section, Page C8
Lance Washington cuts hair by appointment only, which would have been fine if Kings practice hadn't gone so long.
But it's past 2 p.m. and Kevin Martin was supposed to arrive at Ace of Fades barbershop at 1:20, to get his look refined on the edge of Oak Park, just as he has since coming to Sacramento three years ago.
Martin has been here before, though, driving from Arco Arena toward Interstate 80 with a reporter in tow and the window to his world being chronicled on a notepad and voice recorder. It was his indoctrination into the world of celebrity, the public firestorm that followed a story during his rookie season in which the speeding, text-messaging, no-seatbelt-wearing ways of a then-21-year-old inexplicably overshadowed all else.
Click to learn more...
He's not about to speed this time, and can't resist a chance to show just how much he has learned since coming to town.
"Hey, man," he says with a grin on this late October afternoon. "Put your belt on."
The ride has been a good one, with the skinny kid from Zanesville, Ohio, evolving into the scintillating centerpiece for an organization in flux while reaching a level of success players from off-the-radar colleges aren't supposed to reach.
From the hometown of 25,253 that sits 83 miles from Akron and well within the global shadow of its native star LeBron James, Martin left for near-empty gyms and longshot NBA dreams at Western Carolina in Cullowhee, N.C., before the Kings took him with the 26th overall pick of the 2004 draft. Since then, those who know him best say the only changes have been in location and stature, the latter reflected in his five-year extension signed during the summer worth $55 million.
His scoring, in particular, has soared to historic heights, from 2.9 points per game as a rookie to 20.2 in his third year. In terms of progress in the first three seasons, it's the fourth-best increase in league history, trailing Hall of Famers Neil Johnston, Cliff Hagan and Nate "Tiny" Archibald, and just ahead of Bob McAdoo.
Yet Martin may have changed the haircut – ditching the Kid N' Play curly look for a more chic style that his mother, Marilyn, declared took him out of "the little boy phase" – but the barber remains the same.
Martin parks his jet-black Mercedes in front of the 33rd Street business at which a walk-in cut costs $15, then lets Washington go to work.
"It doesn't surprise me that he still comes here," Washington says over the hum of the electric trimmers, "because he's always been real laid-back, not seeming like he wanted all the attention. Kev just seems like the right person to get a contract like that, to be the leader of our team."
Sacramento's son, one could say.
"I was reading one of (Zanesville Times Recorder's Sam) Blackburn's articles the other day, and he called me Zanesville's son," Martin said. "But it's kind of funny because I came (to Sacramento) when I was young. ... Everybody here has seen me go from a kid to maturing as a man. That's what kind of connection I have around here. It's how the people are with me, how they feel connected and I feel connected with them as a community. I couldn't ask for anything else."
* * *
That's the thing about Zanesville, a middle-class town some 50 miles from Columbus where three generations of Martins still live. And, more specifically, that's the thing about Martin's family.
They don't ask for much.
Remember where you came from, come back to say hello every so often and sign a few autographs for the kids. Martin always does, playing in the annual Gus Macker 3-on-3 tournament every summer he has been in the NBA that has become his unofficial annual homecoming. They've given back to him, too, like the event in this past June in which the gym at Martin's Grover Cleveland Middle School was named in his honor.
At home, grandma Maxine makes sure everyone knows the latest in the world of K-Mart. Much like Kevin Sr., she watches every Kings game despite the fact that tipoffs typically come at 10 p.m. East Coast time, and calls him after every game to offer praise no matter how he played.
"She's like his personal agent around here," says Martin's father, Kevin Martin Sr., of his 74-year-old mother. "If you don't know, all you've got to do is ask her and she'll tell you. But we get into it all the time, because I'm real critical and she's always telling him he played great."
What they'll both tell you, though, is that multi-millionaire money doesn't matter much to the Martins. The notion has a ring of ridiculousness, especially in a pro sports climate in which players' families so often expect to reap the financial rewards of their relative's success. But the Martins have proof – from the driveway on up to the front door.
When Martin signed his first NBA contract, the most his parents would allow in the way of gifts were two modest cars – a 2005 Nissan Murano for his father and a 2005 Nissan Altima for his mother.
"But I have a '91 Honda with over 200,000 miles on it that I still drive," Kevin Sr. says. "I don't even drive the new one."
The Martin family tree hasn't branched far, either, as they still live in the same tiny three-bedroom house in which Kevin Sr. was born and both Kevin and his brother, Jonathon, were raised. Martin's room is still outfitted with posters, all-star jerseys from his time at Zanesville High, and newspaper clippings.
The entire family not only continues to work, but work hard. Kevin Sr., who for years had his own landscaping company, now does road construction during the week and has some landscape jobs on the weekends. Jonathon works alongside him, pulling the same 10-hour days and rotating driving duty when jobs take them as far as 90 minutes outside of Zanesville. His mother works a 40-plus-hour week as a welfare social worker.
"We're just everyday people who just do our own thing, fend for ourselves," Kevin Sr. said by telephone at the end of a long day. "Between me and Jonathon and his mother, we know we'd never be hurting (for money) if we ever need anything. But in the meantime, we're going to just keep doing our thing and doing what we want to do.
"Not everything in life is just materialistic. That's the way I've always looked at it, and that's the way we wanted the kids to look at it."
Martin said his family has made it easy to keep the money from affecting who he is.
"They haven't changed one bit so I haven't changed," he said. "That's just how they raised me. Like my mom – she used to always give me $20 at Easter and Christmas, and she's still trying to give me $20.
"That's just coming from Zanesville. We weren't too poor, weren't too rich. It's just a town where you'd want to raise your kids, where people have respect and everybody knows everybody."
Getting the Zanesville folks to know Martin was never the problem. It was spreading his name everywhere else that was challenging.
* * *
Officially, Martin – who grew from a 99-pound freshman at Zanesville High School to a 6-foot-6, 150-pound senior – had three college scholarship offers. In truth, there was just one. The coach at Ohio University who had pursued him moved on to a new job before Martin could accept, and the University at Buffalo program that also wanted him became a less attractive option when it was placed on probation for NCAA violations.
So it was Cullowhee by default.
As distinctions go, the Catamounts had this: Theirs was the only Division I program in the country in which the college was located in an unincorporated town. And even after Martin spent three seasons showcasing his scoring ways and finishing second in the nation (24.9 points per game) as a junior, obscurity remained. When Martin made the choice to enter the NBA draft early and forgo his senior season, critics of all kinds came out and support was minimal.
"When he announced (his entry), it was just a great big thud (nationally)," said Tyler Norris Goode, who covered Martin for the Asheville Citizen-Times, which is 55 miles from Cullowhee. "Nobody cared. The only people who said anything about it said he really should go back to school."
Western Carolina had never had an athlete – in any sport – taken in the first round of a draft, and he was just the second player from the Southern Conference to be taken in the opening round in 40 years.
Before the draft, some media outlets couldn't even manage to get the name of the school correct, let alone gauge the likelihood of whether its star was NBA-ready. Norris Goode remembers looking at ESPN's Web site and reading about Kevin Martin of "Wagner College," a mistake that was part of his prospect profile until draft day.
There was plenty of skepticism in Cullowhee, too. Even Martin's college coach, Steve Shurina, doubted whether Martin could impress his way into the first round. Meanwhile, Martin had been progressing with his personal coach, David Thorpe, with whom he began working after his freshman season in college and who he continues to work with every offseason. Martin didn't sign with his agent, Jason Levien, until days before the draft so he could return to school if he so chose.
"Shurina gave me a booklet and said he had talked to every team in the NBA, and that each team said he's not good enough, that he needed to go to school for another year," Martin Sr. said. "But I talked to (Thorpe), and I know he's in the inner circle more than his college coach was."
Thorpe said he didn't doubt that Shurina had spoken with the teams, only that the information he'd gathered was reason for concern.
"I really think he spoke to most of those teams if not all the teams," Thorpe said. "But in most cases, when a college coach is talking to someone he probably knows, or a lower-level person on the team, they probably tell him what they want to hear.
"The comment I made to the Martin family was that there are no guarantees in this process except one: if you don't put your name in the draft, you're guaranteed not to be drafted."
cont...
http://www.sacbee.com/kings/story/480726.html
The same ol' Kev
Kings guard Martin may come from Zanesville, Ohio, but he's home here now
By Sam Amick - samick@sacbee.com
Last Updated 5:56 am PST Friday, November 9, 2007
Story appeared in SPORTS section, Page C8
Lance Washington cuts hair by appointment only, which would have been fine if Kings practice hadn't gone so long.
But it's past 2 p.m. and Kevin Martin was supposed to arrive at Ace of Fades barbershop at 1:20, to get his look refined on the edge of Oak Park, just as he has since coming to Sacramento three years ago.
Martin has been here before, though, driving from Arco Arena toward Interstate 80 with a reporter in tow and the window to his world being chronicled on a notepad and voice recorder. It was his indoctrination into the world of celebrity, the public firestorm that followed a story during his rookie season in which the speeding, text-messaging, no-seatbelt-wearing ways of a then-21-year-old inexplicably overshadowed all else.
Click to learn more...
He's not about to speed this time, and can't resist a chance to show just how much he has learned since coming to town.
"Hey, man," he says with a grin on this late October afternoon. "Put your belt on."
The ride has been a good one, with the skinny kid from Zanesville, Ohio, evolving into the scintillating centerpiece for an organization in flux while reaching a level of success players from off-the-radar colleges aren't supposed to reach.
From the hometown of 25,253 that sits 83 miles from Akron and well within the global shadow of its native star LeBron James, Martin left for near-empty gyms and longshot NBA dreams at Western Carolina in Cullowhee, N.C., before the Kings took him with the 26th overall pick of the 2004 draft. Since then, those who know him best say the only changes have been in location and stature, the latter reflected in his five-year extension signed during the summer worth $55 million.
His scoring, in particular, has soared to historic heights, from 2.9 points per game as a rookie to 20.2 in his third year. In terms of progress in the first three seasons, it's the fourth-best increase in league history, trailing Hall of Famers Neil Johnston, Cliff Hagan and Nate "Tiny" Archibald, and just ahead of Bob McAdoo.
Yet Martin may have changed the haircut – ditching the Kid N' Play curly look for a more chic style that his mother, Marilyn, declared took him out of "the little boy phase" – but the barber remains the same.
Martin parks his jet-black Mercedes in front of the 33rd Street business at which a walk-in cut costs $15, then lets Washington go to work.
"It doesn't surprise me that he still comes here," Washington says over the hum of the electric trimmers, "because he's always been real laid-back, not seeming like he wanted all the attention. Kev just seems like the right person to get a contract like that, to be the leader of our team."
Sacramento's son, one could say.
"I was reading one of (Zanesville Times Recorder's Sam) Blackburn's articles the other day, and he called me Zanesville's son," Martin said. "But it's kind of funny because I came (to Sacramento) when I was young. ... Everybody here has seen me go from a kid to maturing as a man. That's what kind of connection I have around here. It's how the people are with me, how they feel connected and I feel connected with them as a community. I couldn't ask for anything else."
* * *
That's the thing about Zanesville, a middle-class town some 50 miles from Columbus where three generations of Martins still live. And, more specifically, that's the thing about Martin's family.
They don't ask for much.
Remember where you came from, come back to say hello every so often and sign a few autographs for the kids. Martin always does, playing in the annual Gus Macker 3-on-3 tournament every summer he has been in the NBA that has become his unofficial annual homecoming. They've given back to him, too, like the event in this past June in which the gym at Martin's Grover Cleveland Middle School was named in his honor.
At home, grandma Maxine makes sure everyone knows the latest in the world of K-Mart. Much like Kevin Sr., she watches every Kings game despite the fact that tipoffs typically come at 10 p.m. East Coast time, and calls him after every game to offer praise no matter how he played.
"She's like his personal agent around here," says Martin's father, Kevin Martin Sr., of his 74-year-old mother. "If you don't know, all you've got to do is ask her and she'll tell you. But we get into it all the time, because I'm real critical and she's always telling him he played great."
What they'll both tell you, though, is that multi-millionaire money doesn't matter much to the Martins. The notion has a ring of ridiculousness, especially in a pro sports climate in which players' families so often expect to reap the financial rewards of their relative's success. But the Martins have proof – from the driveway on up to the front door.
When Martin signed his first NBA contract, the most his parents would allow in the way of gifts were two modest cars – a 2005 Nissan Murano for his father and a 2005 Nissan Altima for his mother.
"But I have a '91 Honda with over 200,000 miles on it that I still drive," Kevin Sr. says. "I don't even drive the new one."
The Martin family tree hasn't branched far, either, as they still live in the same tiny three-bedroom house in which Kevin Sr. was born and both Kevin and his brother, Jonathon, were raised. Martin's room is still outfitted with posters, all-star jerseys from his time at Zanesville High, and newspaper clippings.
The entire family not only continues to work, but work hard. Kevin Sr., who for years had his own landscaping company, now does road construction during the week and has some landscape jobs on the weekends. Jonathon works alongside him, pulling the same 10-hour days and rotating driving duty when jobs take them as far as 90 minutes outside of Zanesville. His mother works a 40-plus-hour week as a welfare social worker.
"We're just everyday people who just do our own thing, fend for ourselves," Kevin Sr. said by telephone at the end of a long day. "Between me and Jonathon and his mother, we know we'd never be hurting (for money) if we ever need anything. But in the meantime, we're going to just keep doing our thing and doing what we want to do.
"Not everything in life is just materialistic. That's the way I've always looked at it, and that's the way we wanted the kids to look at it."
Martin said his family has made it easy to keep the money from affecting who he is.
"They haven't changed one bit so I haven't changed," he said. "That's just how they raised me. Like my mom – she used to always give me $20 at Easter and Christmas, and she's still trying to give me $20.
"That's just coming from Zanesville. We weren't too poor, weren't too rich. It's just a town where you'd want to raise your kids, where people have respect and everybody knows everybody."
Getting the Zanesville folks to know Martin was never the problem. It was spreading his name everywhere else that was challenging.
* * *
Officially, Martin – who grew from a 99-pound freshman at Zanesville High School to a 6-foot-6, 150-pound senior – had three college scholarship offers. In truth, there was just one. The coach at Ohio University who had pursued him moved on to a new job before Martin could accept, and the University at Buffalo program that also wanted him became a less attractive option when it was placed on probation for NCAA violations.
So it was Cullowhee by default.
As distinctions go, the Catamounts had this: Theirs was the only Division I program in the country in which the college was located in an unincorporated town. And even after Martin spent three seasons showcasing his scoring ways and finishing second in the nation (24.9 points per game) as a junior, obscurity remained. When Martin made the choice to enter the NBA draft early and forgo his senior season, critics of all kinds came out and support was minimal.
"When he announced (his entry), it was just a great big thud (nationally)," said Tyler Norris Goode, who covered Martin for the Asheville Citizen-Times, which is 55 miles from Cullowhee. "Nobody cared. The only people who said anything about it said he really should go back to school."
Western Carolina had never had an athlete – in any sport – taken in the first round of a draft, and he was just the second player from the Southern Conference to be taken in the opening round in 40 years.
Before the draft, some media outlets couldn't even manage to get the name of the school correct, let alone gauge the likelihood of whether its star was NBA-ready. Norris Goode remembers looking at ESPN's Web site and reading about Kevin Martin of "Wagner College," a mistake that was part of his prospect profile until draft day.
There was plenty of skepticism in Cullowhee, too. Even Martin's college coach, Steve Shurina, doubted whether Martin could impress his way into the first round. Meanwhile, Martin had been progressing with his personal coach, David Thorpe, with whom he began working after his freshman season in college and who he continues to work with every offseason. Martin didn't sign with his agent, Jason Levien, until days before the draft so he could return to school if he so chose.
"Shurina gave me a booklet and said he had talked to every team in the NBA, and that each team said he's not good enough, that he needed to go to school for another year," Martin Sr. said. "But I talked to (Thorpe), and I know he's in the inner circle more than his college coach was."
Thorpe said he didn't doubt that Shurina had spoken with the teams, only that the information he'd gathered was reason for concern.
"I really think he spoke to most of those teams if not all the teams," Thorpe said. "But in most cases, when a college coach is talking to someone he probably knows, or a lower-level person on the team, they probably tell him what they want to hear.
"The comment I made to the Martin family was that there are no guarantees in this process except one: if you don't put your name in the draft, you're guaranteed not to be drafted."
cont...
