Under original plans, MarShon Brooks would play his fifth preseason game tonight, running with Deron Williams and continuing his NBA rookie education with the Nets.
Guess what? Original plans were scrapped. So instead, Brooks will continue working out at Providence College, where he also is working toward his college diploma. The lockout may have made the NBA world an imperfect place, but Brooks found a positive. He went back to school, signed up for four courses (he only needed three) and hopes to have his degree in Social Science by lockout’s end.
It certainly beats the frustration of labor strife keeping you from your NBA dream.
“It’s getting frustrating,” said Brooks, selected 25th by the Celtics and acquired on draft night by the Nets. “There’s never been a point in my life where I didn’t play basketball. Honestly, it was a lifelong dream. I want to see what the hype is all about. I want to get out there and play. Working out and playing with the fellas over at school, it gets old. Especially when they’re starting their season. Like today, they have a game. I can’t play pickup. They have two-a-days, I can’t play pickup.”
So Brooks is studying rather than accepting passes from Williams or displaying his scoring prowess. But he wants to play — anywhere.
“I would love to play in the D-League. Any type of NBA-format games that would give me a chance to play right now would be perfect,” Brooks said.
Brooks’ mother has watched her son struggle with the inactivity.
“He is extremely frustrated because basketball is his life — he breathes it, he loves it,” said Darlyn Brooks, who created a whole different story by capitalizing an “S” in her son’s name. “Keep in mind we were prepared for this. Thank God he was a senior. I feel bad for the kids who came out early. MarShon left a semester early.”
And wound up back in school, which says something about him.
“I’m so proud,” Darlyn Brooks said. “I was young when I had him and stayed home to be a mom. I told him his degree is our degree.”
And their degree “says his priorities and his head is in the right place,” said Brooks’ agent, Seth Cohen of the Miami-based OCR firm. “It says everything happens for a reason.”
Even weird spellings. Darlyn Brooks really liked the name Marshon. So the choice of a name was simple. The spelling was another matter. She wanted the name pronounced MarSHON. So she capitalized the “S.”
“I didn’t want my son being called a Martian,” she explained.
But get a league on Mars, Brooks will play there. He wants to be NBA-ready and realizes the enormous job ahead for young players when and if the lockout ends. He has to learn plays and get used to teammates.
“Then obviously there’s a 24-second shot clock to get used to,” Brooks said, realizing maybe term papers aren’t so tough after all. “It’s huge to have a month training camp for the rookies. You need that. Now it could be, what, 3-4 days? You’re trying to learn 90-100 plays in a few days and get used to the pace as well?”
Teams cannot contact their players during the lockout, so the Nets are unable to help Brooks — born in Long Branch, N.J. — find a home.
“When they settle, I’ll figure something out,” Brooks said. “I just want to play.”