By Orin Davidson
Darren Collison, the son of Guyanese track stars June Griffith and Dennis Collison, is plotting his own path to the top of the world of sports…through basketball
The Flatbush Bar exuded an unusual buzz one recent Sunday night. Patrons thronged the narrow entrance of the Club Classique, excited voices raised above the accustomed decibel level. The Club Classique is a popular hangout spot for Guyanese residing in Brooklyn and you could sense that that Sunday night was a special one.
Inside, at a specially reserved table, June Griffith, the internationally renowned Guyanese track star was exuding happiness as almost all of the other patrons clamoured for her attention. June has every reason to be pleased. If her own career as an international athlete has come to an end, she continues to enjoy celebrity status, these days, as a sports mum. The former world-ranked 400 metres queen is basking in the glow of what seems set to be yet another illustrious career in sport. Her son Darren Collison is one of the most talked-about young talents in the highly demanding world of professional basketball.
People who know Darren well are entirely unsurprised that he is receiving rave reviews following a stellar first (2009/10 season with the New Orleans Hornets in America’s prestigious National Basketball Association during which he came close to copping the coveted Rookie of the Year Award. His prowess on the basketball court derives both from his own innate talent and from a hereditary inheritance of two parents who themselves boast outstanding achievements as competitors in the world of sport.
Guyanese sports enthusiasts will undoubtedly remember Dennis Collison, Darren’s father, once one of the country’s leading national 100 and 200 metres sprinters. Dennis and June both blossomed as national track stars during the mid to late 1970s. They got married after both won scholarships to the Adelphi University in New York. They live in California where Darren was born and grew up and where he developed his love of basketball.
The young Collison was drafted 21st by the Hornets last year following a solid College career with the University of California, Los Angeles. (UCLA) As the starting point guard for one of the most prestigious schools in the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) he performed with distinction and though he never won the elusive NCAA title with his school, as a NBA player, he seems set for bigger things.
Darren’s taste of first team play with the Hornets materialized out of an unfortunate injury to the team’s starting point guard, Chris Paul, which incapacitated him for two-thirds of the season. Thrust unexpectedly into the limelight and guided by his senior team mate he emerged with flying colours. The six-foot, 160-pounder twice broke the team’s rookie record last season, first, scoring 18 assists and 17 points to shatter the initial record then, two months later, topping his own record by tallying 20 assists and 18 points. He further distinguished himself by becoming only the second rookie in the NBA season to accomplish the triple double, with 18 assists, 13 rebounds and 12 All told, he averaged 18.8 points, and 9.1 assists in his debut year. points.
Her son’s raging success notwithstanding, June Griffith is content to play the role of a caring mother. She craves neither the spotlight nor the lure of the financial inducements that usually attend sporting success in the United States. Nor does she – unlike many of the parents of young tennis and golf professionals do – travel across the country to watch Darren’s every game. “We (herself and Dennis) have gone to a few of his games but we are quite happy being low profile. It is not something that we go after because we had our times in competition, June says. And, she adds, Darren likes it that way. Try as she does, however, she cannot escape the limelight. Despite her own considerable accomplishments on the track, her son’s accomplishments on the basketball court have led to her being commonly referred to as ‘Darren’s mom.’ How quickly her own successes appear to have become subsumed beneath her son’s, is an indication of how quickly time flies.
During the 1970s, when athletics enjoyed its heyday in Guyana, June Griffith was by far the country’s most accomplished female athlete. Fans of the sport will recall her memorable dead heat finish with the American Sharon Dabney at the 1979 Pan American Games in Puerto Rico, the outcome of which, decided by the photo-finish camera, relegated her to second place and sparked a vigorous controversy among Guyanese enthusiasts who fumed that it was the politics of the day that led to the American being declared the winner. That year, June was ranked as the 10th best female 400 metres runner in the world. The very next year, 1980, she was cruelly denied the opportunity to run at the Moscow Olympics. Five years later she was finally to become an Olympian in Los Angeles. Dennis has represented Guyana at both the Commonwealth Games and the Pan American Games but missed the experience of the Olympic Games after Guyana boycotted the event in 1976. Given Darren’s prospects as a possible member of “The Dream Team” at the London Olympics in two years’ time, both June and Dennis may yet, in their own way, be part of the 2012 event.
Rancho Cucamonga is a small town in the huge state of California where neighbourhood interaction is not commonplace. June was therefore challenged to keep their toddler son occupied with sports activities. With both mother and father having made careers in athletics, it was understandable that Darren would be tried out in that discipline. That did not work nor did several other sports. “We tried baseball, football and other things but Darren was adamant about only one thing. He wanted to play basketball and only basketball,” June says. The enduring mother set up a basketball hoop in her backyard and arranged for Darren to attend training camps and soon the youngster was stating unequivocally that he wanted to become a professional basketball player.
The route to professional status in the world of basketball in the United States is an arduous one. Dreams can be permanently derailed along the way by any one of several factors including injury of elimination by the competition. For African Americans, so many of whom harbour thoughts of stardom and success on the basketball court, the journey is often nothing short of torturous. Darren has proven himself tough enough to overcome those obstacles and one has every reason to believe that the fact that he was born to two world-class athletes has helped.
Interestingly, while his accomplishments at High School did not immediately suggest that he was destined to make a major impact in the NBA he has literally played his way from strength to strength. An automatic choice as starting point guard for UCLA in his final year, the closest he came to reaching the pinnacle of College success was carrying his team to the the semi finals. Prior to that, in the year when UCLA reached the finals he was part of the reserves.
Darren’s talents appeared to become more apparent following his signing with the Hornets and he immediately attracted the attention of Paul, considered then to be the most talented point guard in the NBA. At that time the Hornets were on their own humanitarian mission of helping to restore the morale of a city ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and Darren had unexpectedly become part of the plot. Benefiting from a crash course in NBA passing, dribbling and shooting administered by Paul, Darren was quickly performing like a seasoned NBA player. ESPN Magazine states as follows: “Utah’s Deron Williams crouches helplessly in his defensive stance as the Hornets point guard he is covering crosses over, throws a shoulder fake then explodes to the hole for a nice finger-roll finish. Before you say “well, yeah – Chris Paul can make anyone look bad,” please note that Paul;, in street clothes, has just jumped off the bench to pump his fist toward his lightning quick replacement, Darren Collison. “Darren’s a great young guard,” Williams says. “Its hard to tell him and Chris apart.”
Towards the end of the regular season Paul reclaimed his starting position and by the end of the season pundits were suggesting that had he not returned to the team the Hornets might have made the playoffs. Their comments were not so much a criticism of Paul’s prowess as they were a measure of just how impressed they had been with his replacement for much of the season. The payoff for Darren was that his performance had won him media attention including comments that upgraded him to elite point guard status and talk of an interest in him by other NBA clubs including the Detroit Pistons.
Still, the young Collison continues to have both feet on the ground, keeping it real. He is not about the start chasing the millions and has chosen instead to leave the Hornets summer games series to return to College to complete the final course left for his attainment of a Bachelors Degree. After that he will return to Rancho Cucamonga for some much needed downtime. There, he will be spending all of his time with mom since, June says, “he doesn’t even have his own house yet.”