When Jay Straight was new to town, he had trouble sleeping nights. The noise was a problem.
There wasn’t any.
“When it’s time to sleep, you don’t hear anything,” Straight said. “For me, that was difficult. I was used to hearing cars, sirens, people. Everything was different here.”
Straight had already made a few transitions in his life before enrolling at the University of Wyoming. One of the biggest came when his grandmother, Addie Thompson, moved from one of Chicago’s worst public housing projects into an apartment of her own in 1998.
Straight, then a Dunbar High School sophomore, missed the Robert Taylor Homes.
“Oh, my God, it was so fun,” Straight said of a life outsiders barely can imagine. “There was always something going on. I missed it completely. But she told me it was for us. That it was time for me to start thinking about the ACT [test], about taking care of stuff.”
Straight was living with his grandmother, who had taken him and his younger sisters from her daughter, whose drug addiction prevented her from being an effective parent. This was when Straight was in 7th grade, shortly before he would learn the father who had given him little other than his name had died from a drug overdose.
“That was a sick time for me,” he said.
Straight now admits he had been suspended from 6th grade because he was caught holding drugs. He had looked on “the gangbangers,” as he calls them, with envy.
In his young world, defined by the crowded courtyards around 4444 S. State St., where he and baseball Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett had their earliest homes, and 4525 S. Federal St., where he would live with his grandmother, it was the Gangster Disciples and members of other gangs who were the role models for most.
“It was so tempting,” Straight recalled. “Being in that environment, it made you want to go sell drugs, it made you want to go out gangbanging. Everybody did it. All the guys who had the nice clothes, the fine gear, that stuff, they were selling drugs and gangbanging. Everybody looked down at you when you didn’t have it. It was strong. Man, that temptation was strong.”
But Straight had a few things going for him others didn’t. Basketball, for starters, although hundreds of kids in the projects have basketball. He also had the strong influence of his grandmother, the ability to be a good student and a spot on an AAU basketball team that gave him a look at life outside the Public League.
That’s how he came to be riding around in a Cadillac Escalade driven by 19-year-old Eddy Curry in the summer of 2001. Along with some other Chicago high school stars, including Najeeb Echols and Luther Head, Straight triumphed vicariously through his friend Curry, who went straight from Thornwood High School to a three-year, $9 million deal with the Bulls.
“He had this Escalade, 22-inch rims, TVs,” Straight said. “We were just along for the ride. It was fun. I came out here after that.”
“Out here” is Dick Cheney country. Wyoming has a population of approximately 500,000; 92.1 percent of the residents are white and less than 1 percent are African-American.
It has a climate that delivers more snow and more wind than Chicago. Laramie is a college town tucked away in a rugged, mountainous outpost worthy of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
If the University of Wyoming isn’t in the middle of nowhere, you definitely can see it from there. It’s the Siberia of Division I college basketball.
As a high-profile recruit, Straight had Notre Dame, Marquette, Boston College, Iowa State and St. Louis on his short list. He chose instead the path less traveled, and now he has only a few steps left.
“His whole thing was he wanted to get away from the city,” Curry said. “Growing up in the inner city, he wanted to get away from that. He wanted to give himself a chance to play and become a good player. By going out there, he limited his distractions.”
And broadened his horizons.
Barring an upset of favored Utah, Straight’s college career will conclude either in the Mountain West Conference tournament or perhaps with a trip to the NIT. His future in professional basketball is uncertain.
His date with a cap and gown on May 7 is much firmer, provided he navigates his way through a 19-hour course load in the spring semester. Addie Thompson has made her reservations, which pretty much ensures Straight will finish his task.
“That’s probably going to be the best feeling in my life,” Straight said.
Model of consistency
A thousand miles away from Chicago, and light years away from the national excitement over Head and others on Illinois’ unbeaten team, the kid who was so tempted to go bad has done very well.
He’s not surprised.
Straight said he would be a much better player than Curry if he were the same height, and it’s hard to tell if he’s joking. He’s listed at 5 feet 11 inches, which is an inch shorter than Illinois’ Dee Brown, whose height is considered a serious drawback for his professional future. But Straight, like Brown, has worked to get the most out of his body.
Straight started his 109th game for Wyoming on Saturday, the second most in school history. He’s the career assists leader and No. 3 career scorer in the MWC, which features many teams from the old Western Athletic Conference.
Straight is averaging 18.2 points and 5.3 assists per game this season for the Cowboys, 15-12 after Saturday’s 61-56 loss to Air Force. But those totals don’t do his commitment justice.
Behind Straight, Wyoming outscored New Mexico 13-0 in the last 2 minutes 43 seconds of a Feb. 7 game at the Arena-Auditorium. That turned a three-point deficit into a 10-point victory. No one on the floor was working harder or more effectively than Straight, who had played every minute of the game.
Straight plays more minutes–39.7 per game–than every Division I player except La Salle forward Steven Smith. He has been off the floor only once in the Cowboys’ last 12 games, twice going the distance in overtime games. He played 50 minutes in a double-overtime victory over Princeton in November.
And he does this playing at altitude.
Laramie, situated on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, has an elevation of 7,200 feet. That number is featured prominently on a sign at the end of the runway that leads to the playing floor and is a familiar figure for Wyoming’s basketball opponents at the Arena-Auditorium, the school’s flying-saucer-style gym.
The sign reads: “Welcome to 7,200 feet. How’s your oxygen?”
Straight can relate. He was miserable in workouts before his freshman season, often getting the nosebleeds that occur until one becomes acclimated to thin air.
“I’ve never been around a guy, or even known of one, who plays as many minutes as Jay does,” Wyoming coach Steve McClain said. “He is in as good shape as a player can be in. To do it here, at altitude, makes it unbelievable. Colorado Springs, which is 7,600 feet, is where the U.S. Olympic program goes to train its athletes. What does that tell you?”
Straight’s initial unhappiness in Laramie was about more than burning lungs. He was feeling socially isolated and wondered what he’d got himself into by following his grandmother’s advice to get as far away from old temptations as possible.
With such a small population to draw from, Wyoming coaches must recruit nationally if they hope to field competitive teams. But getting good players there is only half the battle. The real test often is getting them to stay.
Culture shock
Laramie–population 27,204–is a college town that still seems to be out of the 1950s or ’60s. The social life isn’t what city kids are used to, especially African-Americans. If you don’t want to shop for clothes at Wal-Mart, you could be looking at the two-hour drive into Denver.
Straight said his suitcase was packed “plenty of times” as a freshman.
“It was really, really difficult,” he said. “I wanted to come home. But I’m not a quitter.”
McClain and his assistants convinced Straight to stay, and he became the starting point guard when senior Chris McMillian was slow to recover from a broken leg he had suffered playing softball. He was looking for an opportunity to play as a freshman, bypassing offers from bigger schools in hopes of making a name for himself.
Instead of leaving Wyoming, Straight has become one of the school’s top recruiters. He helped convince former Thornwood center Justin Williams to transfer to Wyoming, rather than DePaul or other big-name schools that recruited him after he had established himself as a defensive standout in two seasons at Colby (Kan.) Community College.
He is likely to be replaced as the Cowboys’ point guard by Brandon Ewing of Julian, who bypassed offers from many Midwestern schools to follow Straight’s path from inner-city Chicago to Wyoming.
Straight’s message to both was straightforward: This is the wrong place to come if you want to party; it’s a great place to come if you want to be serious about basketball and earning a degree.
“Jason doesn’t lie to you,” Williams said. “That was the big thing with me. When I was here [on a recruiting trip], he told me it could be boring around here. He said, `See those mountains? See those stars? They’re going to be the brightest lights you see here.’ But this is a great place to come to play basketball. It’s a lot better than being in Chicago because there are just too many distractions there.”
Breath of fresh air
Laramie is rodeo country, but Straight makes a face when he’s asked if he has been to any rodeos. He’s still a Chicago guy, spending most of his time off the court at the apartment he shares with Williams.
Chicago has remained the essence of his game. His extreme level of conditioning comes from spending the last two summers working with Sifu Katalin Rodriguez Zamiar, a stuntwoman who owns and operates Pow!, a gym in the West Loop. Her program is called a modernized approach to martial arts and includes boxing and elements of yoga.
“She really whipped me into shape,” Straight said. “She emphasizes stretching and flexibility, being prepared to be in shape. She taught me a lot about breathing, and that really makes a difference in games here. I know how to breathe and to pace myself. The first couple of years, I tried to get ready by running. But you can do all the running you want in Chicago and then come here and it’s different. I’m in the best shape of my life right now, and it’s paying off.”
Straight has become friends with Tim Grover, Michael Jordan’s old personal trainer, and sometimes talks his way into games with NBA players at Hoops the Gym.
“It’s fun,” Straight said. “I love being back in Chicago because there’s great talent there. There are so many awesome players in Chicago. It’s always good to go home. You can always find good basketball.”
It’s a long way from the playgrounds of the Taylor Homes to places like Hoops. Straight said he would not have made it if not for his grandmother, who literally cleared a way for him.
“She would protect me,” Straight said. “A lot of my cousins were gangbangers. Everyone was a gangbanger, it seemed like. She let everybody know they would answer to her if they bothered me, and she was respected around there. She said he was going to do better things, and people listened to her. She has been a key to my success.”
No one felt Addie Thompson’s wrath more quickly than her grandson.
“She was always telling me, `I know I sound like an after-school special, but if you don’t go to school, if you sell drugs, become a gangbanger, you’re going to end up dead or in jail,”‘ Straight said. “The older I get, the more I see she was right. A lot of the guys I used to know are dead or in jail.”
Straight has been out of sight, and largely out of mind, since he led the Public League with 29.8 points per game at Dunbar.
“Those were great times,” Straight said. “No matter what happens, I’m going to think back to the Public League as four of the best years of my life.”
He was extremely visible as a high school star because of his play on AAU teams that included the Bulls’ Curry and because he was featured in a Fox Sports Net reality series that followed top recruits. He hopes to regain his high profile next season as an NBA rookie but knows he will have to beat the odds because of his size.
Speedy Claxton, the 5-11 guard who was recently traded from Golden State to New Orleans, is the player Straight hopes to emulate. He’s prepared to go overseas if he does not earn a spot on an NBA roster.
“He’s a very smart player,” Curry said. “He realizes he’s a smaller player. He goes out there and gets the job done.”
Straight’s ties to Chicago include Jalia Straight, his 4-year-old daughter.
“I had a child when I was young, a senior in high school,” Straight said. “It was a difficult time. It made it even more difficult coming out here. But my daughter has been a motivation for me, and so far my plan is working out.
“I’ll be graduating on time and be able to support my daughter better than over the last few years.”
A communications major at Wyoming, Straight could wind up working as a commentator or reporter on television. He also envisions himself pursuing a career as a professional coach.
He has made it this far from 4444 S. State. Who’s to say how much further he can go?
“I wouldn’t change anything that has happened in my life,” Straight said. “It has made me a stronger person. . . . There was a time I didn’t have nowhere to turn, nowhere to go, but I didn’t want to be just another person from the Robert Taylor Homes who didn’t do anything.
“Everything that happened to me, I chopped it up and turned it into a learning experience.”
