Life Lessons Come At a Price Too High

Wizard's Rookie Season Defined by Shooting

It was getting late last Sunday night, and Andray Blatche, the Washington Wizards' rookie forward, was getting sleepy. He couldn't call it a night, though, until he picked up the phone in his Memphis hotel room and spoke to his mother, Angela Oliver.

"Ma, you forgot to call," Blatche said. "I just wanted you to know that I'm going to bed."

Oliver could only smile at the other end of the phone because it was the first time since Sept. 25 -- the night Blatche was shot in an attempted carjacking -- that she hadn't called her son to say, "Good night." Every morning, Oliver said, she calls Blatche to make sure he eats his breakfast and is ready for practice. And every night, she makes sure her baby is safe.

"People tell me I'm being overprotective, but they haven't been in my shoes," Oliver said in a phone interview from her home in Greenville, S.C. "I almost lost him. I guess I'll be an overprotective mother, then."

None of the eight high school players selected in last summer's NBA draft had a more turbulent start to his career than Blatche, whose hoop dreams -- and life -- were almost halted. After a night spent partying at the nightclub H20 in Southwest Washington with a few friends, including teammate Peter John Ramos, Blatche nearly became a homicide victim when he was shot during the wee hours of the night after two masked men reportedly followed him in a van, approached his car near his home in Alexandria and shot him. The case remains unsolved and the two men are believed to still be at large.

"It was a crazy experience. It was an experience I will never forget. It was a wake-up call, I mean, for my life," he said. "That just shows God has a plan for everybody. I'm still on the earth for a reason. I still have things to do, a life to live. God gave me a second chance and I'm really going to try to use it to the fullest."

'I'm Just More Cautious'

Blatche has already learned some valuable lessons about whom to trust, when to leave a precarious situation and how to police himself. In addition to staying in constant contact with his mother, Blatche adheres to a self-imposed curfew (around midnight) and limits his hangouts to his condo in Alexandria, a movie theater and a nearby bowling alley.

"I haven't changed. I'm just more cautious," he said. "I think before I go somewhere or do something. If I feel it's an unsecured place, I don't go. If I'm at a spot that in 20 or 30 minutes something bad is going to happen, I leave once I think something is going to happen."

He admits that he couldn't get into most clubs even if he tried. "After the shooting, most clubs know my age. They won't let me in," the 19-year-old said, smiling. "If I could change anything, I wouldn't have been at that club. I would've stayed in the house if I knew things had gone down like that. I was just at a bad place at the wrong time."

He knows that shiny jewelry combined with his gangly, 6-foot-11 frame made him an easy target. The $50,000 diamond-encrusted platinum chain Blatche wore around his neck that night remains hidden in his closet, out of sight. He said the only jewelry he might wear are his diamond earrings and the diamond-encrusted watch he has worn a couple of times since the incident. Other than that, "I have no use for them," Blatche said.

"I know I messed up coming into a different city, it was a real big city. I was out there going to clubs looking flashy. That was my mistake. But I learned from that," said Blatche, who had already survived some of the roughest neighborhoods in Syracuse, N.Y. "I was targeted ever since I was in high school. Syracuse is not that big and I was the hottest thing in the streets. I always tried not to put myself in that predicament to get caught. I never went out because I was too young. I went to the movies or went to the house. I was always in a safe environment."

Oliver said she tried to prepare her son for Washington. "He was ready for D.C. but D.C. was a little too much for him," she said. "He loves it now." Oliver considered moving to Washington herself. "But I can't take [the] traffic. It's awful," Oliver said, laughing.