Fourth Year's the Charm

Four years ago, I attended a high school basketball game at Pauley Pavilion between Mater Dei of Santa Ana, Calif, and St. Vincent-St. Mary's of Akron, Ohio. The stars of each team took incredibly divergent paths -- LeBron James to the gazillionaire world of the NBA and D.J. Strawberry to a modest, four-year ride in College Park.

Mike Jones was on the court with LeBron in 2003, too. He suited up for the McDonald's high school all-American game that year -- the last stop before insane fame for LeBron and a Gary Williams practice for Jones.

Four years later, Strawberry and Jones took their final bows yesterday at Comcast Center; Strawberry playing Elastic Man, contorting his body through tiny crevices; Jones a study in cool, finding his stroke and his rhythm just before his scholarship ran out. They combined for 37 points, scoring from all angles. They wore down North Carolina State and became the leaders of the first Terrapins team to go 6-0 against Tobacco Road since 1932-33.

More than that, they were two seniors continuing to alter the legacy of their once-maligned class. They surged the way Maryland surged this last month, saving the best for last, pushing aside their struggles and catapulting the Terrapins back to the NCAA tournament for the first time in three years.

They came here four years ago, stayed and, finally, thrived. Their blue-chip counterpart?

Four years later, I don't know who LeBron is, other than a too-serious, very rich and extremely talented young man. I do have an idea who Strawberry and Jones might be, what they might have experienced and how they might have grown since they came to campus in 2003.

"I can honestly say I've learned a lot, I've matured a lot being here four years in college," Jones said, sitting by his locker after his team had won its seventh straight game. "Those who skip out miss a lot. If they have a chance to make the money, that's fine. But you just miss out on a lot of great opportunities, meeting different people, living the college life."

Strawberry, sitting next to Jones yesterday, smiled.

"Without college, I probably wouldn't know what life was about," he said. "Especially coming from all the way across the country. I probably wouldn't know how to live alone. Now, having to rely on myself, doing things on my own, the connections I made here at Maryland. College has been a great experience. I wouldn't give it up."

LeBron? With all due respect, he does not know how normal people live. He never will. He lives in Uber-Athlete World, adult Disneyland. He has no concept of how to pay a bill, what it's like to meet a cute, bilingual woman at a dorm party from another corner of the world. Except for his NBA all-star peers, there is no equity in most of his relationships. He is King James, the unabridged version, and they are his serfs. That's no disrespect; that's just his reality.

People who equate happiness with living ridiculously large admire and envy LeBron's existence, think he indeed has it all. Well-rounded souls who have gone the route of Jones and Strawberry know better.

"Mike Jones!" the announcer bellowed many times yesterday afternoon.