longtallbrad
Game Rating: Hall of Famer
Forum Rating: Prospect
Posts: 945 (1)
So, I grew up in Denver and the better summer hoops camps generally had various Nuggets coming in to demonstrate skills and give pep talks. I remember meeting Dan Issel, Billy McKinney, Bobby Wilkerson, and an aging Charlie Scott. (Man, the Nuggets sucked in those days!) The summer before tenth grade Kiki Vandeweghe came and held forth for a while, showing us various kinds of pivots and jab steps to create space to either drive or pull up and shoot. And to be fair, the guy was a monster scorer for several seasons.
After a while he asked for a volunteer to play him one on one. The kid who came forward was a sophomore who was 6'7" or 6'8" and later went on to play for Kansas St. Kiki handed him the ball at the top of the key and set up on defense. The kid takes about two long steps and lays it right in over Kiki's long arms. The kid was astonished and embarrassed, and you could see Kiki was ticked. He grabbed the ball, drove and missed, and then started playing (what was for him) knuckle-down defense. He stuffed the kid, stripped him, and was ripping down boards. The youngster couldn't score on him again, but Kiki couldn't score either. They were about the same length and had similar body types, but you could see the kid would only get bigger and stronger. After a long 4 or 5 minutes Kiki finally slashed in and scored on a contested layup, and the red-faced organizers declared it a tie. Kiki took off without saying much and looked like he was headed home to drink tequila alone in front of the Flintstones until he felt better.
A year later Vandeweghe was traded. I followed that kid in local box scores and saw him pop for some forty point games later in high school. I don't think he did much at K-State. I think his name was something like Robert Coyne.