Monta's Small Miracle

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The tiny old house looked like it belonged in a circus. Painted bright green with a red-shingle roof, it appeared only big enough for two rooms, maybe a closet.

But as the screen door opened, the people began pouring out. Big ones, little ones, old ones, like the trick of the sideshow Volkswagen, they just kept piling out.

As I looked up and down the cracking street in the Georgetown section of Jackson, Mississippi, I felt certain every other house along the way, the yellow and blue and red ones, would be able to pull off the same trick. Each one bulging with life, ready to explode.

The bright green one, however, was special for it had given birth two decades before to a young man who had escaped to the NBA. Monta Ellis, the swift little guard with the Golden State Warriors, who had grown up right here, would have been one of the dozens to pile past that screen door this day, had the Warriors not made him a second-round draft choice right out of Lanier High School.

But his success story has only a little to do with basketball. It has more to do with the choices we make at an early age, some perhaps divine.

Monta, short for Montana, which is his grandfather's name, wanted nothing more as a little boy than to play the game. He devotedly watched his older brother by five years, Antwain, take Lanier High to a state championship. Monta, in fact, was a ball boy on that team.

Monta Ellis left the mean streets of Mississippi for the bright lights of the NBA.

"He could've been another T-Mac," says Monta today, referring to Tracy McGrady of the Houston Rockets. "He was that good. Six-eight, fast, good skills, man..."

And then the voice, shy and hesitant at best, trails off.

A year after Antwain and his teammates won their first state title and were on their way to a second, a close friend and teammate of his was killed in what has been claimed as a busted drug deal.

"'Twain never was the same after that," says Rosa Ellis, the remarkable single mother who raised her boys on the mean streets. "He coulda been so good, but he let all that other stuff eat him up."

Monta watched and listened. He knew what was happening, he knew how bad the neighborhood had become. Even as a child, he knew the places he really shouldn't be going, especially the park down the street. Great hoops, good flat surface, lotta action, everybody meets there to play.

"But there's guns there," he says today, "and drugs and trouble so I stayed away."

He had his grandfather nail a milk carton to a telephone pole outside that little green house and he began building his life there.

"Oh, I had the toughest time getting him in at night," laughs Rosa. "He'd just shoot and shoot and shoot, all by himself."

That learned skill was taken indoors as a young high school player, and he never looked back, a blazing star through the darkest of nights. The stories of his legend are so grand that they beg indulgence and then someone hands you a yellowed clipping.

"See? 72 that night! Man be on fire, unconscious," they laughed.

As the screen door opened, and the extended family piled out to meet us that day, a hulking figure in all black lowered his head and slowly managed to move into the sunshine. Hands deep in his pockets, he kept his eyes to one side or the other or down at his sneakers. It was a shuffle that might have been learned in prison.

After a while, with the little ones running through our legs, all bright and colorful in their holiday Golden State warm-ups, I made my way to Antwain Ellis' side.

"Whattya think of your brother?" I asked.

He frowned for a moment and then stared off into the distance.

"Always knew one of us was gonna make it," he mumbled. There seemed the hint of a smile.

"You feel good he didn't go your direction?"

He looked at me for the first time and then looked away quickly.

"Yeah, proud of that real good."

Odd what brings us to the street corners of our life, isn't it? A little brother simply follows his older brother, as so many do, and this is just another sad tale probably told only in the police blotters.

But Monta Ellis went the other way. A small miracle we can herald.