When Donte Greene?s phone rings tonight, he?ll be sure to answer.
The Syracuse freshman and former Towson Catholic star will be hanging out in a bowling alley in Woodlawn when he likely is to be selected in the middle of the first round during the NBA Draft.
The ensuing phone call will be a welcome one ? a far cry from the more than 50 messages left on his cell phone from irate Syracuse fans when he announced we was leaving the Orange to pursue an NBA career.
“I might cry. I honestly might cry,” Greene said. “This is the greatest thing I?ve been through. I lost my mom when I was 13, and I had to grow up without my mom. It was tough for me growing up in the streets. All you really had was basketball to comfort you. It?s hard. I?ve been working hard my whole life. To play in the NBA is going to be overwhelming for me.”
Greene envisions going anywhere between picks five and 25 in the draft. Though many NBA analysts? projections differ on which team will draft the 6-foot-10, 225-pound forward, all agree his potential is tremendous.
“He?s very intriguing because of his size,” Ryan Blake, the NBA?s assistant director of scouting, said. “He?s a tall small-forward prospect and he has a lot of strengths, including the ability to shoot from the outside. But he?ll need work on his in-between game.”
Greene, an All-Examiner first-team forward as a high school senior in 2007, is following in the footsteps of Baltimore basketball legend and fellow Towson Catholic product Carmelo Anthony, who also starred at Syracuse for one season.
Greene averaged a team-high 17.7 points per game, and with his highlight-reel dunks and long-range shooting ability, became an instant campus hero. But after the season when he announced he was leaving the college life to pursue NBA millions, he went from big man on campus to public enemy.
Andy McCullough, the managing editor of the Syracuse student newspaper, The Daily Orange, said Syracuse fans were “heated” at a university where “the men?s basketball team is king.”
But there?s a reason Greene left.
“Donte certainly has a lot of confidence in his game, but its not just talk,” McCullough wrote in an e-mail. “There?s a reason he?s a potential lottery pick: He can play.”
Greene, 20, has been mature from a very early age ? in part, because he was forced to be. His mother, April Greene, passed away when Donte was in middle school.
“Ever since then, he?s kind of matured in ways that other people haven?t,” Towson Catholic coach Josh Pratt said. “He?s got good people around him. At the same time, I think he?s had to grow up.”
Now on the verge of reaching his NBA dream, Greene is a role model for young men in and around Baltimore. But Brandon Greene, Donte?s cousin and former Towson Catholic teammate, said he?s been one the for the past few years.
“It?ll be really exciting,” said Brandon Greene, who will play for Robert Morris this fall. “I?m trying to strive for the same things he?s going for. I?m striving to be the same kind of player, same kind of person he is.”
Examiner staff writer John Keim contributed to this story.
