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BASKETBALL FUTURE
By MICHAEL GRANGE
Saturday, October 11, 2003 - Page S1
OAKVILLE, ONT. -- The setting couldn't be more perfect: It's a summery October afternoon, and the outdoor basketball court is empty. Ivan Chiriaev can't help himself -- he's putting on a little show.
He starts close to the basket and hits one shot, his buttery release flawless, the worn ball snapping through the net. He steps back and hits another, steps back and hits another and so on. He's comfortably behind what would the three-point line in the National Basketball Association now, and the lanky 19-year-old drains that too, just as easily as he did the 10-footer.
Feeling a little looser, he tries a few dunks: from the right side, and then the left. A reverse. He splits his legs for effect, just like they do on TV. There's no teenage awkwardness, no wasted motion. He dribbles the ball as if on a string.
From a distance it's clear Chiriaev is a skilled and talented basketball player. Then you get closer and you realize something else -- the gangly man-child stands 7 feet 1 inch.
And you understand why some people think the baby-faced kid with the blue-grey eyes and the killer handle goofing around in a leafy Toronto suburb might be the best high school player in the world.
"He can handle the ball like a point guard and he's seven-feet tall," says one NBA team scout. "He's a lottery [top-13] pick for sure. The guy's a bitch."
Told of the blunt assessment -- bitch is NBA-speak for really, really, good -- Chiriaev smiles, clearly pleased that his talent is speaking, telling a story that's almost too far-fetched to be believed.
Only nine months ago Chiriaev was living a drab two-bedroom apartment outside St. Petersburg, Russia with his sister Anna and his mother Lena and his father Alexander, a scientist and university instructor.
In a few weeks he'll start his senior season at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Secondary School in this prosperous bedroom community, hoping to lift it to a Ontario provincial championship.
In a year, if all goes well, he'll be starting his first NBA season, a millionaire at age 20, and well on his way to fulfilling a dream powerful enough to encourage him to leave his family at age 18 for a country he'd only heard about.
"Basketball was not the purpose," he says of his journey. "I came here for everything -- a different lifestyle, an opportunity. "Here I can tell, people live," he says, with the emphasis on live. "In Russia people wait for the next day. The difference between North America and Russia is in Russia it doesn't matter how hard you work, it's not appreciated. In North America, you work hard, you get what you want."
He arrived in December of 2002, admittedly frightened about what lay ahead, but determined. His uncle -- his mother's brother -- had offered him a bed if he wanted to come to Canada. He mulled it over for about six weeks before making up his mind.
He started playing basketball as a seven-year-old and his passion for the game grew as he did: he was 6-foot-4 by age 14 and grew nine inches in the next three years. He was good enough to play for the junior national team in Russia and compete internationally. But when he arrived in Oakville he was anonymous and very, very skinny -- with less than 180 pounds draped over his seven feet.
He could play though. St. Thomas Aquinas's senior team was 2-6 when its meal ticket walked into practice for the first time. "It was crazy, I was dunking in practice and they'd never seen that before," Chiriaev said. "For me it was nothing, but they stopped practice."
He scored 15 points in his first seven minutes of his first game -- his first basket a baseline dunk over two defenders, the next a long-distance three-pointer. Within a week the word began leaking out about this Russian kid in Canada, and his uncle's mailbox began overflowing. He now gets 300 letters a week from colleges wanting his nephew to lift their basketball program. By the end of the season the team that wasn't even going to make the league playoffs had made it to the provincial finals.
If the story ended there, it would be remarkable enough: shy, unknown Russian giant lands in Canada, goes to school, makes new friends and a new life. But the wild ride is only just getting started.
Chiriaev has arrived in North America at a very unusual time in the NBA. Only a few years ago the league was primarily an American entity, a step behind even hockey in using talent from elsewhere. But when the Dallas Mavericks selected German teenager Dirk Nowitzki -- a 7-footer with small-forward skills who has emerged as one of the game's top talents -- ninth the 1998 draft, interest in the international scene was piqued. By the time the Memphis Grizzlies struck gold with Spain's Pau Gasol another multiskilled big man taken third in 2002, the rush was on.
This season at least 80 NBA rosters spots will be filled by players born outside the United States. In the 2003 draft the second overall pick was from Serbia-Montenegro; the year before the No. 1 pick was from China. David Stern, the NBA commissioner, has talked about expansion to Europe by the end of the decade, and having NBA teams hold training camps overseas by next year or the year after, as part of an effort to make basketball the first sport as popular internationally as it is in North America.
Chiriaev's role in all of that is a small one, for now. But the package he represents is a unique -- a ball-handling, sweet-shooting, 7-foot European teenager who is living in North America. Unknown even at his high school last February, he is the equivalent of a 1999-era high-tech stock: rocketing up the board and blazing into people's consciousness on his potential alone.
His potential is considerable, say those who've seen it first hand. Carl English, who is in the Indiana Pacers' training camp and who formerly attended Aquinas, worked out regularly with Chiriaev this past summer in preparation for the NBA draft and came away impressed.
"His upside is incredible," English said in an interview this past week. "He's got all the fundamentals down, which I think comes from him playing in Europe. At his size, if he does the things he needs to do and works the way he needs to work, it will carry him a long way."
Damon Archibald, an assistant coach at Iowa State came to an early morning workout a few weeks ago and left shaking his head. "How good is he? Let's put it this way, I'm not recruiting him," Archibald said. "There's no point. I was hoping he was worse than he was, but he's a player. There's no way he's going to make it through a year without being discovered."
Still, he's played less than two-dozen high school basketball games. The number of major college and NBA scouts that have seen him play in competition can probably be listed on his hands and toes. But the hype is coming like a wave as the word of his unusual gifts crackles across cell phones and blisters around the Internet. A recent feature on NBAdraft.net, a web site that evaluates potential NBA draftees has Chiriaev listed as the sixth best prospect eligible for the 2004 draft. Another site, Hoopscoop.com, lists him as the best high school player in North America. Chiriaev's goals are simple: he says he wants to continue to improve his game -- and to that end he's lifting weights four times a week and doing basketball drills for two hours a day, in addition to playing and practising. He wants to help St. Thomas win a provincial championship.
He's enjoying life off the court as well. After subsisting on a diet in which soup was a meal, not an appetizer, Chiriaev is thriving on 4,000 calories a day and he's added nearly 50 pounds in nine months. "I am a like a dog, I eat everything," he says, in surprisingly nuanced English that he credits to a steady stream of television and movies. But it's all toward a larger end: To bring his family over from Russia, to become a Canadian citizen and represent his new country in the Olympics; to play in the NBA. The ride is just beginning, and right now there are more questions than answers: will he go straight to the NBA, or spend some time at a big U.S. college first? Will he be able to handle the growing scrutiny? And will he stay together with his girlfriend, Mary, who is back in St. Petersburg, and who he hasn't seen since he left?
For now the court is empty and it's just a big teenager enjoying the run of the place, working on his moves, feeling his body flow just the way he wants. "The biggest goal in my life is to play in the NBA," he says. "But not just play in the NBA, I want to be an all-star, not just some tall guy who is in the league. I want people to know me."
There's no one watching now. It won't be that way for long.
Ivan Chiriaev
Who: A 19-year-old senior at St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School in Oakville, Ont.
Where: Raised in St. Petersburg, Russia, Chiriaev came to Oakville to live with his uncle in December last year.
The hype: At 7-foot-1 and with guard skills, Chiriaev is the fastest-rising prospect for the 2004 NBA draft, with some suggesting he may be picked in the top five.
The hip: Loves his Jordan-line sneakers and sweatsuits. His favourite CD is the Dr. Dre classic,
The Chronic.
The skinny: Was skinny, with barely 180 pounds draped over his 7-foot frame, but a 4,000-calorie-a-day diet (anything that people eat to lose weight, he does the opposite, a friend says) has him up to 230 pounds.
