Ex-Gorman star Watson gives kids reason to follow dreams

Each essay was titled "Yes We Can!" and local schoolchildren were asked to write about an event in black history they felt most changed or influenced America.

The contest was about dreams.

How appropriate, then, C.J. Watson helped select the winners.

You don't make the NBA solely on desire, and you sure as heck don't survive it by hoping. Getting there is unbelievably tough for most. Staying is no stroll in the park, either.

Watson is making the most of what tireless work and good fortune has meant to his young professional career, and the former Bishop Gorman star on Monday night showed two Las Vegas children the mountaintop one can reach when they believe in doing what is necessary to overcome the steepest terrain.

"I'm proof you can accomplish anything," Watson said. "It's not just basketball. It's about reaching your potential, no matter what you choose to do in life. I want to help kids in Vegas reach theirs. Many people helped me get to this point. I want to be the one who helps kids back home now."

Watson is a second-year guard for the Golden State Warriors, a transplant from the NBA Development League, the last stop between a player thinking the dream and living it. Most just never reach the living part.

The Warriors hosted San Antonio on Monday, when Watson welcomed essay winners Darzell Stringer and Lenin Ocampo. The fifth-graders attend W.P. Williams Elementary and met Watson, posed for photographs and watched a guy no one really imagined making a difference in the world's best basketball league continue to do so.

Most free agents who sign 10-day NBA contracts are the temporary teachers without a credential, more emergency fill-ins whose duties are to avoid making countless mistakes until those qualified return.

When coming out of Tennessee, Watson had "temp" written all over him.

He went undrafted and played a year in Europe before joining the D-League. The Warriors signed him to one of those 10-day deals in January 2008, not thinking he would be around long enough to learn where to park his car on game days.

"It all depends on the player," Warriors coach Don Nelson said. "You hope a guy can come in and his skill blends with the team and its philosophy. C.J. has done a really good job. He understands how to play. He guards. He's a very nice player. We love him to death up here."

It's called walking into a room with confidence when a door is opened.

The Warriors are just now getting healthy at guard, and it has been Watson who stepped in and added numbers when others tended to injuries this season.

He averages nearly 10 points in 25.7 minutes and for a stretch ranked among the league leaders in 3-point shooting. It also helps when you can get past the "Wow!" factor sooner than later.

That is what occurs when young players make the league and for the first time find themselves guarding Kobe Bryant or looking up as LeBron James flies by for a dunk.

It is the mental barrier many must scale before producing any sort of success, this idea of being on the same court with those superstars you have long admired.

Awestruck works in the NBA like too much oil in your cake mix. It gets you sent back to the D-League or, worse yet, some foreign country where teams think paying your salary is more option than obligation.

"I was definitely starstruck my first few NBA games," Watson said. "I idolized a lot of these guys. But to know I'm out there making plays against them also helps me realize how much my hard work has paid off, and also how much further I have to go.

"The league is humbling. Every night, I'm trying to prove I belong and can play here. That's what I want the kids of Vegas to do, to always strive to get better at whatever it is they do.

"That was one idea behind this essay contest. Give them an outlet to explore something different and, at the end of the day, to never stop dreaming."

Dream big enough, and the "temp" label might even disappear.

Ed Graney can be reached at 702-383-4168 or egraney@reviewjournal.