Turiaf answers prayers of Gonzaga fans
All it took for Ronny Turiaf to feel like a changed man was to stay the same man.
For weeks, the charismatic Pied Piper of Gonzaga University basketball had been an emotional pretzel, pulled and twisted by ambition and comfort, fate and faith. Not a life-or-death decision, this crossroads of either returning for his senior year or making himself available for the National Basketball Association draft, but it was a life-changing one – and, being Ronny, he wore his soul’s turmoil not on his sleeve but even more conspicuously, on that amazing and hyper-expressive face.
But any anguish was gone on Monday.
Gonzaga’s elastic 6-foot-10 center made a reluctant public announcement that he would be back in a Bulldogs uniform next season, playfully parried a few questions and then went back to being what he likes best: a Zag.
“Two days ago I was in my room after I’d made my decision,” he said, “and suddenly I felt different. I thought to myself, ‘What’s wrong?’ and then I realized – it’s done. I’m here for another year, just like I always planned.
“The last couple of weeks have been so hard on me, trying to figure it out. When I did, I felt like a different man.”
It certainly makes the Zags a different team – so much so that assistant coach Bill Grier could joke about Turiaf being “the cornerstone of our recruiting class.”
But in the end, the joy and relief of Gonzaga’s coaching staff had more to do with Turiaf’s newfound peace.
“It’s obviously great for us,” said Grier, “but most of all it’s the best thing for Ronny. He has a great love for this place and this program, and he can use this next year to become the really dominant player that he knows he can be – and to show people he can do it consistently throughout the year.”
It has become such an absurd exercise, this runoff of underclass talent into the NBA. Twenty-five collegians have declared so far, a few clutching the get-of-jail-free card of not having hired an agent to keep open the option of returning to their schools. Beyond that, there are nine high school seniors in the mix, along with the mysterious foreign legion – all making for the most unpredictable, and ridiculous, draft in years.
No LeBron or ‘Melo, and too many Odartey Blanksons.
It’s easy to assume that Turiaf did his homework and returned to take his Gonzaga finals because he wasn’t going to be a first-round pick, with the attendant cocoon of a 3-year guaranteed contract. But it wasn’t quite that simple.
“There was a lot of feedback from several different general managers that he is a first-round pick,” insisted Grier. “Some said he was a lock. But the consensus among most of them was that he could go as high as 20th, or he could fall to 40th, or who knows where. Of the guys we talked to, most said this year’s draft is so wacky, so uncertain, with so many high school kids coming out that because of that, if Ronny has a good senior year he has a chance to be a lottery pick next year.
“All those things went into the equation.”
But not as much, if you believe Turiaf, as his happiness.
This would seem to be the oddest match of person and place in college basketball – this native of Martinique, a child of the tropics, here in what must seem all too often to him like the tundra. But beyond geography and climate, there is this exotic and expressive soul on a campus and in a community as plain and stoic as they come.
Yet the fit has been, well, remarkable.
“To feel the love from everyone on campus, from everywhere, is why I feel so blessed just to be around these people,” Turiaf said. “These are people who want to help you be a better player, to help you graduate, to help you through school and life. You will never find that kind of atmosphere anywhere in the country – guaranteed.
“If I could play five, seven, 10 years here, I would.”
Yet Turiaf was hardly oblivious to the hard realities and nagging issues tugging him in other directions.
In fact, they have been tugging at him from the time he first committed to GU three years ago. Though the NBA wasn’t sniffing around, professional clubs in France and elsewhere in Europe were – and continue to do so. He didn’t have to be anybody’s first-round pick to reap one of those guaranteed contracts.
“If it was a business decision,” he said, “I never would have come to Gonzaga.”
Which didn’t mean he was without doubt.
“I’m not going to lie – it’s been an issue,” he said. “I haven’t been around my mom and sisters for six or seven years now. I don’t see my dad anymore. I don’t think people understand what I’m going through to help them have a better life. I’m on a mission, you could say, and I don’t want to settle for taking the easy way and playing in Europe would be the easy way – ‘Here, take this money and be with your family.’ But I want them to have the best life ever.
“They’ve been so supportive. My dad told me to do whatever was good for me, and not for them. My mom, pretty much the same thing. ‘Follow your heart, honey,’ is what she said. And what was in my heart was to stay here one more year.”
The NBA svengalis have given him some basketball homework for the next year. To work on his outside game, as he’ll have to be a face-up player in the pros. To become a more ferocious and relentless rebounder. To simply be more consistent.
“I agree with the consistent part, completely,” Turiaf smiled. “I need to come in day in and day out and play as hard as I can. But it’s the right thing to say, and the tough thing to do.”
But when driven to rise to the occasion, Turiaf generally has – and as the only starting senior on next year’s team, he figures to be driven every night. The team he returns to lead isn’t likely to take up immediate residence in the Top 25, but his presence will certainly be a prod to the young guns – Adam Morrison, Sean Mallon, Erroll Knight and a batch of splendid recruits – to aspire to it.
And rather than be burdened by expectation, Ronny Turiaf seems to have been liberated by it.
“I was having all those bad thoughts in my head, seeing myself in a different jersey next year,” he said. “It didn’t feel right.
“Finally, I feel free again.”