Home is where the hoop is

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Lionel Gordon
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1 Page 1 of 5 LONGHORNS MEN'S BASKETBALL Home is where the hoop is Texas basketball signee D.J. Augustin was planning to lead his New Orleans school to another state title. Then the weather changed. By Kevin Robbins AMERICAN-STATESMAN Monday, February 27, 2006 MISSOURI CITY He wears the number that means he had nothing. That he started all over from nowhere again. With purpose D.J. Augustin selected "00" for his jersey when he joined the basketball team at Hightower High. None of his choices at Hightower included his old number 14, the digits college coaches searched to find in the cramped Catholic league gyms around New Orleans. Augustin had to learn to let go of a lot of special things that used to be his. Back in August, when Hurricane Katrina chased him and his family from their neighborhood, Augustin abandoned everything but a bag stuffed with shorts and T-shirts. He left his school, his trophies, his pictures, his awards and his summer-cured dreams of a third consecutive Louisiana Class 5A basketball championship. The title. Of all that he lost, Augustin struggled the longest and hardest with that. "I knew we were going to win another state championship," said Augustin (pronounced AH-gus-teen). Before the hurricane, Augustin was the returning starter at point guard for Brother Martin, a small private high school for boys three blocks from his old house in the Gentilly section of the city. This was to be his fourth year on the varsity. The Brother Martin Crusaders played this year without Augustin. And he found a new team: the Hightower Hurricanes. Cruel enough, that name. But Augustin and his family can finally smile at the irony. Hightower made the playoffs this season with the polished, unflappable Augustin managing the point, where he averaged 19 points, six assists and nearly five steals a game. Hightower won its first two

2 Page 2 of 5 games and plays Alief Hastings tonight at the Aldine Campbell Center in Houston. When the season ends, Augustin will look to May, when he returns to Brother Martin to graduate with his classmates and, more important, the players from his old basketball team. Next season, the 2006 McDonald's All-American will play for Rick Barnes and the Texas Longhorns. "It's going to be the best time of my life," the 18-year-old Augustin said on a rainy Friday night in Fort Bend County, an hour before the Hightower Hurricanes played their final game of the regular season. Across the gym, his parents and two older sisters arrived to watch, as they always have, wherever Augustin plays. "God, he's still going to bless me," Augustin said. "He's blessed me before, keeping my family alive." Creating a new life This was supposed to be the best time of his life. But instead of storming through the Catholic league in the city where he was born, Augustin sat with his new teammates at the Wheeler Field House on that wet Friday night, pawing at cell phones, waiting their turn and half-watching a game between two Fort Bend district teams that the Hurricanes had beaten already. Hightower played the late game. The Hurricanes faced Kempner, a school that won on a late shot and a couple of free throws the last time they played. This was Senior Night for Hightower, and though Augustin was a senior for the 25-7 Hurricanes, he understood why he would not start. The other seniors, boys who had worn the forest green and white longer, deserved to be on the court when the ball was tipped. Augustin joined the team late. He was the new player, one of 21,000 evacuees from New Orleans making a life in and around Houston. He said he respected the unity the Hurricanes had worked to achieve since school had begun last fall at Hightower. So instead of arriving with the sense of entitlement that a player attracting interest from North Carolina and Wake Forest and LSU and Texas might project, Augustin demanded nothing. He only asked: How can I help what already is here? "I knew I was coming into new territory," he explained. "I understood. I was going to do my part." At Brother Martin, his part was easy. As he had since he earned the starting spot as a freshman, Augustin ran the game, passing to players he had known most of his life, knowing exactly where they would be at that moment on the court, snapping presses like stems of chicory, exploiting teams that were not prepared for the horn-to-horn dominance of Brother Martin. The Crusaders were 39-2 last season. Every starter was expected to return, with Augustin bringing the ball into the postseason. "He was our leader," said Scott Thompson, a former assistant at Brother Martin who took over when

3 Page 3 of 5 popular head coach John Lavie left for a more stable position after the hurricane. "He had the special quality that made those around him elevate their games." The storm scattered the Brother Martin Crusaders with the gales that pummeled the Gulf Coast. Augustin and three other teammates fled to Texas. Another went to Georgia. The ones who remained in Louisiana escaped to Baton Rouge and beyond. The Augustin family drove away after midnight on the Sunday before landfall. Augustin had just received his Brother Martin class ring. The family rendezvoused at the house after midnight, the adults and the children from the old New Orleans family, everyone but a grandfather who vowed to stay with his city. The Augustins caravaned to Texas, as they always did when the hurricanes came. They got to Houston and turned on the TV. Darryl and Vanessa Augustin watched for a moment and knew: They would not be returning soon, if at all. They booked hotel rooms for themselves, their daughters and D.J., their only son. The calamity grew more dire through the week in New Orleans, where Darryl Augustin worked as an animal-research technician and his wife was a second-grade teacher. The Augustins had been for generations and deep in their hearts in and of New Orleans. In August, they braced for the change of their lives. Everyone but the youngest Augustin gave up on going back. That would change, too. A chance to play The family found a four-bedroom house to lease in a cheerfully named subdivision about 20 miles southwest of Houston. They enrolled Augustin at 9-year-old Hightower, a pleasantly open school with hand-me-down Nissans and the random Volvo next to pickups in the student lot. To Augustin, Hightower was as different from Brother Martin as a farm pond was from Lake Pontchartrain. With 2,600 students, Hightower was nearly twice as big as Brother Martin. It had girls. It was in the suburbs. It had a basketball team of strangers. "I didn't know what to say," admitted David Peavy, Augustin's new head coach at Hightower. "What do you say to somebody who just lost everything?" Play. Just say play. Augustin became the Hurricanes' point guard, dribbling the team through its rugged schedule. The team had advanced to the playoffs two of the three seasons before last year, when Hightower went The Hurricanes needed help this year. Augustin could provide it.

4 Page 4 of 5 All the while, the son of New Orleans was trying to decide where to play in college. North Carolina was tempting. But when the Tar Heels signed Tywon Lawson, Augustin removed them from his list. He considered Wake Forest. Too far from home his old and his new. That left LSU and Texas. "Texas looked like the best place," Augustin said. "They care about their players. Not just about basketball. About life." The Longhorns' coaches discovered Augustin years ago at one of the many basketball camps Augustin attended as a youth. Texas assistant Russ Springmann knew at once that he had found the kind of player who comes along about as often as a hurricane as mean as Katrina. "He has uncanny vision," Springmann said. "He sees everything on the floor. He's a guy that everybody wants to play with." Today, Augustin stands 5-11 and weighs 185 pounds. He betrays little emotion on the court and prefers the fundamentally sound over the spectacularly showy. He patterned his early play after LSU legend Pete Maravich because Augustin's father once brought home tapes of Maravich, gave them to his young son and said, If you can play like this man, you can play anywhere. Augustin attended basketball camps from the time he was old enough to fling a ball to the rim. His parents turned a section of the driveway in back of the house into a basketball court. At their son's urging, they installed a light so he could play at night. And when his father came home from work, often tired enough to sleep, there was Augustin, holding a ball at the door, waiting to shoot with his dad. That was the kind of commitment that led to the roomful of citations, trophies, certificates and photographs that were lost when the Mirabeau Levee dissolved, the London Avenue Canal spilled into Gentilly and the affirmations of a young but storied basketball career floated away in the dirty water. Back in the game The coach of the Hightower Hurricanes called for No. 00 midway into the first quarter of the Kempner game. Kempner jumped to a quick lead at the Wheeler Field House. Hightower was in the playoffs regardless. But the Hurricanes wanted revenge. Augustin's parents watched their son, remembering how loud and full the small gym at Brother Martin would get on game nights. So many people wanted to watch the dynasty that the overflow crowd strained outside to see the Crusaders through the windows. Augustin wanted dearly to return to Brother Martin, his parents said, even after they showed him pictures of the house that his father had brought back from visits to New Orleans. It was Augustin who

5 Page 5 of 5 buoyed his parents' spirits as they searched for the grandfather who stayed behind (he later was found). But as the rest of the family began to accept their new life in Texas, Augustin was suffering in his soul. "He really needed to see it," said Vanessa Augustin, "to have closure for himself." So the family took Augustin back to New Orleans. They drove down their old street, past the tattered houses spray painted by recovery teams that had found corpses inside. The family poked through the rubbish in their yard and kicked in the door to the house. They saw the sagging floor, the water stains on the walls, the work of looters who took their clothes, the places where heirlooms used to be. Augustin took pictures. "He knew, once he saw things, that he wouldn't be able to go back," his mother said. His father noticed an immediate change. "This could've affected him in a lot of ways," Darryl Augustin said. But as the season at Hightower evolved, he saw his son accept his new surroundings and embrace his new team. "He wasn't here," his father said, "thinking about there." Augustin also went back to Brother Martin during his visit. He saw his teachers and friends from the squad. His time there allowed him to say hello, and goodbye. Then he returned to play in Missouri City the game he could not play in New Orleans. "Basketball is really, I guess you can say, my medicine," Augustin said. Hightower caught Kempner that rainy Friday night in Fort Bend County. With the ball under Augustin's palm, the Hurricanes won in double-overtime, surviving largely on Augustin's free throws, which came when Kempner could do nothing but foul No. 00 for the Hurricanes. Six months ago Augustin had nothing but a gym bag. He left the court with 34 points. Katrina took a lot. She also gave. "It didn't break him," his father said. "It made him stronger." Find this article at: Check the box to include the list of links referenced in the article.

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