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Deandre Ayton, Brandon McCoy and the story of Balboa City School

Deandre Ayton, shown here during his freshman season at Arizona, spent four years in San Diego at Balboa City School before leaving for Hillcrest Prep in Phoenix
(Ted S. Warren / AP)
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Deandre Ayton likely will be the No. 1 pick in Thursday’s NBA Draft. Sometime in the second round another 7-footer, Brandon McCoy, is expected to hear his name called.

Ayton is from the Bahamas, McCoy from Chicago. Ayton graduated from Hillcrest Prep in Phoenix, McCoy from Cathedral Catholic High in San Diego. Ayton played his freshman year at Arizona, McCoy at UNLV.

Their careers intersected as roommates at a weekend camp for top high school prospects as sophomores, and as occasional teammates on the AAU circuit as juniors, and in the McDonald’s all-American game as seniors. And in an epic overtime game between Arizona and UNLV last December as college freshmen.

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But their ascension as players, their passage from boys to young men, their inimitable bond across a diverse and divisive basketball landscape, began five years earlier in a room they shared in a San Diego house as gangly, uncoordinated eighth-graders with bad footwork and broken jump shots. For a year they were inseparable. Ate together, did homework together at the kitchen table, went to church together, attended school together, worked out together, watched NBA games on TV together.

Dreamed together.

“They talked about playing in high school together and then in college,” says Chaundra Temple-Young, who served as their surrogate mother that year. “Can you imagine if they had stayed together. I mean, if you could just imagine. They would have been a force to be reckoned with, and they would have had a heck of a story to tell.”

& & &

Six years ago, a local real estate investor and basketball coach began thinking aloud about forming a program in San Diego that would marry athletics and academics for elite players.

The impetus was the cautionary tale of Jeremy Tyler, a 6-foot-10 man child who turned pro in 2009 after his junior year at San Diego High with visions of NBA grandeur that never materialized – less, in their opinion, because of raw talent than poor guidance. Tyler spent parts of four seasons riding NBA pine (scoring average: 3.8 points), and the rest of his career bouncing around minor leagues in the U.S., China, Israel, Japan, Australia and most recently with TNT KaTropa of the Philippine Basketball Association.

“We started this to change people’s lives,” says Ryan Stone, the real estate investor. “Our plan was for the adults not to fail the kids.”

“We wanted to create something that could have been a model,” says Shaun “Ice” Manning, the basketball coach. “We wanted to bring them in young and develop not just their bodies but their minds.”

Stone was family friends with Stephen Parker, who had founded Balboa City School in 1991 “for gifted underachievers.” The private school had a small downtown campus and an enrollment of about 100 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. It had no gym.

The three decided to add a basketball team.

“It was my hypothesis,” Parker says, “that good basketball players are naturally intelligent, whether they’re good in school or not. I felt that the basketball players would fit in with the rest of our students.”

Parker would provide the school. Stone would provide the funding. Manning would provide the players.

The first came through one of Manning’s coaching connections in Mexico who had spotted a tall, athletic 12-year-old at a prospects camp in the Bahamas. Stone flew out the boy and his mother, sold them on their vision of Balboa City, and soon the seventh grader was living with Manning and Temple-Young, his fiancé at the time, in her four-bedroom San Diego home on the border of Lemon Grove.

A year later, they added a tall, athletic eighth grader from Chicago through another of Manning’s connections. He moved into the room with the kid from the Bahamas.

Deandre, meet Brandon.

Things were going well. Three more players moved in with Manning and Temple-Young. Ayton was named the nation’s No. 1 eighth-grade prospect, providing instant credibility to the upstart program at the small school in San Diego without a gym.

Manning figured they needed another basketball person as they transitioned into high school and recommended Zack Jones, who had coached Horizon Christian High to state titles with future NBA players Jared Dudley and Jeff Withey.

“We just wanted them to be kids, do well in school and play basketball,” Stone says. “We’d take care of everything else and keep everyone else away.”

The problem at first wasn’t everyone else, it was them. Manning and Jones had what Stone calls “a difference of opinion on direction.” An internal power struggled ensued, and Stone sided with Jones. In July 2013 they asked that Ayton move out and transfer guardianship.

Ayton’s mother was in town to celebrate Deandre’s 15th birthday. Manning says he went home, washed Ayton’s clothes and delivered them at 2 a.m. to the hotel where they were staying.

“I just handed him his stuff and I left,” Manning says. “Deandre had his head down. He couldn’t look me in the eye.”

Manning claims Jones and Stone tried to wrest away McCoy as well. But McCoy’s mother chose to leave her son with Manning and Temple-Young, despite no longer being associated with Balboa City and attending Morse High instead (before moving to Cathedral as a junior).

Two years later, Ayton was gone, too.

He was living with Jones now, playing for a Balboa City team sponsored by shoe company Under Armour that didn’t have CIF certification but had a national schedule against other basketball-oriented prep schools. Ayton’s mother, Andrea, told Bleacher Report earlier this year that she grew weary of her son’s increasingly distant relationship with their family in the Bahamas. “Things were upside down,” she said.

In fall 2015, she flew to San Diego to meet the team upon its return from an international tournament in Germany. They were leaving, she told Deandre.

“My head was – I wasn’t screwed up but I feel like I was shifted away from my family on a lot of this basketball stuff,” Ayton told Bleacher Report in January. “You have people coming around you saying they are family or whatever. They try to keep you away from your real family. That kind of got me.”

After first considering Findlay Prep outside Las Vegas, they settled on Hillcrest Prep in Phoenix. Andrea moved to Phoenix with three younger children, and they plan to follow Deandre wherever he is drafted.

“Would Deandre be better off if he would have stayed with Balboa? We absolutely believe so because we care about him as a person and we care about his future,” Jones said at the time in a statement issued to media. “We believe in providing students with room to grow and discipline to stay grounded. With us, we believe he was in the best position to succeed.”

Stone offered this take on what happened, without providing specifics:

“Everything that’s gone wrong with college basketball is what happened. The shoe companies, the financial advisors, the agents, the schools … it’s relentless. You get a kid like Deandre who starts showing up in newspapers, and they start coming at you from everywhere. You can’t control it. It was just too tough to control everything.”

Parker no longer is associated with the school, having sold it to an educational company in 2013. It has since moved campuses to Escondido and shortened its name to just Balboa School. Jones is still executive director and Stone still funds the basketball program, which has roster of international players and does not compete within CIF.

Ayton and McCoy went their separate ways, too, both growing to 7-footers and blossoming into top prospects. Rivals.com rated Ayton as No. 3 from the prep class of 2017, McCoy as No. 12. At the McDonald’s game in April 2017, Ayton and McCoy combined for 21 points, 18 rebounds, seven steals and four blocks to lead the West team to a 109-107 victory.

Their careers intersected again last December in Las Vegas, former roommates going at each other like they did on those long afternoons with Manning in Balboa Park’s Muni Gym. Ayton had 28 points and 10 rebounds for Arizona in the 91-88 overtime victory. McCoy had 33 and 10 for UNLV.

Manning and McCoy were waiting outside the visiting locker room at the Thomas & Mack Center with dozens of fans, wondering if things would be awkward with Ayton after all these years, wondering if he would acknowledge them. Ayton emerged … and immediately yelled out the name of Manning’s son. They took pictures. They shared long hugs.

Someone from Arizona said the bus was leaving. It was time to go.

“Hold on,” Manning says Ayton told the man. “This is how I got good.”

& & &

Barring a trade or late change of heart, the Phoenix Suns will draft Ayton No. 1 on Thursday. The Suns also have the 16th, 31st and 59th picks, but you figure they won’t take another 7-footer.

People and circumstance have come between them, but the gangly, uncoordinated eight-graders who shared a room remain friends. There is a kinship, an understanding, a respect. A bond.

“We’ve even talked about, why not get back together on your second (NBA) contract?” Manning says. “Bring this story back together. Maybe that’s how things will work out one day.”

Deandre Ayton

Size: 7-1, 260

College: Arizona.

Stats: 20.1 points, 11.6 rebounds.

Accolades: Pac-12 player of the year

High school: Hillcrest Prep, Balboa City (San Diego)

Draft prospects: The consensus No. 1 pick, which belongs to the Phoenix Suns, a franchise that has never had a franchise center. There are the obligatory murmurs about the Suns entertaining trade offers for the pick, but most expect them to keep it and take Ayton. There are questions about Ayton’s viability as an NBA defender. There are no questions, however, about his freak athleticism and unique offensive skill set. The NBA rookie salary scale pays the No. 1 pick $6.8 million next season and $23.1 million over three. But he’ll probably make more from the shoe deal he recently signed with Puma.

Brandon McCoy

Size: 7-0, 250

College: UNLV.

Stats: 16.9 points, 10.3 rebounds.

Accolades: Mountain West freshman of the year.

High school: Cathedral Catholic, Morse

Draft prospects: McCoy’s prospects have slid in recent months, from a first-rounder into the second round. A few mock drafts have him going undrafted. A consensus mock draft from NBADraft.net has him at No. 40, the 10th pick of the second round. One concern is McCoy’s wingspan, which at 7-2 isn’t as wide as most other 7-footers in the draft (Ayton’s is 7-5, Mohamed Bamba’s is 7-10), although that didn’t stop him from blocking nearly two shots per game, second best in the Mountain West. Teams are not required to offer guaranteed contracts after the first round, but many players receive them in the top half of the second round.

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mark.zeigler@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @sdutzeigler

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