Marcus Haislip: Allow Me To Reintroduce Yourself

There are only two things that NBA Draft picks can become – success or failure.

It’s a simple fact of life and a simple fact of the NBA that potential is reached, not reached or exceeded. It doesn’t matter if it takes three months, five years, 10 years or 20 years. NBA players will either be regarded as one of the good picks or one of the bad picks. They’ll be a bust, steal, or no-brainer. They’ll sail the seven seas, find the Holy Grail, cause a nation to weep, drive fans insane or make people want to put their head through a wall just to avoid seeing that player miss his assignment on defending the pick and roll for the umpteenth time. Anything is possible.

Whoops. Sorry, KG.

Anything is posssssssibbbblllllleeeeee!

We have our steals in recent draft memory. Whether it be Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, Danny Granger, Michael Redd, Paul Millsap, Gilbert Arenas or others, there is always the hope of a diamond in the rough that will be discovered and help your franchise shine. And we also have our busts in the draft. There’s Michael Olowokandi, Danny Ferry, Pervis Ellison, Marcus Fizer and Marcus Haislip.

Wait a second; let’s hold back on Marcus Haislip.

Marcus Haislip is coming back to the NBA. Not only is he coming back to the NBA but he’s also coming back as a member of the San Antonio Spurs. Normally, I’m not interested in guys who don’t make it here and then are jettisoned overseas, unless I come across one of their games on NBATV or some random DirecTV channel that I didn’t know I subscribed to (see: Omar Cook, Trajan Langdon, or Qyntel Woods). But with Marcus Haislip, I’ve always been a lot more intrigued with what happened to his NBA career.

I mean, where did it go? One day it was here and the next day it vanished – like David Copperfield, laser disc and the Sega Dreamcast.

He was a lottery pick for the Milwaukee Bucks; thrust into a forward heavy rotation in beers and brats country that consisted of various combinations including Toni Kukoc, Tim Thomas (back when he was regarded as a “one of these days, he’s going to make us look like geniuses” type of player), Anthony Mason, and Keith Van Horn. He played a grand total of 704 minutes in the birthplace of sweet, sweet Miller High Life before finding his way to Indiana to sit behind the fallout of the Ron Artest melee in Detroit. Needless to say, in 79 career games in which he cracked 20 game minutes just 15 times, Marcus never really got a chance to prove he wasn’t a bust.

So what does he do? He does what any young strapping lad with no job and very little direction does in their early to mid-20s. He heads over to Europe!

And what does he do in Europe? He finds a craft, hones it and bides his time like the Count of Monte Cristo. He moves through Turkey for two years before finding his home in Malaga, Spain. He becomes a highlight real of go-go-gadget dunks and Hakim Warrick-like blocked shots. He adds a three-point shot to his repertoire. He learns how to shoot free throws. He becomes a slashing power forward because he doesn’t score well from the block. He finds ways to adapt, blend in, and star for a successful club.

Now, he’s not the perfect swordsman that the Count of MC was. He isn’t a great defender outside of the occasional highlight swatation. He doesn’t really have low post moves. He rebounds at an extremely poor rate for a 6’10” jumping jack. He doesn’t exactly scream a lower-middle class version of Shawn Marion like the highlights might allude to.

But in San Antonio, he doesn’t have to be all of those things. He doesn’t have to exact revenge on those who have wronged him. He doesn’t have to be the Tim Duncan to Tim Duncan’s David Robinson. He just has to be an option. He just has to be energy off the bench for the often old and slow San Antonio frontcourt. He wasn’t given a fair shot before but with San Antonio, you have to feel like he’s being brought aboard for a reason. Maybe it’s just insurance in case Ian Mahinmi is still Ian Mahinmi or in case Tiago Splitter is as motivated to jump oceans as Fran Vasquez has been.

R.C. Buford often knows what he’s getting himself into, especially with foreign players. Marcus Haislip is inherently and biographically terrestrial to this country but he might as well be a foreign commodity. He was unknown and unwanted here. He busted out before he ever busted in. But redemption is his to have in the great state of Texas. Teaming with veterans and champions creates an environment of winning and permeates through the young players that want it badly enough.

In San Antonio, Marcus Haislip has proven that endurance and separation lead to a chance for atonement. He hasn’t proven anybody wrong and he hasn’t proven anybody right. But what he has done is currently erased the label of failure next to the 13^th pick in the 2002 draft.

He’s a step back in the direction of success. Once again for Marcus, anything is possible.