LOS ANGELES — By mid-December, the joy had drained from Isaiah Collier’s face, a weary smile all that remained.
Two days after USC’s head-scratching overtime loss to Long Beach State, the freshman point guard ambled over inside a dead-empty Galen Center. He moved quietly and spoke even softer, hunching his shoulders as he sat in a baseline seat to talk. A purple rubber bracelet, inscribed with the words “Live Like Khalil,” dangled from his wrist.
A trainer was waiting for him near the free-throw line to resume, the only people left in the gym after this Tuesday practice. Collier made just five of his 12 free throws against Long Beach State. Even the easy points haven’t come easy.
You’ve had a pretty strong start to your college career, a statement was posed. He interrupted. “Not the start that I wanted,” he said. Draft hype around him had been ceaseless since he first put on a USC jersey, and he was scoring in bunches, but he was also averaging more than four turnovers per game. And losing.
“I feel like I’ve just been struggling since college started,” Collier said.
Collier was always at his best when he played with love. He was young when his father Dwain first noticed his son studying old DVDs of Magic Johnson and Pete Maravich, flipping one-handed dimes, his joy contagious in the basketball he shared. But he had been burdened with carrying USC’s offense on his shoulders before he had played a minute of college basketball, burdened with mighty draft expectations he never asked for; he is still just 19 years old and has looked it at times.
“He’s a big, strong kid with big shoulders,” said uncle Larry Thompson, Collier’s coach at Wheeler High. “But at the end of the day, he’s still a kid.”
It was easy to see, through every headstrong drive in transition and messy footwork and ball skipping out of bounds: by December, Collier was buried inside his own head. Few know, truly, how deep.
After he woke up this Tuesday,…
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