On Third Look

You think Nevada's Nick Fazekas has come out of nowhere? His family story makes it seem more like a miracle

Say they dropped you into a seat at a college gym and told you to pick the best player on the court just from the pregame warmups. That means you'd have to judge solely on appearance, and in that case one of the last guys you'd choose would be the long and loose white kid who runs the floor as if his shoes were three sizes too small.

But what if you knew the kid's story? What if you could unwind the strands of DNA that decode the strength and fortitude hidden inside him? What if you found out the roots of this strength, two generations back, traveled through hell and back? What if the journey went beyond grace and form and took you somewhere deeper?

It might change everything if you knew how the kid got to the court. Because he'd surely look different once you heard about his grandfather, who wangled his way out of a POW camp in Moscow in 1947 after wrapping a gasoline-soaked rag around his calf to fake an infection. What if you learned that that was just a piece of the tale?

In fact, the only way to start the story of Nick Fazekas is to look back nearly 60 years, to a young Hungarian soldier named Albert. His story, frankly, is far more interesting than his grandson's. That's no knock against the kid. Albert's tale is operatic, while Nick's is merely admirable. Ultimately, of course, the two are connected.

The gasoline trick came as a piece of advice from a sympathetic Soviet soldier. The soldier told Albert, who'd been taken captive by the Soviets after the Allied victory in World War II, how some disenchanted soldiers got out of their service. Albert snuck a rag to a gasoline tank, soaked it, tied it around his leg. Forty-eight hours later, the limb looked as if it were afflicted with an infected burn.

He showed it to his captors. A man can't work with such a wound he told them. Albert had heard that the sick and injured, who were of no use to the Soviets, were routinely sent home. It took a year, but the scheme worked. Albert was put on a train to Romania and, three weeks after that, on another to Hungary. To this day, he believes the gasoline saved his life. He'd seen what could happen. The Soviets wrung from your body all the work it could muster, then disposed of it like a broken tool.

But this wasn't the first time Albert had mocked death. He and a buddy escaped from a prison camp in Rogovka, Latvia, in 1946. They climbed a barbed-wire fence and spent eight days on the lam, running in the nighttime dark and hiding in the woods during the day. They ate whatever they could find in the fields, mostly raw potatoes. Unsure of exactly where they were or where they were going, they chose a directionsouth-and headed for what they hoped would be the Hungarian border.

Albert figures they walked anywhere from 50 to 70 miles in those eight days, until they were spotted by a Soviet soldier. Albert was brought down by a bullet that cut clean through his calf. ("Not bad," he says. "It missed bone.") He and his buddy were dragged to a second camp, in

Novgorod, where the soldiers demanded to know the name of the camp they'd escaped from. Albert, knowing he'd be sent back to Rogovka and executed if he told, said he didn't know.

Albert is crafty like that.

He worked in Novgorod until there wasn't much left of him. When he boarded a train to another camp, in Moscow, his six-foot body, which carries 200 pounds at age 80, weighed just 98 pounds. So he reached for the gasoline.

He gave 41 months of his life to those three prison camps. Gave them his body, but not his will. And when the Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian revolt in 1956, Albert, his wife and their first child, Steve, were among the 40,000 Hungarians granted political asylum in the United States.

Do you look at Nick Fazekas differently now? Can you see more than the knees that threaten to bounce off his chest when he runs?

Albert doesn't know how or why his life was spared after his escape, or after the resistance. "I don't know if I'm lucky or not," he says. "But I'm still here."

And now his 20-year-old grandson stands to make millions playing a game.

DURING HIS high school years at Ralston Valley High in Arvada, Colo., Nick Fazekas schemed of ways to bring his game up to the level of his dreams. He wanted to play in the NBA, of course, just like most guys who stand 6'11" and can hit a jump shot.

This was just a few years ago, when the NBA's fascination with European players was at its peak. Nick processed the trend the way his grandfather processed the Soviet soldier's advice and came to a conclusion: all that was keeping him from being European was his address. "I set out to be an American European," he says.

He went to work. He worked on his outside game until the three-point shot became one of his most consistent weapons. He worked on shooting off the dribble. He worked on catching and shooting as he came off screens. He worked on ballhandling and getting the most out of his body on the low block.

In short, he tried to make himself over in the image of Dirk Nowitzki. Same size, same general skill set. So what if Nowitzki doesn't run like an injured deer? Today, Fazekas is one of the best inside-outside threats in college basketball. Nevada's junior forward dropped 35 on Kansas

in a big road win early this season and topped it with 37 (and 15 boards) in a disheartening loss at Hawaii. He was WAC Player of the Year in 2004-'05 and is a potential All-America, scoring 21.2 ppg this season. In short, he is one of those classic where-did-he-come-from stories that propel midmajors into the national consciousness.

Then again, Fazekas had no desire to be a mid-major revelation. He was fixated on playing in a top-flight program, right up until he realized that big-time programs weren't exactly fixated on him. Growing up in Big 12 country, his interest leaned toward Colorado or Kansas. But when the feeling wasn't mutual, he took trips to Marquette and Utah, where coach Rick Majerus wanted Fazekas to visit a doctor to find out if maybe a foot problem contributed to his awkward running style.

Ah, that running style. Knees rise like a hurdler's as arms and hands flap loosely like a puppet's. Fazekas attributes his stride to high arches and a pigeon-toed left foot. Let them laugh. He just shrugs and says, "People like to make fun of me, but the way I see it, you run how you run."

Around the time Fazekas was coming to grips with his future, Nevada's head coach, Mark Fox, a Wolf Pack assistant at the time, called one night to talk about his maybe visiting Reno. As soon as Fox began his pitch, the high school star tried to summon the guts to tell the coach he wasn't interested. But when he hung up, it was without having told Fox much of anything.

Nick called his father at work. "Dad, Coach Fox just called, and I couldn't tell him no." Joe Fazekas said, "Well, just take the visit and see what happens."

What happened was that being treated like he was wanted made Reno look pretty good. After the trip, Fazekas decided he and the incumbent star, Kirk Snyder, now a guard with the Hornets, could bring the big time to Nevada. A Sweet 16 appearance as a freshman and a first-round defeat of Texas last season have made him a prophet.

"Luckily for me, not being able to say no helped me out in the long run," Fazekas says. "It wasn't right for me to go big-time, but now I've helped Nevada turn into a top program. Kirk was the reason we got this thing going, and I feel I've been the one who's kept it going."

But this is the story of three generations, not two, so before we jump completely from Albert to Nick, we need to introduce Joe. Joe was a 6'11" center himself at Wyoming, and played professionally in Argentina for a few years before turning his attention to making sure his son got the NBA opportunity he never did.

He has a favorite rallying cry for Nick. "I was focused like a flashlight," he says. "You have to be focused like a laser beam."

A lot of what Nick does-dead-eye jumper, bigger-than-he-is post-up game-are logical steps in the evolution of father to son. "My father has always been a positive and negative factor in what I've done," Nick says. "I could score 40 with 15 boards, and he'd find something I didn't do right. I always worked on those things to please him."

Two poor performances in last season's Tournament-the Wolf Pack lost to Illinois in the second round-kept Fazekas from pursuing his dream after his sophomore season. This year his intentions are clear.

"I hope I'm not coaching you next year," Fox told him.

"I hope I'm not playing for Nevada next year," Nick says. "But last year taught me to put both feet into today and let tomorrow take care of itself." (For a sneak preview of his tomorrows, see the bottom of the next page.)

While he was settling on his plan to make it to the NBA, Fazekas was scheming to make sure he had company. Joe, a bus driver in the Denver area, had ballooned to more than 420 pounds. "He was a walking heart attack," Nick says. So during his freshman year, the son started a telephone campaign, calling his dad often to say, "I'm going to make it to the NBA, and I want you to be there when I do."

They spoke nearly every day, and Nick would always ask, "Been to the gym today?" Joe usually said yes. "I think he lied to me sometimes, just to get me off his back," Nick says.

Fact is, though, that once Joe started to work out, he couldn't stop. For himself, for his sonwho knows which way the balance tilts?-Joe dropped close to 150 pounds. The gym is still part of his daily routine.

"He helped me get where I am, and I guess I wanted to return the favor," Nick says. "After all those years of trying to please him, maybe he decided he wanted to please me."

IT'S THE story of three generations of tough, quiet men. They don't talk much. They aren't that way. Typical of his generation, Albert says, "I never really talk about my life, but I ought to write a book."

So you look out onto the court and wonder how Nick got there.

Maybe a coach saw something nobody else saw and took a chance. Or a boy grew and grew and grew until basketball was inevitable. Or-who knows?-maybe it started when a man poured gasoline on himself in a Soviet prison camp 60 years before.

Albert, who lives near his son in Colorado, watches Nick as often as he can, which shouldn't be construed as being as often as he'd like. He makes a trip or two to Reno each year, and there are a few games on television. He says, "I like it, what he does."

What does this 80-year-old man see when he looks out at that court? He sees his grandson the star, and when he does, he sees his own life and the randomness of fate. But more than anything, more than basketball or stardom or the prospect of millions, he looks to that court with the understanding that every successive generation that carries his name is nothing short of a brand-new miracle.

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