Goodness Gracious

If nice guys finish last, why is everyone trying to keep up with Marquette's Dominic James?

You'll just have to hang out here a while to see why it feels wrong to waste time and space discussing the dynamic basketball talents of Marquette sophomore point guard Dominic James. Sports might seem to be the whole point of the enterprise here, but trust us, you'll come around to our way of thinking soon enough.

Until then, here's a little basketball story to fulfill the obligation:

Back at Richmond High School, deep in the deepest thicket of Indiana prep hoops—where 80-yearold women carrying score books show up in handknit school sweaters 30 minutes before the junior varsity game, where folks who have held season tickets since the 1960s get the prime spots in the 8,000-seat gym, and where two local radio stations broadcast every game, home and away—Dominic James developed his favorite move.

He saw Jordan use it against the Knicks once, on tape, and fell in love with it. Before long, he'd made it his own. He'd hold the ball on the baseline, feign a move toward the open court, then spin back toward the baseline. Two steps and a flash of his 41-inch vertical later, James would be grabbing the rim and looking for a place to land. Everyone but the defender thought it was pretty cool—no matter how many times he did it. And Dominic did it a lot.

Nearly every time he broke it out, though, he'd hear it from his coach. It wasn't that Chad Bolser didn't love the move too. He just felt it was his coachly duty to impart advice to the best player he'd ever mentored. "I'm going to be honest," he'd say. "You can do that all you want here, but you're not going to get away with it at the next level."

The line became a lesson and, over time, an inside joke between coach and player. The kid would blow past another unsuspecting schoolboy and finish with a slam, and Bolser would wetblanket the thing with a well-timed, "You're not going to get away with that at the next level."

Then last season, James' first at Marquette, Bolser and Richmond assistant Jeff Williams went to the Bradley Center in Milwaukee to catch James and the Golden Eagles taking on Pitt. And wouldn't you know it, there was James, holding the ball on the baseline, taking a dribble away from the hoop and … you know the rest.

Bolser stared at Williams: "Who's the idiot now?"

The coach is still shaking his head a year later as he sits in the empty bleachers at Richmond. "Turns out, I was wrong. He can get away with that pretty much anytime he wants to."

The coach loves this story, almost as much as he loves the one about Dominic (pronounced Dom-a- neek ; nobody knows why) showing up an hour early for a varsity practice when he was a freshman. Knowing the team's starting point guard had gotten hurt the night before, Dominic rounded the corner as Bolser was opening the gym. When the coach asked, "What are you doing here?" James answered, "Just thought you might need a point guard." A week later, he was on varsity for good.

From Richmond to Milwaukee, they love to tell stories about James, a 5'11" point guard who is truly everybody's All-America. He carries a GPA above 3.0 and talent that suggests a near-term date with the first round of the draft. Earlier this year, Louisville coach Rick Pitino called James "maybe the best point guard in the nation."

It's James' personality, though, that gives the amateur historians their best material. Tellingly, the only on-court quality he lacks is assertiveness. After Marquette lost its first two Big East games this season, coach Tom Crean and the rest of the Golden Eagles called on James to commandeer games. For a guy who purposely tried not to score in lopsided high school games for fear of showing up opponents, this was a tough assignment. It took some direct words from his big brother and best friend, Germayne, for him to get the message. Germayne said, "You being unselfish is kind of like you being selfish."

Dominic understood, and the era of unselfish selfishness kicked off with eight straight Big East wins—including huge road victories at Connecticut, Louisville and then-No. 6 Pitt—before a loss to Georgetown. Even against Pitt, though, James' internal tug-of-war was on display. He scored 14 in the first half, then spent most of the second dishing to teammates. When the game got close late, though, he made it his own, ending the night by hitting two free throws with his team down by one and less than a second left in overtime. "There are times in every game when he can just take over," Crean says.

Obviously, all the stuff that wasn't supposed to work at the next level works just fine.

Still, courtside seats give you the worst view in the house. To see the Dominic James favored by the storytellers, you need to step away from the floor. A wider view lends greater focus.

THEY'RE ABOUT to sing the national anthem at the Bradley Center before an early-season game against Oakland University. You know the scene: players lined up across the free throw line, singer at halfcourt, fans standing at Midwestern attention. Pretty standard.

But look closer, down there on the Marquette side, and you'll see James holding hands with a young woman in a wheelchair. Her parents are a few steps away near the baseline, and that smile they see on their daughter's face is the widest one they've seen in a long time. Who is this 22-year-old woman, and how did she get down there?

This story starts during James' junior year of high school. He began slapping hands with Natasha Snyder before every game as she sat along the baseline at Richmond High. Natasha, who graduated from Richmond after Dominic's freshman year, suffers from a difficult-to-diagnose movement disorder—falling under the umbrella term dystonia—that combines the effects of cerebral palsy and cystic fibrosis.

Dominic and Natasha became friends. Hand slaps became hugs. When Dominic went to Marquette, they continued to stay in touch through Facebook and instant messaging. And when James found out that Natasha was going to Chicago for some tests this past December, he invited the Snyders to Milwaukee for a game.

And that's all they expected: a game. But James talked to Crean about Natasha, and they decided to take it a step further. So Natasha was on the floor for the anthem and again after the game, when Dominic gave her a game ball signed by the team and a special guest, former Marquette star Dwyane Wade. She got to meet Wade, too.

"It's been a tough couple of years for Natasha, and to see that smile was really special," says her father, Jim. "That was not an everyday smile. For Dominic to do that—I can't even tell you what it meant to us."

Sitting on the baseline at Richmond on a Saturday night in early January, Natasha says, "I couldn't believe he did that for me. It made me feel so good."

Told that his actions invigorated Natasha, James says, "She inspires me with her attitude and strength. She's my role model. Whenever I think something is hard, I think about her and realize I have nothing to complain about. Despite her disability, she managed to come to all my games. I wanted to return the favor."

The gesture received a lot of attention back home in Richmond, but when James says, "I didn't do it to be recognized," he sounds almost offended.

And that response is so genuine that it rubs off on those around him. Every time someone from Richmond starts to describe James, it sounds like an apology. Along the lines of "You're not going to believe this, but … " or "I know this sounds too good to be true, but … " Bolser's version is, "I don't want to overly romanticize this, but he has a gift for making people feel good. It's not an act. There has never been anything premeditated about it."

A little girl attended Richmond High's basketball camp the summer before James' senior year. She wasn't very good, but her effort caught Dominic's attention. When camp ended, he gave her his phone number and made her promise to call him in two weeks to let him know how things were going. She didn't call—she was embarrassed, and besides, who knew if he really meant it?—but one day, she answered her phone at home and heard, "Hi, this is Dominic James. I thought I told you to call me."

A couple of years earlier, during his sophomore year in high school, he went to the emergency room with his grandfather, who was ill. A girl he didn't know walked into the waiting room and sat in a corner, bawling. Before long, Dominic was in the chair next to her with his arm around her, telling her everything was going to be all right.

And you want to talk about basketball?

DOMINIC WAS raised by his mother, Angela, and maternal grandparents, with Grandma Tillie serving as the family's rock and moral authority. Germayne, a former Division III player at Lakeland College in Sheboygan, Wis., also helped out. Dominic says his older brother "sacrificed his high school years" for him.

His charisma and caring have attracted benefactors and well-wishers, much like wool gathers lint. Basketball is a big part of the community fabric in Richmond, and the school belongs to one of the toughest and most storied prep basketball leagues in the country. Down the road in one direction is New Castle, where Steve Alford played. Up the road in another is Muncie Central, the team whose loss to tiny Milan inspired Hoosiers .

But Richmond's infatuation with James goes beyond basketball. They don't want him to fail—can't bear the thought of it, really—because this young man deserves success. These folks forced the Richmond fire marshal to run people out of the middle school gym when they overfilled it for Dominic's seventh-grade games. And they made sure that one of the local stations picked up the Marquette broadcasts the moment he hit campus. But these days, their protectionist tendencies are as much for the person as the player. They just don't want to see him disappointed.

It's a big world out there, and nobody can be completely sure that small-town James is completely ready for it. As his Marquette teammate Jerel McNeal says, "There are people out there who will mistake his kindness for weakness."

But Dominic shrugs off all the fretting. "All my life, I've just wanted everybody to be happy," he says. "My goal in life is to see everybody smile."

Producing smiles is just another move that works at any level. Basketball is important, sure, but it's temporary.

You see that now, right?

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