Recuperating Willis hopeful ailing uncle will see him play

By Rob Miech

Monday, April 20, 2009 | midnight

Tre’Von Willis had to see his uncle one last time. He got the call from his mother at home in Fresno the Wednesday night before spring break. Early the next morning, he was on the freeway.

In a hospital bed, Bobby Warren was fading from pneumonia and a mixture of drugs that had flared his diabetes.

Warren played Division-II ball but had to quit when he nearly died in a motorcycle accident. Still, with a deformed right hand, his jumper was money.

“He could stroke it,” said Willis, a guard who just finished his sophomore basketball season at UNLV. “He was so quick, so fast. I idolized him.”

When Willis was 9, Warren forced him to use his left hand on the court. He’d brush up to Willis’s right and cut off that path. The stubborn youngster still tried to use his right hand and go right.

Warren wound up holding Willis’s right arm down.

Willis lost the ball with his left hand. Layups barely hit the backboard, but Warren was just as stubborn. Finally, the left became natural. Willis beat Warren using just his southpaw.

Willis was hesitant when he walked into the hospital room two weeks ago. Warren had lost about 70 pounds. His wrists and legs looked like sticks, but he cracked a joke.

Willis told the bald man with the long goatee that he looked like Osama bin Laden. Laughter filled the room. Warren is now recuperating at home.

“He cheered me up,” said Willis, 21. “In my mind I had to see him one more time, but he’s out of the hospital now. It would make my season if he could come out to a game and see me play.

“I didn’t know what to expect. It didn’t look like him, but his spirit has never been knocked down.”

Banged up but unbowed

Willis, who transferred from Memphis, tried keeping his spirit up during the past season, but his body bore the brunt of his first regular game action in 2 1/2 years.

The sore right shoulder, which was slightly separated during football practice in high school, twice required a cortisone injection. He suffered deep shin scrapes when he slipped on ice and fell under a bus in Utah.

Just when he felt like he was getting his legs back, he tweaked a hamstring.

“I went back down a level,” Willis said. “I’m trying to get my legs stronger in the weight room and I want to be more aggressive, so I can do more things for my ball club.”

He had a four-game stretch, when he was playing the point, in which he doled out 25 assists and only turned it over twice.

“I was feeling pretty good,” Willis said. “I felt like I could do anything on the court. I trusted my teammates and tried to get them the ball in the right situations where they could be successful.

“I had a real rhythm going, a pace where I could see everything. I just controlled the tempo of the game.”

But after those four games, San Diego State visited Las Vegas and belted the Rebels in overtime. UNLV went to New Mexico and, for the first time in the Rebels’ history, lost a second consecutive game in OT.

That deflation started a slide in which the Rebels lost seven of their final 11 games, including at Kentucky in the NIT, to finish 21-11.

During the season, Willis contemplated post-season shoulder surgery. But he will avoid the knife because he does not want to miss a minute of open-gym opportunities with his teammates or weight-room workouts.

“I don’t want that time off, waiting around four to six weeks, or whatever it would be, after surgery,” he said. “I want to keep getting better. I feel I can do more to help this team win.

“I’m taking class all three summer sessions, too, so I’ll rest in between them. But I’m not taking too much time off. I’m really trying to get after it, to better myself and help get this team rolling.”

Rudderless

Willis unflinchingly says this past UNLV team was the closest squad he has ever been a part of. Ever. Off the court, he had never been tighter with teammates.

Which may have been one of their problems.

“We were a little too close,” Willis said. “Sometimes, guys would think they’d hurt other guys’ feelings if they got on them. Guys were afraid to get on other guys, saying ‘you need to pick it up a little.’

“Things like that kept us from being great last season.”

Willis doesn’t stop there. He wears his convictions like the numerous tattoos that drape his body.

Even with a sterling assists-to-turnovers ratio during that scintillating stretch in which he was the de facto rudder of the team, he said he didn’t feel like a leader.

“I never really felt like I was leading, or anybody, really, for that matter,” Willis said. “We really just didn’t have a person on the team to say, ‘hey’ … nobody had a tight grip around the team.

“You couldn’t say, ‘that’s the leader’ or ‘that’s the guy we look up to to get us going.’ I think that was another one of our problems.”

Coasting added to the aimlessness.

“I think our main problem was we thought we could just turn it on, off and on,” he said. “Sometimes, we’d get in trouble and look up, and then guys would be, like, ‘Let’s go.’ Sometimes, that’s not how things work out.

“Sometimes, it is too late. That was our biggest inconsistency, thinking we could turn it on at any time. As you can see, that wasn’t the case.”

Above the rim

Willis is enthused about him and 6-foot-6 guard Derrick Jasper and 6-8 Chace Stanback likely being the backbone of the Rebels next season.

Like they used to do on the summer-traveling circuit, Jasper is throwing blind passes to Willis, knowing exactly where he will be, lately during open-gym runs. Willis is there to retrieve them.

Stanback’s inside-outside game will be invaluable to the team, as will power forward Matt Shaw and fellow big men Brice Massamba, Darris Santee and newcomer Carlos Lopez.

“That was a major problem last year, too … size,” said Willis as he tried to suppress a laugh. “We were too little. But we’re looking pretty good. This should be a more physical group.

“We just have to love to get after it, love to be aggressive, fighting and scrapping for everything. Sometimes last season, we weren’t that team.”

Expect more dunks, too, like the one Willis flashed at Kentucky. He was embarrassed he hadn’t taken an earlier wide-open drive in strong and Patrick Patterson swatted it.

Willis wasn’t going to make the mistake a second time.

“Dunks are a good thing,” he said. “It cheers up the crowd, gets the team pumped up and you get so much momentum. That’s definitely something we lacked last season.

“Dunks definitely get you into the game … with Chace and Derrick, and DeShawn Mitchell will be a sophomore … my legs are coming back. Next season should be exciting, with people getting above the rim.”

Inspiration

Bobby Warren will be on Tre’Von Willis’s mind for every pick-up game and every weight-room session this offseason.

“Yeah, that’s inspirational,” Willis said. “That’s why I’m trying to get better. I want this team to do great things. If I can do something to make him get better … ”

Willis’s voice trails off. If Warren can recover and muster the strength to see a Rebels game next season, Willis would be ecstatic to have his mentor in the same arena.

“Anybody can be taken from you any day,” Willis said. “I can be taken. Life is special. You have to thank God for everything. My uncle pushed me to another level, giving me that other hand.

“I’m just very thankful he’s alive and fighting, and I’m still praying for him.”