THE EVOLUTION OF A CHAMPION

By Wayne Kondro
The Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA - In the post-game celebrations following Carleton's successful defence of their Canadian Interuniversity Sport men's basketball title, the Ravens dutifully ascended a stepladder to snip keepsake segments of the championship net, with coach Dave Smart performing the final honors and clipping the last loop to release it from the rim.

Smart clutched it in his hand and strode towards midcourt, tossing it three meters through the air onto the chest of point guard Osvaldo Jeanty, who'd just been chosen CIS tournament MVP for the second time in his career, championship game MVP for the fourth consecutive season, and recipient of the Mike Moser Trophy as national player of the year.

\"This,\" Smart pronounced, pausing briefly, \"belongs to you.\"

As much as the gesture was altogether deserving, given Jeanty's heroics during Carleton's remarkable march to its fourth consecutive crown, it was also an acknowledgement of the near-fulfillment of a unique pact struck between the pair in the summer of 2002, when Jeanty was a senior at Samuel Genest, and Smart still an unproven, albeit highly-regarded, coaching commodity.

Jeanty was being wooed by several American institutions, Carleton and the University of Ottawa, which his Haitian-born parents wanted him to attend because they felt its bilingual nature more accurately reflected their commitment to the French language. They felt comfortable with then recently-minted Gee-Gees coach David DeAveiro and believed it would be too onerous a task for someone who'd been educated all in his life in French to suddenly have to deal with classes delivered strictly in English.

But the affable and courteous Jeanty, then 18, believed Smart was building a hoops juggernaut that would enable him to realize his ambition to win five national titles and become the best player in the country.

The 'drive-for-five' pact was apparent from year one, when, in the bedlam which ensued after Carleton captured its first CIS title in any sport at the Halifax Metro Centre, and completely unaware that a reporter was within earshot, Smart leaned over at the foul-line and whispered to Jeanty: \"one down, four to go.\"

The countdown has since become their private mantra, but the pact, says Jeanty, went much further.

The actual deal was that after Carleton captured its seventh --but not necessarily consecutive title-- then Smart would abandon his footloose ways, settle down, get married and raise some children.

\"He looked at me and said: 'tell you what, I'll make you a deal. Seven national championships, I'll get married',\" Jeanty chuckles. \"I'm guessing he thought: 'seven national championships, that'll take me to 40, 42, 50-years-old and I won't ever have to get married'. But I said: 'Alright. I'm going to work my hardest to give you five and then, two years later, I'll be the best man at your wedding'.\"

\"Now, I know that's going to happen, because Aaron (Doornekamp), Ryan (Bell) and Manny (Jean-Emmanuel Jean-Marie) will take care of the other two years and I'll be the best man. And I'll make a nice speech.\"

And what a speech it will be, after five years of toiling in Smart's army, grinding and grinding until it hurts, often serving as the coach's whipping boy.

Yet, theirs, in some respects, seems the perfect marriage of player and coach. Both have an iron will, a prodigious work ethic and an obsessive need to win.

In fact, if it's possible --and many would argue it isn't-- then Jeanty may well be more competitive than Smart.

Smart doesn't doubt it. \"In all my time in sport, any sport, I've never seen anything like him. I've seen people who were more talented, lots of people. No one is even close to being as mentally tough as this kid. Ever.\"

It is a toughness that seems to have been spawned by an archetypal sibling rivalry in which Renaldo Jeanty, two years Osvaldo's senior, served the dual capacity of tormentor and protector.

The pair grew up squabbling, almost out of principle.

\"I used to cry all the time because he beat me at chess or checkers,\" Osvaldo says. \"My Mom used to get mad at me because I wanted to fight him because I thought he cheated all the time (which Renaldo doesn't deny). He used to trash-talk me too, which drove me insane. . . . The worst thing was his laughter afterwards.\"

When Renaldo and friends like Mac Jean-Marie discovered basketball and began making the neighbourhood playground the court of competitive choice for east Ottawa hoopsters, the elders would invariably make younger, smaller brothers Osvaldo and Jean-Emmanuel watch from the sidelines.

After the big boys were done, Renaldo would often indulge his sibling in a game of one-on-one and typically whip his butt, using three extra inches in height and a dozen pounds to great advantage.

\"I'd beat him again and again and he'd just want to keep on playing,\" Renaldo recalls. \"We'd get tired and go home and he'd stay and shoot for hours and hours. He kept saying: 'I going to end up beating you some day'.\"

The battles were legendary, Jean-Marie says. \"Everybody would come just to watch those two argue and fight. Renaldo was bigger and stronger and he would bully Oz and push him around and it would drive Oz crazy.\"

It also motivated him. \"I would try to practice when Renaldo was not around because I wanted to surprise him,\" Osvaldo says. \"I wanted to come in and show him, 'bang, I'm good now'. He just never knew that when he was sleeping, I was out there practicing.\"

To this day, Osvaldo adds, \"my brother's one guy I will never mess around with playing basketball. Whether he's 50 years old, out of shape, I won't take it easy on him. I won't let him score one point. He probably still thinks he's much better than me. He won't give it up. I don't think those words can come out of his mouth. Ever.\"

No doubt who's better, the personable Renaldo quips. \"Definitely me.\"

Yet, eventually, Renaldo concedes his brother's game has surpassed his own. \"He's gone from a kid just finding his way through, to now being able to take over and control a whole game, something I didn't think he was capable of doing. He actually shocked me in Halifax the way he basically, for three straight games, dominated the floor. I was very proud of him.\"

It's a pride that's long been evident to anyone who's seen the brothers interact, and a protectiveness that once saw Renaldo insist Osvaldo be precluded from following him to Louis-Riel, then riddled with gang, drug and crime problems.

Rather, Jeanty would attend Samuel Genest, \"the little French school with uniforms, green jackets, blue ties and no basketball program,\" where again, he soon found himself infuriated by disrespect.

The Lazors won a Tier II title but in the basketball world that's like taking your sister to the prom, particularly in an era in which the mighty St. Patrick's Fighting Irish, led by guard B.J. Charles, was racking up city titles.

\"I'm big on the hatred thing,\" says the soft-spoken Jeanty. \"I have a lot of hatred. First, it was my brother. And then I got better than my brother by the time ninth grade came around and it was B.J.. Oh my God, did I ever hate B.J.. He was the man. And I was just like, I'm going to be better than you someday.\"

It didn't help that in the summer of 2001, Smart axed Jeanty from the under-19 provincial team, which featured Charles, Irish teammate Dion Williams (who later starred at St. Francis Xavier) and future Raven Mike Smart.

An irate Jeanty spent the summer working on his game until his fingers felt numb, cursing Dave Smart for dubbing him \"just a streetball guy.\"

\"It drove me crazy, the fact that Dave was saying I wasn't smart enough, that 'Mike shoots 80 per cent from the three, open ones, you don't shoot 80 per cent.' So I started shooting threes, 1500-1700 a day. I would practice setting screens and stuff like that, reading ball screens, staying on guy's top foot and doing everything properly, working on my ballhandling and my quickness.\"

While raining treys in the rain at the Elmsmere playground, something clicked. He came to the realization that basketball is a cerebral game. \"It suddenly seemed to me I didn't know the team concept yet and how to play basketball, the right way, the smart way, with your brain. I thought it was only body and skills, which it's not. It's a combination of both. It's almost even 90 per cent smarts and 10 per talent.\"

The summer of agony eventually paid off.

The following year, Jeanty and Jean-Marie, carrying what they called \"the honour\" of Francophone basketball on their shoulders, led Genest to a Triple-A city title and a fourth place finish at OFSAA. Smart, in turn, finally selected him to the under-19 provincial team, which ultimately finished fifth at the national championships.

\"But I still get bugged by Dave and Robbie and Mike Smart about that. Fifth place, it was the worst showing ever by a provincial team.\"

In due course, the pattern of being driven by challenges to his pride has continued at Carleton.

Both Smart and Renaldo admit they've constantly pushed their charge by unfavourably comparing him to more-hyped players.

\"Every game I play, Dave is saying 'somebody is really, really good and better than me'. And every time I hear that from him, I just go crazy,\" Jeanty says.

Renaldo continues to deliver 10-point critiques after each game. \"I have never admitted he had a good game. He can shoot five-for-five and I'll find a flaw in his game. I guess I am protective of him, like regular older brothers, but I wouldn't say it to him or show it to him. I just want him to succeed. Most of the reason why I push him so hard is because I know he needs to be pushed.\"

It's strategy that's actually backfired on the elder Jeanty. Convinced Carleton had no chance of winning its fourth consecutive title after Doornekamp was sidelined with a fractured ankle, Renaldo promised to fund a vacation to the Dominican Republic if the Ravens bucked the odds.

\"When they won, at the Carleton party, the first thing he said to me was: 'I'm going to the Dominican'. All my friends were witnesses, so I guess I'm on the hook.\"

With Smart and Renaldo constantly finding new ammunition and incentives to challenge Jeanty, he doesn't foresee any difficulty maintaining his edge next season.

Moreover, Jeanty says there's a long list of reasons to keep his nose to the grindstone: the drive-for-five; making sure Smart is married off; completing his commerce degree; playing professional basketball; toiling for the Canadian national team; and someday, making a bushel of money, by possibly running an investment firm, and then retiring early to tell tall tales to his grandchildren.

As far as parents Marie and Maxene are concerned, he's already a success. \"We're very proud,\" says Maxene. \"The most important thing to us was to see him go to university and succeed at his academics. We couldn't ask for more.\"

Jean-Marie all but scoffs at the notion his friend might ease off the pedal. \"Never. He's the kind of guy that he won't even go to hang out with our boys or go to a few parties, if he has work to do, whether it's schoolwork or basketball. Those come first. But when we do go out, he's fun. He's a ladies man. He's just that type of guy. He's so sociable and he talks to everyone. He always has 'the Oz smile', which the ladies like.\"

Ease off?

\"No way,\" Jeanty says. \"Holy crap, there must be 200 'me's' out there. That means somebody's coming. But nobody's taking my crown and nobody is basically going to be better than me. I know how hard it is to get there. And I know the only reason I got there is that person at the top said: 'I'm good enough'. I'm not doing that.\"

Reprinted with permission from Wayne Kondro.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

(Photo: CIS player of the year Osvaldo Jeanty honed his deadly long-rage stroke by shooting over 1,500 three-pointers every day. File photo.)