Livingston takes first step in new career path

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jul 25, 2008 | by Tim Buckley Deseret News

Back in the day, 15 years ago this summer, Randy Livingston was all that.

And more.

Much, much more.

"(Jazz general manager) Kevin (O'Connor) said he may have been one of the top two or three players he ever saw play in high school," Jazz coach Jerry Sloan recalled. "He would have been a heck of (an NBA) player."

"Randy Livingston was a great player going into college. Not a good player -- a great player," O'Connor added. "I mean, he was (among) the Jason Kidds of the world back then. He was everything a point guard could be, with size, good speed, great mind, (ability to get) the ball anywhere on the court."

Then his knee blew up.

Twice.

First time it happened, the guard tore his anterior cruciate ligament during a July basketball-camp pickup game, even before he took part in his first practice for Louisiana State University, which had to fend off the likes of Duke and North Carolina to keep the New Orleans prep phenom from straying too far from home.

Flash forward.

Kidd is preparing to lead Team USA into the Olympic Games for a second time in his career, one which -- before it's done, having come full circle from Dallas to Phoenix and New Jersey and back to Dallas again -- will have earned him well in excess of $150 million.

Livingston's tale is that of someone scratching and clawing to hang on, occasional NBA stints scattered among months and months in the minors and nightmarish trips overseas.

It's also one that also finally has come to a close, with the easy-to-like Livingston -- whose 12-year pro career includes a short NBA stay in Utah -- now observing and assisting the Jazz's Rocky Mountain Revue summer league team as he readies himself for a new career.

"Eventually I want to be a head coach in the NBA," he said during a break this week at the Revue, whose six-day run concludes tonight at Salt Lake Community College. "But I know you have to crawl before you walk. So this is just the first step for me.

"I'm prepared," Livingston added, "to go whatever route it takes to become a head coach."

And it doesn't matter how rocky that road may be, how many obstacles may be in the way. Because if there's one path Livingston knows all too well, it is that which requires overcoming adversity no one should be forced to face.

Prep phenom

The year was 1993, and Livingston was on top of his high school world.

He shared Parade magazine's high school All-America Player of the Year honors with now-Detroit Pistons starter Rasheed Wallace.

One year earlier, as a junior, he had shared the same award with Kidd.

A product of the rough-and-tumble Callioupe Projects area in New Orleans, Livingston parlayed a scholarship uptown to the renowned and private Newman High School -- where he rivaled current Indianapolis Colts star quarterback Peyton Manning for popularity, shared the football field with Manning and owned the basketball court on which Manning spent a couple seasons playing behind him.

Livingston would wind up producing three consecutive Louisiana Class 2A state championships for Newman, making art out of dunks and scoring more than 3,000 points while there.

He contemplated declaring for the NBA Draft -- which would have been more exception than the rule for a high school player back then -- but ultimately opted otherwise.

Livingston instead headed for LSU, where certainly glory days awaited, and eventually so did the NBA, where there were many millions, tens of millions, maybe more than a hundred million, just like Kidd's, to be made.

But that was before the knee exploded.

After reconstructive surgery, Livingston missed his entire freshman season at LSU with a medical redshirt. He played the next season, averaging 14.0 points over 16 games -- before the same right joint failed him again, this time because the kneecap had fractured and a patellar tendon had torn during a game against Arkansas. Then he hurt his back during the 1995-96 season, and enough was enough.

To this day, some still book Livingston in the same chapter of LSU sports lore as the legendary ex-Jazz player "Pistol" Pete Maravich -- including EA Sports' 2008 NCAA March Madness video game, which ranked Livingston No. 26 on its top-50 list of the all-time best college basketball players, curiously 15 spots higher than Maravich.

But three knee surgeries later, and with just 29 college games to his credit, Livingston decided to do what he could have done prior to all the pain, before so much disappointment.

He declared for the NBA Draft, banged-up body and all.

"When I left school early ... it didn't matter what the trials were, I was prepared to go through it," Livingston said. "And I gave it my best."

Pro career

Though he might have been a top-10 pick in the 1993 draft, Livingston didn't go until the second round -- No. 42 overall -- when Houston took him in '96 and signed to a one-year, $250,000 deal.

He played in 64 games as a rookie for the Rockets, the knee holding up for all but seven games. But Houston waived him after that first season, and what would follow proved to be more than a decade's worth of physical ailments, mental anguish and truly trying times.