Once A `Bad Fit,' Peeler Now Has Second Chance

Once his child walked across the sky. Thousands saw it. It happened on a warm February night in Norman, Okla., when the boy was just 18, and there was a basketball in his hand in the biggest game of the year. Suddenly, he was in the air - his feet pedaling a graceful arc, his eyes locked on some distant prize - and then in one giant circle, the arm swirled around, sending the ball crashing through.

There was loud crack as the rim snapped down, then up. Then there was silence.

For on that night in Norman, in that packed arena, basketball fans were convinced this was like nothing they had seen. His name was Anthony Peeler.

Almost a decade later, Larry Peeler held the phone against his ear and heard the words spilling out from a country away. He didn't know what to say, so he said nothing. He watched the television, saw the games and noticed the fear on his son's face. An NBA career was falling away. The smile was gone from Anthony's face.

Even in the worst times, Anthony Peeler could always find a way to smile.

"We hurt as much as he did," Larry Peeler says. "Never in his life had he been in a situation like that. Never had he not played, and suddenly he wasn't playing at all and no one would tell him why."

How had it come to this? How had Anthony Peeler, once the player the experts said was the best guard in high school, the one the TV commentators regularly called "the next Jordan" all the way through college, the one people in the NBA loved to call "Mr. Fourth Quarter" ended up on the bench of the worst team in the league?

Nobody falls so far, so hard, so fast they wind up buried on the Vancouver Grizzlies. Not without an answer.

He sits now on the edge of a table at KeyArena and shrugs slightly.

"I guess I just wasn't in (Coach) Brian Hill's plans for his team," he says.

It doesn't matter, it is all in the past. The time in Vancouver, those brilliant nights with the Lakers when the game was late and he was on fire, even in college when his college career started to fall apart. Everybody should get the chance to reinvent themselves, and here is Anthony Peeler self-assured again. He is talking and the eyes are looking at that distant place again. He is smiling. Maybe after a decade of searching, he has found that moment again.

The Minnesota Timberwolves rescued him in February and brought him here, back to the playoffs. These were always his moments. The Timberwolves gave him a regular place, at shooting guard somewhere between Stephon Marbury and Kevin Garnett, two of the league's brightest young stars. Two players as big as Peeler was once supposed to be.

Ask the Timberwolves why this has been their best season, why they won 12 of their last 16 games, and why they think they have a decent chance of beating the Sonics this week in the first round of the playoffs, and they don't hesitate: "Anthony Peeler." He brings them versatility. He can score from the outside, something they desperately needed, and he can score at any moment. He brings leadership and maturity, things you didn't always hear about Peeler.

"No doubt about it, it's been a dream come true getting out of that situation," Peeler says. "I love Vancouver, but I was just in a situation I was never going to get out of. It's hard to play on a team that has a lot of players who aren't playing together. I'm just so happy here."

He never wanted Vancouver, but he had no choice. The Lakers, who made Peeler the 15th overall pick in the 1992 draft and played him behind an All-Star, Byron Scott, dealt him away before the 1996-97 season in one of a series of one-sided deals designed to free enough salary-cap room to sign Shaquille O'Neal. For a while, the Grizzlies played Peeler, then Hill took over and played Sam Mack and Blue Edwards instead.

"It was a bad fit," says Minnesota General Manager Kevin McHale who made the trade for Peeler. "It's just like everything else; just because you have a situation that doesn't work, it doesn't mean it can't work somewhere else. I think he's enjoyed it here and we've enjoyed it here."

Yes, Peeler is happy. He never gave up in Vancouver because his father told him in those phone calls never to give up. Never doubt that ability. One day it would take him far again. And so Anthony had a friend come up from his hometown in Kansas City, an old buddy who had a football tackling dummy. And every day they worked out, Peeler hit the pad, telling himself, "They're not going to crack me," keeping himself strong.

Around the All-Star break, there were rumors of a trade to the Timberwolves. Peeler was so excited that when he left Kansas City to go back to Vancouver at the end of the weekend, he didn't bring a single piece of baggage.

"That's how unhappy I was to be going back there," he says. "I told everyone I was going to be traded."

Everything has worked out. He could always score, and since the deal, he has averaged 13 points. It probably isn't what he expected to be getting his sixth year in the league, but it is a respectable figure considering everything he has been through.

The other day someone asked him if he thought he was unlucky, and he stopped and thought about the question. Yes, he was unlucky to be stuck on the Lakers when they had so many other talented players who played the same position. But he will never regret playing in Los Angeles. That was where he became "Mr. Fourth Quarter," hitting a big shot whenever the Lakers needed one.

Then he smiled.

"No doubt about it, I'm lucky to be in this situation," he said.

Maybe he is closer now to that night when he walked across the sky and a whole arena in Oklahoma gasped. Some of the problems have been his own. He reportedly checked into a rehabilitation clinic between his first and second years of college at Missouri. And then there was a very public arrest for an incident in which he supposedly bit a woman, pulled a gun and refused to let her leave her apartment. The gun got him five years' probation. Some of the other charges were dropped.

It has been six years since the incident, six years without further trouble. It has been nine years since the dunk and something always seemed to be in his way - the arrest, other players, Vancouver. The barricades are gone now.

He is free again.