This is crazy!

 

Tough road back to NBA for Darius Rice

 

 

His chance in China became a nightmare.

 

By Ira Winderman

Staff Writer

Posted October 7 2005

 

 

It was late, dark, thousands of miles from home, and Darius Rice, amid all the confusion and everything that was being lost in the translation, sat in the back seat of a hired car with a sense he was being followed.

 

The former University of Miami standout had arrived weeks earlier, in the Shandong province of China, seeking the type of basketball riches that had proven unattainable back home.

 

He had been embraced upon his arrival, marveled upon as he hit shot after shot for the local professional basketball team. The money was good. The game was fun.

 

Ultimately, it proved too good to be true.

 

Instead of finding a possible route to the NBA through China, Rice found himself trying to escape "the scariest experience I ever had."

 

He tells his tale now at AmericanAirlines Arena, as he prepares for another session at Heat training camp.

 

In body, he finally is where he wants to be, with hope of an NBA career.

 

But he can't shake where he had been during those four weeks in June.

 

Security officers, he said, left him feeling like a hostage in his hotel room. His passport was seized. He was denied access to cash in his safe-deposit box. Only after slipping by the sleeping guard outside his door would he begin an escape on that daring late-night passage that would take him through Hong Kong and back home.

 

HOOP HOPE

 

When he arrived weeks earlier to the eastern seaboard region in China, the city of Qingdao seemed like an oasis to the 22-year-old.

 

After failing to make an NBA team out of college a year earlier and then getting by on a minor-league salary of $24,000 from a team in Fort Myers, the nephew of NFL legend Jerry Rice was about to cash in.

 

The pay this time would be $20,000 a month, for two months, enough to replenish the bank account for another stab at the NBA.

 

The results were, to say the least, encouraging.

 

In a two-game tryout, he averaged 55 points and 16 rebounds.

 

But back home, the Dallas Mavericks suddenly were interested, offering a berth on their summer-league roster for a July tryout camp.

 

They wanted Rice. And Rice wanted the Mavericks.

 

But his new employer in Qingdao wanted more, claiming a two-month contract was in place.

 

Rice's adviser, former FBI agent Doug McCary, told Rice nothing had been put into writing.

 

So the 6-foot-10 Mississippi native went back to his hotel, prepared to take another shot at the NBA, hopeful about the looming tryout with the Mavericks.

 

He went to the lobby and requested his passport. The request, he said, was denied.

 

He requested access to his safe-deposit box, to retrieve his own cash. The answer, he said, again was no.

 

"The owner of the team told them not to give it to me," was Rice's understanding.

 

So he returned to his room, running up $3,000 in cell phone calls to McCary.

 

THE BACK STORY

 

McCary, who works out of Houston with respected NBA agent Tony Dutt, earlier had suspected something wasn't right.

 

Like Rice, McCary stressed the matter had nothing to do with the Chinese government. Rather, he spoke of a network of overseas agents and middlemen who seemingly clouded the issue, leaving it murky to this day.

 

"It started when we were called by a Chinese contact who lived in Canada and said there was an opening and that they were looking for someone like Darius, who could score," McCary said of the late-spring conversation. "I told Darius I wasn't familiar with the structure, but it was for $20,000 a month, for two months.

 

"So he goes over there for the tryout and he doesn't make the team, which is odd. But then, he calls and says another team was willing to pay $15,000 a month.

 

"I was an FBI agent for four years, working with the SWAT unit in Jacksonville. Something wasn't smelling right. I was like, `D, I think you ought to come home.' He was saying, `Well it's good money.'

 

"I said, `I don't even know where you're at. We're talking you're in a communist country.' He chose to stay and play for them. He was like an instant success."

 

Too instant.

 

"My first game I had 58," Rice said. "Once I had that, there was no way I could get back without finishing the season."

 

ON THE RUN

 

"They ended up holding him hostage in his hotel," McCary said. "I had to call friends to go in and pick him up. When they went in the first time, they pulled him out of the car and made him stay in the hotel."

 

Finally, after showing up but refusing to play in his team's third game, Rice said he waited until deep into the night, when the security officer beside his door nodded off. With the night staff at the front desk seemingly unaware of the situation, he struck a deal. He would exchange his safe-deposit key for his passport.

 

The staff obliged, but only after it was clear his cash would secure the arrangement.

 

However, there would be no cash left behind.

 

"I stuffed paper into an envelope, filled it up, and put it back, all puffed up," Rice said.

 

With about $4,000 -- he had not and would not be paid for his play in Qingdao -- he left with another driver McCary had arranged.

 

And then the phone rang.

 

"Eight miles down the road, a call. They told the driver to bring me back," Rice said, those at the hotel seemingly having caught on to his worthless envelope.

 

Sensing the entire time he was being followed, he knew what he had to do.

 

The cash he supposedly left behind actually had been stuffed into a container of workout supplements, in an athletic bag. So he reached in and began grabbing for bills, paying off the driver to continue on.

 

All the while, McCary was on the phone. He told Rice not to fly to Shanghai from the regional airport the car was now approaching, but instead to fly to Hong Kong and return to the States from there.

 

"It wasn't a happy leaving," Rice said. "I was on the run. I had a couple of good games, and the next thing you know it's the scariest experience I ever had."

 

Yet he does not regret the decision, only the outcome.

 

"Thinking the NBA was going to have a lockout, I was going to go over there and make a few dollars," he said. "Never being in the league, I didn't really have anything. I was thinking there was going to be a lockout, so might as well get a job over there."

 

MOVING ON

 

Rice made it back for that tryout with the Mavericks, arriving with a story that would put every basketball moment before and after into perspective.

 

"China has some oddities, but I've never heard of that kind of thing happening before," Mavericks President Donnie Nelson said via e-mail last week. "It's common practice for a team to take a player's passport for processing purposes. In China, where there's more red tape than usual, maybe it took longer.

 

"I haven't heard of any other U.S. players having any issues like that in China. In fact, China has been surprisingly good, much better than Europe, regarding paying on time and treating American players well."

 

Rice said he found the U.S. Embassy of little help, although McCary believes his own contacts there eased the situation. A representative from the American Citizen Services wing of the U.S. Embassy at Beijing said it's office was unaware of the situation, while an e-mail inquiry to the U.S. Consulate at Shanghai did not draw a response. An e-mail to the corporation that runs the team Rice applied to also did not draw a response.

 

For now, it's all about domestic relations for Rice, namely two-a-days at AmericanAirlines Arena.

 

After making it to that audition for the Mavericks, Rice arranged for a tryout with the Heat in July.

 

A long shot to make the team, he nonetheless appreciates the opportunity.

 

"I have nothing now except these," he said, tugging on his T-shirt and a pair of jean shorts. "I have nothing to lose, everything to gain. I don't have anything right now."

 

Except renewed hope.

 

"I thank them for giving me the opportunity to be here," he said.

 

Ira Winderman can be reached at iwinderman @sun-sentinel.com.

WOW

 

Amazing story, I am glad that he got out ok

thats crazy...

This is exactly why I refuse to play professional basketball overseas.

 

Glad Darius made it out alright, and I hope he lands somewhere in the NBA, cause it ain't gonna be with the Heat.

I hope Darius catches on, I'll always remember his steal-to-three-pointer a couple years back.

 

To think, if he leaves after his junior year, he would have been drafted.

He won't get a shot with miami, but hopefully another team signs him.

God damn those foreign teams dont play around.

 

darius is one of those examples of why it mightve been a good idea to go into the league after highschool when it was still allowed.

I hope Darius catches on, I'll always remember his steal-to-three-pointer a couple years back.

 

To think, if he leaves after his junior year, he would have been drafted.

 

That game was nuts. I think he had something like 45 too.

That play though, in reality, is the personification of why he struggled to reach the NBA. If he would have bulked up, he could have continued on his path to be a poor man's Kevin Garnett capable of playing four and at times five positions. But instead he chose to be Antoine Walker and just launch up long twos and threes at will. Granted, of course, he took the three because that's where he stole it and because we needed it anyways, but it was always he eventually was killed by the sword he swore by.