Basketball has been a focus for Carter after family adversity
| Friday, Feb 27 2009 12:58 AM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 12:59 PM
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Garces senior Stephon Carter is considered the area's top boys basketball players.
If you're a high school basketball fan, Stephon Carter is omnipresent. He's a four-year starter, a two-time Californian Player of the Year for one of Kern County's most visible teams and his name or picture is on the news and in these pages seemingly every other night.
You may even think you've gotten to know him over the past four years — you know, Carter is the uber-talented, hotshot Garces senior who drives the lane as if defenders were applesauce and plays with a tenacity that borders on arrogance, the one who lights up the scoreboard more than PG&E.
But you, dear basketball fan, don't know the first thing about Stephon Carter.
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You don't know Stephon Carter is clumsy.
So clumsy, in fact, that Kevin Bush, the father of the house where Carter lives, has nicknamed him "Schleprock" for the accident-prone Flintstones character who was followed everywhere by a black cloud.
"He'll fall down the stairs, run into the wall, drops everything, you name it," Bush said. "We were in Vegas once, and if you can believe it, he walked into a sign. He is very, very clumsy. You see all that grace on the basketball court, but Stephon has like five thumbs on each hand."
OK, that was good for a laugh. What else don't you know?
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You don't know how Stephon Carter grew up.
His parents, Steve Carter and Diane Atkins, raised him as best they could. But they were strapped financially — "We were on Section 8; we were on all the things you could possibly think of, but my parents were doing it to survive," Carter said — and he clung to basketball to avoid drowning in the temptations of gangs or drugs.
Steve and Diane ran into legal troubles, Stephon said, while was in middle school. He declined to elaborate on those troubles, but they were enough to force Carter to find a new home. He did, with Kenny and Marianne Harmer, whose son Stephen would go to Garces and play football and golf.
"I thank God for Kenny Harmer," Steve Carter said last week, minutes after another Garces basketball victory. "I appreciate those people big-time. My son, he had it rough coming up."
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You don't know what basketball means to Stephon Carter.
The Harmers helped, and so did the game. Carter clung to it, and he gripped harder during his sophomore year at Garces, when his parents divorced and split from Bakersfield, leaving him to choose Stockton with his mother, or Pasadena with his father, or to stay in Bakersfield with his best friend Ryan Bush's family.
He chose Bakersfield, the Bushes, Garces and basketball. Not that it was easy.
"The first year was really hard," Ana Bush said. "He really loves his parents, and he knew they were having a hard time. He felt uncomfortable. I told him we'd treat him like one of our own sons and that if he needed anything, he should just ask. He never asked for anything. But he helped out with the chores, no problem, and he ate whatever I cooked."
Carter eventually acclimated to life with the Bushes, and Ana Bush is pleased to hear him say he's going "home" when he means their house. But that wasn't the end of Carter's tribulations.
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You don't know Stephon Carter's pain.
The family member Carter was closest to from an early age was his brother, Steve Jr., 10 years Stephon's elder. Stephon's favorite thing to do as a young boy was watch Steve play, whether it be on the playground or at East High, where he was an All-Area player in the late 1990s.
"When he was in high school, I was 5 or 6," Stephon said. "But as I got older, like 14, we really got close, and we really connected."
Steve was Stephon's mentor, coach and trainer. The two would run bleachers together at Bakersfield College, play one-on-one at a playground court, then sit and talk about life and the decisions Steve made — many of them poor — and the ones he wanted Stephon to make.
"I always stayed pretty straight," Stephon said. "My brother, he was always on my case. He went left for a while, so whenever he thought I was going left, he'd get on me real tough. He did not want me to be like him, so bad."
Finally, going left caught up with Steve. Last June, Stephon received a 7 a.m. phone call with the jarring news from his dad: Steve had been killed outside a convenience store, stabbed after an argument escalated into a fight.
His brother — who had taught Stephon his on-court attitude, helped with his game and showed him so much away from basketball — was gone.
"It was the toughest thing I've ever dealt with," Stephon said. "Words can't describe the feeling. I still feel that pain every night."
Said his father: "I don't usually talk much about that stuff. But we cried together. We still cry together behind that."
Stephon said he's doing better in his day-to-day life, and it's not coincidence that basketball season has helped. He's also taken a strong interest in his nephews who lost their father. The Bushes are even helping him plan a trip to Knott's Berry Farm with the two boys.
But most of all, he's clinging to basketball again.
"There's no question; that's his deal right there," Garces coach Gino Lacava said. "Most kids find something, usually it's football or basketball or something in high school, to call their own. Stephon has probably immersed himself a little deeper than most kids."
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Now you know why Stephon Carter relishes basketball like he does.
Carter wound up at Garces, partly because of the time he spent with the Harmers and partly because the club team he played for, Gladiators, had several players becoming Rams. He didn't like it at first — "My freshman year, I hated it here," he said — but that changed when basketball season started and Carter's outgoing personality and basketball stardom drew in plenty of friends.
"He spent a lot of time in my office as a freshman," Lacava said. "He was maybe feeling a little uncomfortable, and he would find his way in here daily. But the kids around campus really gravitate toward him. He's got a really magnetic personality, and he probably knows every kid on campus."
Meanwhile, he's helped bring Garces two Central Section championships and won two CalifornianPlayer of the Year honors in the process
According to section historian Bob Barnett, Carter became the Central Section's second-leading career scorer last week with a 14-point effort against Liberty, passing former Fresno-Washington Union star and current NBA player DeShawn Stevenson. Carter has 2,490 career points entering tonight's Division II section 7 p.m. home quarterfinal against Porterville-Monache. The all-time leader is Washington Union's Tre-von Willis, who scored 2,843 from 2003-06.
"He's the best 6-(foot)-3 guy that I've ever had," Lacava said, "and I've been around the game for a while. "I'd be scared to death to coach against him. I wouldn't have an answer. Not many people do."
Carter's play combines dynamite driving ability — good luck keeping him from getting into the lane — with an attitude that borders on angry.
"My freshman and sophomore year, I got so many technicals from just immature stuff," Carter said. "But as I got older, I kind of toned down a little bit. I wouldn't say a lot, because I still look mean in my play, and I still look mad. But I'm not mad; I'm just focused."
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See? That's what you don't know, at least not if you haven't talked to Carter after a game or while he's hanging out with friends, spending time with his girlfriend or watching another game.
"He's calm; he's mellow," said Ryan Bush, Carter's best friend, teammate and housemate. "He's easy to get along with. But on the court, he gets into the game."
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You don't know how hard Stephon Carter works.
"He feels that basketball is his meal ticket," Ryan Bush said, "so the ball is basically everything for him."
That's why, apart from Garces practices, he'll take the ball into the backyard to shoot, or to the school to shoot, or to the gym to shoot. That's why Cal State Bakersfield coach Keith Brown said that when Carter signed to play with the Roadrunners, choosing CSUB over nationally known programs like Arizona State and Colorado State, it will have "an immediate and everlasting effect on the program."
"You probably couldn't find a kid at any school in this town that works harder than he does," Kevin Bush said. "He's really got some natural abilities and God-given talents, but he works very, very hard."
