On the day his mother died from complications of lupus almost a decade ago, Dwayne Davis remembers coming home from school to find the living room full of the same flowers and balloons that once surrounded her hospital bed.

At first, Davis was elated because he assumed doctors had finally allowed Lawanda Smallwood to return home. Only after a tearful conversation with his step-dad did the 13-year-old discover the tragic truth.

"I was devastated," Davis said. "She had been to the hospital a few times before that, but she had always come home after a couple days. This was pretty sudden. We didn't see it coming. It was the worst news I ever heard in my life."

Since his father wasn't involved in his life and his step-father lacked the income to offer much support, Davis had to assume much of the responsibility for raising his baby brother and 8-year-old sister after his mother's death. He confronted obstacles no boy so young should have to overcome, from sleeping in homeless shelters or his mom's old van, to driving his sister to school long before he was old enough to have a license, to selling stolen PlayStation 3s out of the trunk of the car in order to scrape together money for food.

That Davis emerged from such poverty to arrive where he is today is so implausible even he still wonders how he managed to do it. The 6-foot-5 shooting guard escaped his hardscrabble Philadelphia neighborhood, became the first person in his family to earn a college degree and played so well in his lone season of Division I hoops at Southern Miss that he has caught the interest of NBA teams.

Only invited to the Portsmouth Invitational last month after Southern Miss coach Donnie Tyndall made a late plea on his behalf, Davis quickly proved he belonged, averaging 21.7 points per game and earning first-team all-tournament honors. A lack of elite athleticism has hindered his draft stock, but Davis has performed well enough in workouts with a half dozen NBA teams to merit consideration as a potential second-round pick.

"I think he will hear his name called in the mid-to-late second round,"said Keith Kreiter, Davis' agent at Edge Sports International. "How confident am I? The draft is very tough and it's difficult to say, but I think he brings a lot to the table. You know he's going to work hard every day, you know he's going to be a great teammate, you know he's going to score the ball and you know he's going to play hard at both ends."

Crisscrossing the country to visit with NBA coaches and executives the past few weeks is pretty surreal for someone who grew up as humbly as Davis.

Even before his mom's death, Davis lacked a stable home or male role model. His mom bounced between several men and sometimes struggled to support her kids, so the family often resorted to spending long, shivery nights in shelters or to crashing with friends or relatives.

Basketball quickly became a release for Davis. He honed his silky shooting stroke on the snow-covered Philadelphia playgrounds, earning the nickname "Rifleman" from his friends for his soft touch from well behind the arc.

It became much tougher for Davis to prioritize either school or basketball in junior high once his mom died. He had much bigger concerns at that time, like figuring out where he and his siblings could sleep for the night or find their next meal.

Too proud to ask for help from family members who were barely subsisting financially themselves, Davis and his siblings alternated between sleeping in Philadelphia homeless shelters and the back of the family's van the next few months. He and his sister sometimes went a day or two between meals, but Davis earned pocket change by getting a part-time job at a local toy store and by purchasing stolen PlayStation 3s from a neighborhood thief and selling them for a discount rate out of the trunk of the van.

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