Eric Prisbell, USA TODAY Sports

Oklahoma State freshman point guard is a potential NBA lottery pick

Family tragedy sent him into a period of simmering rage and troublemaking as a youth

College coaches praise Smart for his unselfish style of play and decisionmaking

FLOWER MOUND, Texas -- Six years before Oklahoma State point guard Marcus Smart became one of the nation's most respected college basketball players, he threw rocks at people's heads.

How he blossomed into one of the sport's most humble stars, an unassuming 18-year-old potential NBA lottery pick, was through a journey defined by deep personal loss and self-discovery.

Rage burned inside him after seeing cancer overtake one older brother and cocaine nearly destroy another. Anger boiled while confronting a neighborhood south of Dallas he called a war zone amid duplexes. He desperately sought to inflict others with the pain that incessantly gnawed at his 12-year-old heart.

One night near his home in Lancaster began like so many others, with Marcus and a friend stuffing their pants pockets with rocks and positioning themselves on the second floor of the apartment complex they called The Pinks, looking for a target with a pulse. Little did Marcus know this would be such a pivotal night in his life.

Spotting a man on a bike in a black hooded sweatshirt, they unleashed rocks and celebrated with high-fives and laughs after – Bam! – the pelting knocked the man to the ground. But when Marcus looked again, all he saw was the bike. And all he heard was the thumping of a man racing up the stairwell and a frenzied voice promising to kill him.

Marcus and his friend leaped over the second-story railing, landing hard on the concrete below. The man quickly followed. Fueled by adrenaline and fear, Marcus sprinted faster than he ever had on the football field or basketball court, zigzagging through alleyways to an adjacent complex, The Meadows.

Behind Marcus, the footsteps and menacing voice grew louder. Marcus did not know that the man was a member of the Bloods street gang. And until he glanced back in the dimly lit roads, he did not know what object the man held in his hand: a loaded gun.

Marcus knew he no longer was the generous kid who as a 4-year-old gave a homeless man his coveted $20 bill, no longer the innocent child who pedaled his bike in cowboy boots to McDonald's for free burgers. He knew he had devolved into something else, a lost soul perhaps with just seconds left to breathe. His heart pounding and soaked in sweat, he breathed so uncontrollably he felt like his lungs were locked in a vise.

The man closed to within 15 yards. Marcus heard the ear-splitting sound of four gunshots.

"Ever see 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'?" Marcus says now. "Just imagine him that close to you with a chainsaw, that's how close he felt. All I kept thinking was, Am I going to die? Is this how I die? What is he going to do if he catches me but doesn't shoot me?"

***

When fans see Marcus play college basketball now, racing up and down the court with an intensity few can rival, there is little evidence of that anger. Some players in the sport are more talented than Marcus, but few possess such a unique skill set, and even fewer are as reluctant to boast about it. To Marcus, his statistics are an afterthought; his teammates' statistics matter more. He deflects attention in an age when most crave it.

"It's his character," says Marcus' best friend and roommate Phil Forte, a friend of Marcus since they were in third grade. "He plays with a chip on his shoulder, not like a prima donna."

Fran Fraschilla, the ESPN analyst and Dallas resident who has watched Marcus play since the ninth grade, says, "It is very rare you see a young player with the countenance and knowledge of a 10-year NBA player … If you're going into an alley fight, and you have the Incredible Hulk on your side, you feel pretty good. That's what you have with him."

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim says that by season's end there may not be a more valuable player in the country. And Oklahoma State coach Travis Ford can recount myriad stories that he finds so unusual, so refreshing in this look-at-me-generation in which many players seek to compile highlight reels.

"For a McDonald's All-American, his approach to the game is like no one I have ever been around," Ford says. "If you are around him for five minutes, you'd never guess that he is one of the best players in America."

Few know how Marcus became the way he is today. Says Marcus, "People always ask me, 'How are you so humble?' When you go through things like I have, there's only one way for you to be. Life is not a game. This is a cold world out there – the world is very cold – and if you don't learn things and understand things, this world can eat you up."

Few know how his childhood fueled his competitiveness and shaped his self-effacing persona. Marcus says he shared his story with USA TODAY Sports, including many details that he never told close family members, so that other troubled children who have endured the loss of loved ones and hardscrabble environments have a template for success.

"I think about it every day, it's incredible," Marcus says. "Thank God I had both parents and older brothers. My mom and brothers are my heroes … If I didn't change what I was doing, I would be dead or in jail."

Marcus was bred in a close-knit family that rarely sulked despite tragedy. There was his mom, Camellia Smart, 58, who goes to dialysis three times a week and who has lived with one kidney since, she says, "a kidney stone ate up the other one" two decades ago. There's her husband of 38 years, Billy Frank Smart, the 66-year-old biological father of Marcus and Michael Smart. And there's Todd and Jeff Westbrook, who were born to a different father decades before Michael and Marcus were born.

Camellia, whom the brothers deemed Wonder Woman for her fortitude and work ethic, was the family's heart. Todd, a second father figure to Michael and Marcus, was its backbone.

Marcus knew that if anyone was destined to play in the NBA, it was Todd, who shot 62 percent from the field one season as a guard for Lancaster High. By the time Marcus would dribble a basketball all over the home in his boots, he had already heard all the stories from the 1980s that made him idolize Todd.

Marcus knew that when doctors found a tumor behind Todd's eye at 15 years old, his mom felt like "someone took a knife and split my chest in two." But he knew Todd barely flinched, telling the doctor, "Okay, what do we do next?"

Though the cancer spread to his lungs, then his stomach, Todd always found enough resolve to mentor his brothers. He showed them how to shave, shake a man's hand and sell themselves in job interviews. He explained to Michael how to wear a condom. Even as he turned gaunt and too weak to walk to the bathroom without resting, he often called Michael and Marcus into his bedroom to watch the Discovery or History channels.

"That is what I always admire about him," Marcus says, "that tenacity and that ambition to keep living even though you know you don't have much time."

As a 9-year-old, nothing meant more to Marcus than family. When Camellia saw he was wearing sneakers with holes in the bottom to school, Marcus shrugged. When a relative offered to buy him Nikes, he pointed to other $19 sneakers instead. And in December 2003, when Camellia asked him what he wanted for Christmas, Marcus said one word: "Nothing."

"Seriously, baby, what do you want?" Camellia repeated.

"Momma, I don't want anything," Marcus answered. "I ask God to bless me and my family to be together for Christmas."

Together with his family for the holidays, Marcus received that gift. But on Jan. 9, 2004, Marcus' aunt called him and his cousin inside from playing, asked them to sit down and tearfully delivered the news everyone feared: Todd was dying. The family was at the hospital. Marcus stared at her, gazing at her face, thinking he was dreaming.

Then he sprung up and bolted out the door, slamming it so hard the glass shattered. His cousin chased him down, wrestling him to the ground while Marcus screamed. At the hospital, Marcus ran down a long hallway until he spotted the rest of his family, all bawling.

Todd, at 33 years old and after an 18-year battle with cancer, had died.

In Todd's hospital room, among crying relatives still trying to speak to Todd, Marcus walked to the foot of the bed, slowly knelt and touched Todd's foot. "It was cold as ice," he remembers. "I have never felt something so cold and so hard in the human body before."

Camellia, tears rushing down her face, picked Marcus up and told him everything would be okay. Still in disbelief, Marcus walked to the other side of the bed thinking Todd was merely sleeping. Marcus shook him and yelled, "Todd, wake up!"

Marcus walked to the edge of the bed and placed a gentle kiss on Todd's lips. Marcus then put his hands in the air, saying, "Todd is just like a butterfly. He flew away."

***

Losing Todd was a blow the family struggled to endure. In their home in DeSoto, Marcus and Michael, sometimes at the same time, could not help but crawl into Todd's bed at night, putting themselves to sleep to that familiar sound of the Discovery Channel. It was the same room where they would always put a hanger above the door in the shape of a basketball hoop and would join Todd in shooting balled up socks until Todd grew fatigued.

Now without Todd, the brothers found a catharsis in surrounding themselves with Todd's memory, his images and sounds.

But Marcus also had other images seared into his mind: his 19-year-old brother Michael, who had been a talented point guard at Lancaster High, spiraling into a world of gangs, drugs and guns. Michael became affiliated with the Bloods street gang and acted as if he had a death wish.

Michael saw friends accumulate up to $8,000 a week working the streets, driving Mercedes Benzes and '86 Chevys. They were decked out in gold and diamonds and had oversized flat-screen televisions before much of suburban American owned one.

Marcus watched Michael springboard in that life and nearly drown. Michael says he made $2,500 per week, selling crack and other drugs and pimping out women. To protect himself, he says he had at least five firearms: "A .40 and .45 caliber, a TEC-9, an AK-47 and a 12-gauge shotgun."

After they moved to Lancaster, Marcus at times would run to the corner of the 1500 block of Bluegrove Road and make futile attempts to get Michael to come back home. Undeterred, Marcus would wait up until the wee hours of the morning to make sure Michael – though at times frazzled from drugs – returned home safe.

Marcus, just 10 years old, would sit close to Michael in the near darkness of their home and tell him, "Momma does not need a call at 2 a.m. telling her they found you in jail or six feet under. She already lost one son."

Marcus would raise his little hand and wipe away tears from Michael's face.

"Stay out of trouble," Marcus told him. "I promise, I got you, brother."

Looking back eight years later, Marcus says, "We had plenty of nights like that. I was growing up around it. I was seeing it. I was seeing his pain. I didn't like what he was doing, but he was still my brother and I loved him. You see that stuff on the news and play the [video] games, and it's like a video game. When you see it in front of you, it's terrifying."

Less than a year after Todd's death, Marcus was at an AAU tournament when Camellia relayed him a message that Michael was in the hospital. During a one-month binge of cocaine abuse, Michael snorted so much on one occasion that he toppled over in the home and hurt his eye. Gary Westbrook, his uncle who was rendered a paraplegic after being shot in the spine in a carjacking, came off his wheelchair to pound his chest to try to revive him before calling 911.

And soon after, Marcus again was in a long hospital hallway, bracing himself for another ice cold foot to grasp, thinking all the while that he could lose a second brother in the span of a year. Upon entering the room, his emotions swirled as he saw tubes coming out of Michael.

Marcus gripped his hand.

"I do remember the look in Marcus' eyes," Michael says. "And it was scary."

Says Marcus, "He should have been dead, that's how much was in his system."

Michael remembers the doctor telling him, "I'm here to save lives. If you want to do this to yourself, don't come here. Just kill yourself."

***

Michael recovered and went to the altar in church that Sunday. Though he was not done with street life, he says he never sniffed cocaine again. He vowed to keep Marcus away from that lifestyle. And he told gang members to leave Marcus alone or face Michael's wrath of bullets.

"You go down a different path," Michael told Marcus. "It's called a straight arrow. People want to call you a punk or different? You be different. I promise you, six years later when you look back, see who is different and who made a difference."

But problems were beginning to fester for Marcus, whose rage simmered. As a young child, he hardly made a misstep, except when he says he foolishly smoked marijuana the only time in his life, when he was no older than 8. He says it made him so sick that he had to embarrassingly tell his mom, who took him to the emergency room. Camellia says Marcus only told her he was sick, not that he smoked pot.

But after losing Todd and nearly losing Michael, while surrounded by classmates flashing gang signs and guns on street corners, Marcus says, "I just felt really lost. I definitely changed."

He and friends would steal candy, food and soda from stores. He uncorked much of his anger on the football field, but his greatest emotional release came from fighting. He called himself a bully, preying on the weak and strong.

"It feels like if you have a broken arm and you just want to scream," Marcus says of his anger. "The worst pain you can ever think of, that's exactly how angry I felt. That's how bad the anger was and exactly how bad I wanted to release it. Got to release it. It's like a boiling pot. I didn't know how to express it beyond fighting."

He would get in three fights per week. He looked for any weapons he could find. He would throw knives and branches at people. He recalls nearly breaking a kid's neck. He says he felt like he could have killed someone.

On one occasion, he and a friend were jumped and outnumbered by guys. Marcus pulled out a pocketknife. They pulled out a pellet gun. Marcus went home and got his dad's .22 caliber pistol. Michael stopped him at the door before Marcus had the chance to hunt down the kids.

The fights escalated. He slammed another kid's head into the concrete. At one point, the principal called him into his office and told him he was to go to alternative school for 30 days.

"It was like jail," Marcus says. "Good behavior and you can get out early."

The night that remains most crystallized in Marcus' mind is when he was running for his life from the man in the black hooded sweatshirt. He and his friend raced to a trail in the woods they knew well.

They made quick turns and knew a low-hanging branch required them to duck. The man did not duck, and they heard him get knocked to the ground. Once home that night, Marcus never closed his eyes.

"My life was almost taken," Marcus says. "I was terrified. I didn't know what to do. From some stupid decision I decided to make, one stupid decision that I felt was good, that I felt was fun, it could have easily taken my life. That's a lesson learned.

"I really don't tell people that story because what would you say? What would you do if you were in that situation? It's just not a pretty sight to try to imagine running, literally running for your life."

Marcus never told Michael that the man – an acquaintance of Michael -- shot at him, only that the man tried to beat him up. Marcus knew that if he had told Michael all the details, Michael might have killed the man.

"You see how he thinks?" Michael says. "If I just keep this to myself, my brother won't get in trouble and I just won't do it anymore. I would have gone out and somebody might have gotten killed. He came home safe. And I'm still here."

And he never told his mother, but at the time she knew he needed help, an escape from that environment.

"I knew I had to do something," she says. "You know how you know something is wrong, you can feel it. I've always told my boys, there's nothing too hard to come and talk to me about."

One day she sat Marcus down and talked. He told her about the fights. "He was just tired almost of living. I said, 'Baby, why haven't you told me this before?' " Camellia asked. " 'Momma, I didn't want to worry you.' "

"I didn't let the gangs rob my other boys, and I was not going to let them rob Marcus," she says. "He was so depressed. You're battling out there. Peer pressure is a mother. 'Should I do this, do that? If I don't do this, I'm a coward.' He was too young to live through that."

Marcus took anger management classes, which he says helped a great deal. And the family moved into a three-bedroom ranch house in Flower Mound, a suburb west of Dallas. Camellia relied on advice from the family of Phil Forte, Marcus' best friend who lived in Flower Mound, to select a school.

Moving was a culture shock. Marcus would see people walking around outside at night and instinctively flinch. Friends would have to tell him that it was just a man walking his dog. Marcus now could sit on the family's back porch without hearing gunshots or fighting. The effect on Marcus was unmistakable.

"He was like reborn," Camellia says. "How would you put it? Like he stepped out of the darkness to the light. That is how remarkable the change was."

Marcus channeled his aggression in football and then in his primary sport, basketball. Teachers told Camellia how impressed they were that Marcus lacked a sense of entitlement that some other athletes possessed. When Marcus won trophies or awards, he would quickly put them aside and turn to YouTube to study intricate skills like Kobe Bryant's footwork. And when the recruiting letters came, he didn't dwell on them, instead hitting the gym with Michael.

***

Sitting in an Applebee's last week, Michael's eyes welled up as he reflected on Marcus, a younger brother he says he looks up to as if he were an older brother. Michael says Marcus regularly encourages him to keep his life above board and tells him how proud he is that Michael, who is now 27 and works at a warehouse, gave up selling drugs a few years ago.

"God had me on this Earth for a reason," Michael says. "And I think that might be the reason – my brother. He is doing something my mom wanted for all of us, to be successful. He is making us believe. You look at Marcus. Everything is complete. He has it all.

"When (Mom) looks at Marcus, it just brightens up her day. Todd is gone, but he's living in Marcus. It's crazy, man. You have met Todd because you met Marcus. Marcus seems like a big brother."

Back in Camellia's suburban home, which is filled with Marcus' trophies, signed basketballs and Adidas shoes from the McDonald's All-American game, she walked to the fireplace and picked up a team picture of Todd from Lancaster's 1987-1988 season. Todd returned that senior season despite playing with little more than one eye and helped Lancaster to a No. 2 ranking in the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches' Class 4A poll.

In the picture, Todd wore No. 3, the same number each brother wore in high school. Each brother has a tattoo in memory of Todd. Marcus was also interested in wearing the No. 3 at Oklahoma State, but was told it was unavailable because Dan Lawson, who died in the Oklahoma State plane crash of 2001, had worn it. Marcus instead chose 33 because that was Todd's age when he died.

In Saturday's game against Texas Tech, Marcus scored only three points but didn't care. The team won. Marcus reflects on his life every day, appreciative of how far he has come and determined to always play hard and unselfishly. He is intent not to let his brother's name go in vain.

He says he has firm control now over his emotions, and his coach, Travis Ford, calls him one of the most genuine players he has been around.

"I don't want to be that person they look at and say, 'He's an A-hole, he's mean,'" Marcus says. "I want them to look at Marcus Smart and say he's the nicest guy I have ever met. I want to hear good things. I don't want to hear any negative things about me. It makes me look bad. It makes me feel bad. It makes my family look bad. I'm a reflection of my mom, my brothers and everyone in my family. How I carry myself is a reflection of how they raised me. I've learned that."