Doyel: Terry Rozier listens to the voice in his head

There were guns in his house and a voice in his head. Terry Rozier didn't pick up the guns. He listened to the voice.

There were drugs in his neighborhood and friends who sold them. Terry Rozier didn't follow his friends. He followed the voice.

To this day he doesn't know whose voice he was hearing. Rozier, a guard from the University of Louisville, thought about it some more on Thursday after taking part in a Pacers workout with five other NBA draft prospects at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Standing with me away from the media scrum around Kentucky's Andrew Harrison, Rozier narrowed down the voice to one of two people.

Maybe, he decided, it's the voice of his mother, who worked two jobs to provide for Rozier and his little sister, who has cerebral palsy. Either that, or it's the voice of his father, who has been locked up in a Northeast Ohio prison for most of Rozier's life. Whoever it is, the voice has always been clear:

Make the right choice.

For Terry Rozier, the right choice was sports. He wanted to play in the NFL, not go to prison. Growing up in Youngstown, not only in the murder capital of Ohio but as Terry Rozier Sr.'s son, Terry Jr. knew about prison. So what he did was, he threw himself into football. Then what he did was, he got so good at basketball that he switched dreams. Kept the voice. Or rather, the voice kept with him.

"I've always heard it," he says. "I've always had that little voice in the back of my head, telling me to make the right decision."

For years the Rozier family was locked in a struggle with life, and the family was losing. Terry was a baby when his dad was jailed for seven years for aggravated robbery. His dad wasn't out long before being charged with murder and convicted of kidnapping — Rozier says his uncle was convicted of the killing — in 2003. Terry Rozier Sr. was (and still is) imprisoned at Trumbull Correctional Institution in Leavittsburg, Ohio, and has three years left to serve.

Along the way the family struggled to eat while listening to gunfire on little Terry's Youngstown street. One night, Terry says, the neighborhood was buzzing that the family of the man killed in 2003 was coming to the Rozier house for revenge. Terry remembers spending that night hiding in bed, the door barricaded. He remembers being moved out of his mom's home in Youngstown a few days later, and going to live with his grandmother in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights.

This is what fueled the 6-1 Terry Rozier to become a top-100 recruit at Shaker Heights High and Louisville's leading scorer this past season as a sophomore at 17.1 ppg and 3.0 assists a game. This is what fuels him now.

"When you step between those lines, that's the time to get it all out," Rozier was telling me Thursday. "This is the time, if you have any anger, you don't think about you — you just play. I want to be great at basketball. The biggest regret …"

Rozier stops. He reconsiders that word.

"I don't really have 'regret'," he says. "The biggest revenge from my childhood is winning. I want to win. Make me forget about whatever happened in my past."

At Louisville they love the young man, even as coach Rick Pitino was pushing him out the door. The season ended poorly, an Elite Eight loss to Michigan State that saw Rozier shoot 6-for-23 from the floor. After the game Rozier told reporters he needed time to choose between the NBA and his junior season at school.

Pitino didn't give him that option.

Rozier "is leaving," Pitino said the next day, "and it's the right thing."

Pitino is crazy about Rozier but believes he's ready for pro ball and knows his family needs him there. Rozier's mom still works those two jobs, including as a night-time security guard at a hospital. His grandma doesn't work. His dad's in jail. His sister is 13 and needs full-time care for her cerebral palsy. It's time for Rozier to make some money.

Where? That's the question. He's no sure thing to stick in the NBA, given his relative lack of size (6-1, 190), shooting (30.6 percent on 3-pointers this past season) and playmaking (just a 1.4 assist-turnover ratio). But Rozier has toughness and determination most guys don't, because most guys didn't have to overcome what he has. How many NBA players say they want to win to "make me forget about whatever happened in my past"?

This one says it, and means it. Rozier still hears that voice in his head, telling him to make the right decision, and along the way he picked up a movie to go with the soundtrack: "Through the Fire," the 2005 documentary on future NBA point guard Sebastian Telfair, who emerged from the Surfside Gardens housing projects in Coney Island. Rozier watches it repeatedly, most recently last month before a workout with the Miami Heat. Just to get his mind right. There are choices to be made every day.

"It's motivational for me," Rozier says. "His story, his background, his family, the type neighborhood he grew up in, to make the decisions to get out."

Everybody makes choices. Late in the second round, NBA teams needing a backup point guard will scan the names of college guards still available, guards with talent but flaws, and try to choose one with the mental makeup to succeed.

Choose wisely.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel