Cleveland Cavaliers grab Luol Deng

Luol Deng, shown here in 2007, is the Cavaliers newest small forward, and might be the answer they've been searching for that position for more than three years.

(AP Photo/Simon Dawson)

CLEVELAND, Ohio – A few years ago, Luol Deng went back to London to speak to children in his old youth basketball program. It's something he does often at each of the stops he's made in his basketball life, so Brixton Topcats coach and British basketball legend Jimmy Rogers didn't think much of it.

It was just another opportunity for Deng to share the tale of how he made it from now-South Sudan to a refugee in Egypt to political asylum in England and finally, to becoming an All-Star in the NBA.

Deng told a story Rogers knew: About the time when he was 11 and trying to make it to Rogers' basketball practice at a gym four miles from home.

One day, he showed up late. Deng was never late. Rogers asked what happened, and Deng confessed that he'd lost his bus pass. In Deng's family of nine children, there was no budget for extras and mistakes. Rogers offered to pay for a new bus pass, but Deng refused. He'd take care of it, he said.

What he didn't tell Rogers, what he didn't tell anyone, is that he decided the only way to make it to practice on time each day without taking charity from anyone or burdening his family was to run the entire four miles.

And what he revealed further in that speech in Brixton, years after he'd begun playing for the Chicago Bulls and established himself as a solid star-in-the-making, is that he also wore a 20-pound weighted vest for each run.

To help with conditioning. Just because.

"That's why he's in the NBA," Rogers said from London in a phone interview this week. "He just did it. That's why he's in the NBA. He hadn't even told me. That's the kind of guy he is."

Deng is the kind of guy who is universally recognized as a model citizen, an athlete with a heart, and a humanitarian for all the work he's done with refugees who are in places like he once was as a child in Egypt.

He's also the kind of player who fills the void at small forward that the Cavaliers have been desperate to alleviate for more than three years. He's a 28-year-old All-Star, a coveted two-way player who both defends and scores, who understands the game so well that opponents and teammates alike talk in awe of his ability to move without the ball.

He's achieved all that in a way that is altogether unfamiliar from the last small forward to have a secure hold on that position. When LeBron James was the top high school player in 2003, Deng was called the No. 2 high school senior in the country. 1-2. But that's where their stories began to diverge. James opted to go pro immediately. Deng went to Duke.

James was the No. 1 draft pick in 2003. Deng slipped to No. 7 in 2004. James has become the top player in the league, winning two NBA titles and four league MVPs. He has rarely been hurt. Deng has become a dependable "glue" guy, according to Chicago coach Tom Thibodeau, and has battled through a wrist injury and scary complications from a spinal tap last year that he says threatened his life.

And about the time Cleveland's heart was breaking as it watched its small forward desert the city, the future Cavalier was on a humanitarian mission in a refugee camp in Kenya. During "The Decision" in 2010, Deng was in a camp of 72,000 people living without electricity or water.

"A lot of what he does can't be quantified in statistics," said Joe Mantegna, Deng's high school coach at Blair Academy in Blairstown, N.J. "He's the least self-promotional person you'd ever meet, he's a guy who hasn't let fame and fortune and money change him."

Deng remains loyal to anyone and anything that has helped him. Born in what is now South Sudan, Deng was the eighth of nine children to Aldo and Martha. Aldo Deng served in the Sudanese parliament and became minister of transportation, but fled with his family to Egypt to escape Sudan's civil war when Luol was 5.

They spent five years in a refugee camp in Egypt before Aldo was granted political asylum in England in 1993. While in Egypt, Deng's older brother met fellow Sudanese Manute Bol, and the course of the family's lives changed. Bol, the 7-foot-7 former NBA player who was a fellow Dinka tribe member, introduced basketball to the Dengs, and Luol quickly embraced the sport.

In England, Deng began playing for Rogers' Brixton Topcats, and although the coach admits he didn't see the talent in the gangly immigrant immediately, he saw something else.

"What struck me was his commitment," Rogers said. "He was just quiet and got on with it. He's such a nice guy. He really is a nice guy. I remember when he first went in the NBA, all the guys asked, 'How come you don't have any bling-bling?' He said, 'I just don't like it.'"

He's not flashy. He prefers solid cuts over spectacular dunks, dependable passes over long-distance buckets. He always has, ever since his high school days when he attended Blair Academy. Deng and his older sister came to the school when he was 14, following in the footsteps of his older brother, Ajou, who played basketball at Connecticut.

Mantegna saw a raw talent, too, but wasn't prepared for the work ethic that helped Deng develop quickly into one of the top players in the country by the time he graduated.

"I would say 75 percent of the people in the league have more natural ability than he does," Mantegna said. "I don't think he'd mind me saying that. But he so far surpasses most of these guys in work ethic. He'll outwork everyone. His work ethic is incredible."

Pair that work ethic with Deng's locker-room presence, and the Cavaliers just might have found the small forward for which they've been searching for years.

Example A: Chris Collins recruited Deng to attend Duke only after he stumbled across a long-limbed high school junior playing at an AAU tournament. Collins scheduled a recruiting visit with Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski later that year, but Krzyzewski had to back out at the last minute when he had hip-replacement surgery.

Collins still went, and just before he returned to Durham, N.C., Deng handed him a sealed envelope and told him to give it to Coach K.

"He'd gone out and gotten him a get well soon card," said Collins, now the head coach at Northwestern. "It showed what kind of kid he is and, now, what kind of man he is."

Example B: When Deng's Duke team was in the NCAA tournament in 2004, an upstart Xavier team was threatening the Blue Devils' advancement to the Final Four. Down by two to the Musketeers at halftime, Deng stood up to deliver an impassioned speech to his teammates.

"He actually started tearing up," Collins said. "He said, 'We have a chance to go to the Final Four, we need to lay it all on the floor.' It literally moved him to tears. We went out in the second half and he led the charge and we won a hard-fought game."

Cleveland Cavaliers grab Luol Deng 8 Gallery: Cleveland Cavaliers grab Luol Deng

The stories of Deng's selflessness are endless. Mantegna talks about the time his high school squad knocked off the No. 1 national team, and Deng whispered to his head coach that someone else on Blair Academy's team should win MVP because he'd already accumulated several of those awards in his career.

"That was an incredible moment of maturity and presence," Mantegna said. "You think, 'Wow. This kid is just 17 years old, and I didn't even think of that.'"

And then there's the work he's done off the basketball court, striving to help refugees from his native South Sudan, and helping his country achieve independence in 2011. While in Chicago, he paid for two charter buses to bring hundreds of Sudanese from Michigan to vote absentee on the referendum for South Sudan to separate. The country's 22-year civil war ended in 2005.

Deng's philanthropy has resulted in the 2008 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Humanitarian of the Year Award. His fame in Britain means that in 2011, when Brixton issued "complementary currency," a set of notes featuring celebrities with ties to the area, Deng was on the 5-pound note. David Bowie was on the 10-pound bill.

"I have an opportunity to affect people with my sports career," Deng told the Chicago Tribune in 2009. "I'm not a billionaire. I can't fix everything. But I have an opportunity to do something and I want to use that as much as I can."

Which makes his unwillingness to accept extension offers from the Chicago Bulls during this season more understandable. Deng reportedly turned down a three-year, $30 million offer before the Bulls traded him to Cleveland.

"You've got to also know where Luol came from and his family background," Chris Collins said. "If you saw where his family came from and what his father had to go through to provide for his family ... Luol knows this is going to be his last big contract. Is it going to be completely about his contract? He doesn't want to break the bank. All he wants is to be treated fairly."

And so the audition begins, now. Deng is looking for a team that wants him at small forward, and the Cavaliers are hoping that he might be the answer to fill the void that has handicapped the team for more than three years.

Whatever happens, those who know Deng say that the remainder of this season will be played in typical Deng style – with effort and devotion to his new home.

"He's going to look at this Cleveland situation and he's going to throw himself in emotionally," Collins said. "He's going to throw himself into it emotionally and he's going to compete to see what they can do. .... He's a team guy, he's a great friend, he's a great teammate. He's a class act. He's everything that's right about professional sports because he does his job, he's a class guy. He's someone every team should want on their team."