The Post Sports Live crew debates whether the Wizards could claim the Eastern Conference title after an impressive start to the season and big wins over the Cavaliers and Bucks (Post Sports Live/The Washington Post)

The Post Sports Live crew debates whether the Wizards could claim the Eastern Conference title after an impressive start to the season and big wins over the Cavaliers and Bucks (Post Sports Live/The Washington Post)

Ben Furnace cannot take credit for what is likely the greatest draft-day steal in Inglewood YMCA youth basketball history.

NBA executives never had it so tough: The June 1989 draft for the team he would coach that season was effectively blind. Players tried out for a short period before it convened and the sheer number of children to choose from rendered the process a crapshoot. And with his twin sons and a family friend already earmarked for the team, Furnace didn’t have a pick until the fourth round.

So Furnace leaned on the advice of a teenager known as Tiny.

“He came over and started killing me with the pick,” Furnace said from his home in Round Rock, Tex. “He kept saying, ‘Pick Paul.’ So I picked Paul.”

“Paul” was 11-year-old Paul Pierce , who had recently moved with his mother, Lorraine, from Oakland to the city in Los Angeles County. The family friend already on the roster — a former student in the kindergarten class taught by Furnace’s wife, Teri — was 13-year-old Andre Miller .

Pierce and Miller would win back-to-back league championships, leading what Furnace called his most talented team in 25 years coaching in the league. Twenty-five years later, they are teammates at the tail end of illustrious NBA careers supplying wisdom and playing key roles for the Washington Wizards.

“It was fun. It was a fun experience,” said Miller, 38. “It was the Laker era. Everybody wanted to be like the Lakers, just like run-and-gun and have fun when you’re kids.”

The Showtime Lakers featuring Magic Johnson dominated the Los Angeles sports scene in the 1980s and invigorated a hotbed of young talent in Inglewood, which was then home to the Lakers’ arena, the Forum. The best local players would congregate for pickup games on neighborhood blacktops, the Rogers Park recreation center and the YMCA. In addition to Pierce and Miller, Baron Davis, Milt Palacios, Eugene “Pooh” Jeter, Jason Hart and Lisa Leslie were among the future professional basketball players who honed their craft in the neighborhood.

The Inglewood YMCA and its programs provided valuable guidance to inner-city youths. It grew into the biggest of the 31 YMCA branches in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, according to former youth sports director Michael Solomon, with volunteers refereeing and coaching approximately 500 children ages 5 through 17 per year.

“It was a landmark for basketball in the area,” said Solomon, now the junior varsity coach at Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy in Los Angeles after working at the Inglewood YMCA for 31 years. “It was important for a lot of the kids. It was like a safe haven. Our location was a way out.”

Furnace began coaching Miller in the YMCA’s developmental league, where players learned the sport and improved motor skills through various drills. Miller was, as Furnace put it, “thick in the hips” and layered with baby fat until high school.

“It was almost like a bowling ball when he went up for a rebound,” Furnace said with a chuckle. “Everybody went flying.”

Andre Miller, 11 (third from left, second row), with his youth league basketball team. He would be joined two years later by Paul Pierce, who is now his teammate on the Washington Wizards. (Courtesy of Ben Furnace)

But Miller wasn’t hindered by his bulk. Pierce remembers Miller as a superior talent. Miller possessed a natural feel for the game and unmatched intelligence, the foundation for a 16-year NBA career.

“He was just smarter,” recalled Pierce, who is 37 and in his 17th NBA season. “He was just high-end, smarter. He was just better than everybody else. He had that high-end basketball IQ. At the point, he was the best junior high player I’d seen.”

Pierce’s development was not as swift. He arrived at Inglewood High School undersize and overlooked, honing his methodical game. He began his sophomore year a stocky 5 feet 8 and on the junior varsity team but was promoted to the varsity squad during the season. He soon sprouted into a 6-7 scoring dynamo.

“By that time, he was on a whole other level,” Miller said. “He was probably the best player in California.”

Miller caught a firsthand glimpse of Pierce’s ascension during his senior season. Miller’s high school, Verbum Dei, was a small, all-boys Catholic institution and overwhelmed by Pierce’s Inglewood powerhouse in a holiday tournament meeting.

“We had to give him that spanking,” Pierce said, laughing.

While Pierce was establishing himself as one of the top high school recruits in the country, eventually earning McDonald’s all-American honors and attending perennial power Kansas, Miller wasn’t recruited heavily and landed at Utah after sitting out a year for academic reasons. But he contributed immediately, leading the Utes to the national championship game his junior year and earning consensus first-team all-American honors as a senior.

The Boston Celtics selected Pierce 10th overall in the 1998 draft; Miller went to the Cleveland Cavaliers at No. 7 the following June. They kept tabs on each other from a distance, Miller establishing himself as one of the sport’s premier pass-first point guards and Pierce as one of its best scorers.

Never dependent on athleticism, the two have aged gracefully into their late 30s similarly — with skill and savvy. Miller is the oldest player on an NBA roster; Pierce is the 10th oldest. And 25 years after crushing preteen competition to kindle their basketball careers, they are on the same roster again, contributing for an upstart team as resident savants as they approach retirement.

“A lot of us thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if one day they got to play with each other?’ ” Furnace said. “It brings back a lot of memories. It’s really rewarding.”