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Coming full circle: Rimmed out

• Albany star Dontonio Wingfield slowly fades from the spotlight.

Paul Dehner Jr.

ALBANY — The call came during a hazy summer afternoon in 1994.

Gloria Wingfield arose from bed and tried to shake off another day of sleep after yet another late-night shift of cooking at a local food plant.

On the other end of the telephone was her eldest son, Banastreus. He delivered a shocking revelation: His brother and her son, Dontonio, was declaring himself eligible for the NBA Draft.

“I said, ‘Oh no, he’s not,’” Gloria Wingfield recalled. “He said, ‘But, momma, it’s on the news.’”

All she could do was call Dontonio and beg her son to reconsider.

“I focused on him getting a degree from college, staying in school,” she said. “I told him he has got to finish school. But it was too late; he’d made up his mind.”

Dontonio Wingfield should have listened to his mother.

If nothing else, he should have listened to somebody. Or he should have discussed his decision to go pro with University of Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins. Wingfield should have disregarded the agents slipping million-dollar deceptions in his ear.

“I had an opportunity to stay in Cincinnati and be a leader,” says Wingfield, as his standard baritone peaks into regretful exclamations. “I was a leader by my ability on the floor, but college could have taught me how to be a leader off the floor.”

Instead, he journeyed into a world of wild spending and unabashed excess.

He entered that crazy world as a wide-eyed 19-year-old without a clue.

These days his decision would be considered commonplace. Eight freshmen were selected in the 2007 NBA Draft alone. There are programs, seminars and mentors specifically arranged to help young players.

Back in ’94, however, it was a league unprepared to assist a manchild in adjusting to its high- profile lifestyle.

“Honestly,” Huggins said, “I thought he needed another year. I thought one more year and he’d have been really ready. But I understood.”

Indeed, Huggins understood. He understood Wingfield’s lifelong wish to transform a single mother who raised three boys into a well-to-do retiree with frequent-flyer miles.

Dontonio and his two brothers, Banestreus and Sheldon, had seen their mother slog in from a night at work as they headed to school in the mornings. They sympathized as they watched her sleep on their way out to Henderson Gym in the afternoon.

Yet dinner was always on the table, and whenever the boys looked into the stands, they always saw her seated there for their basketball games.

“If I had half the strength she did, I would be all right,” Dontonio Wingfield said. “She was my motivation. It wasn’t easy for her. Just seeing my mother raise me, my brothers, just by herself; I was worried about my mother and my little brother. But I didn’t need it. I was in college. They were feeding me good.”

Yet he did need college. Not for basketball, but for life. And fickle NBA scouts knew it.

For the ’94 draft, Wingfield sprung for a block party for his friends here. He expected to be someone’s No. 1 pick.

“All you are thinking is the first round is guaranteed (money),” Wingfield said. “Second round, you don’t know if you are guaranteed.”

But the first round came and went, and Wingfield’s friends didn’t hear his name until the Seattle SuperSonics used their second-round pick — No. 37 overall — on him. His friends cheered the selection. He didn’t.

“I am in the room by myself crying,” he said.

The day became the first of many disappointments in the NBA.

Wingfield was about to join a team coached by George Karl, who led the SuperSonics to the best record in the NBA the previous season. Karl was bringing in a talented 260-pound sideline accessory to watch and learn.

On his first day in Seattle, Wingfield met Karl and shook his hand.

“Coach Karl said to me, ‘You will not play this year,’” Wingfield said.

This was funny, but no joke. Wingfield played 81 minutes in an 82-game season. He scored a total of 46 points and grabbed 30 rebounds.

“It was great,” he said. ”There was no pressure. I was on a great team.”

Not for long, though. Karl left Wingfield unprotected in the next year’s expansion draft. The Toronto Raptors selected him. But without a contract, he explored offers elsewhere.

He signed with the Portland Trail Blazers, but they could just as easily have been the ”Portland Power Forwards.” The team had Rasheed Wallace, Cliff Robinson, Gary Trent and Jermaine O’Neal all vying for playing time.

Wingfield averaged 11.1 minutes, 3.8 points and 2.4 rebounds a game that season. His numbers increased slightly the next year at 12.1 minutes, 4.5 points and 2.9 rebounds a game.

Essentially, this was the plan Wingfield mapped out for himself. But, again, he became his own worst enemy. He was 22, although in his head a career clock constantly ticking tortured him.

“I always felt confident in my ability,” he said. “The pros were the first time I got on the court and was actually really, really scared. Like scared, scared.”

Away from the crowds, in the calm of a quiet hotel room on the road, Wingfield listened to the deafening drumbeat of self- imposed pressure — pressure not to be a waste of talent; pressure to provide a walking, talking ode to others; pressure to deliver millions of dollars and financial freedom to a crowd of struggling family and friends.

”I never slept,” he said.

The pressure ate at him. He gave in to the pressure during his second season in Portland. Frustrated, he refused to enter a game during garbage time.

”I was always thinking about how I wasn’t satisfied,” he said. “I used to get this worried feeling filling me when I was playing ball — just worry for no reason.”

Three games into the 1997-98 season, the Blazers released Wingfield.

Analyzing his situation in Portland, Wingfield can acknowledge the pitfalls of the NBA life. Looking into the crystal clear rearview mirror of his life, he now sees a young kid melting under the white-hot glare of the NBA spotlight, trying to handle the demands without the social skills he needed to progress and survive.

“I didn’t have patience,” he said. ”You got all the tools, all the money to fail. That money can bring you happiness; it also can make you a failure. That’s what it did, because I was so busy trying to prove to everybody that I belonged in the NBA — that I should be playing, not that I was just there.”

Then, in mid-thought, Wingfield seemingly steps outside himself to give a lecture he now knows he needed to hear 11 years earlier.

“I wanted to play and I wanted people to see me playing,” he said. “That’s crazy. I should have been content with that. I wanted more. I had a nice house; I wanted a bigger house.”

None of it made sense, he said. Not being satisfied with making $600,000 a year, what is there to complain about?

“Wait your turn, you ain’t but 21, 22!” he said. “I didn’t think like that.”

Even with all his impatience and problems, he arrived in Albany during the lockout season of 1998 excited about a tryout lined up with the Washington Bullets. They were in desperate need of a power forward after trading Chris Webber.

Wingfield felt he was the man to replace Webber.

As he and friend Jennifer Maxie drove down rain-soaked Newton Road on Nov. 7, 1998, he was feeling confident that his big break was just ahead.

“I was just coming into my prime,” he said. ”I had to straighten up a lot of things that I needed to, but I wasn’t sad; I was on the up-and-up. I was ready.”

Little did Wingfield know on that rainy night, with one jerk of the steering wheel, that his life was about to take a turn which would kill his NBA career. It would nearlly kill him as well.

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