Wizards long-shot Felix proves he’s one tough cat
Journeyman, who took unconventional route to NBA, finally gets second chance
When Carrick Felix stands in front of his audience as a motivational speaker, he begins by sharing the personal snapshots of his life. The teachers who said he’d never graduate high school and the bullies who persisted because how easy it was to pick on the then pipsqueak. The nights sleeping in his car while a student-athlete at Arizona State University and the night he almost lost basketball.
The last story goes like this: Felix was playing for the Santa Cruz Warriors, the minor-league affiliate of the NBA’s Golden State franchise. He had already been cast aside by two other teams, missed substantial time in his young career due to injury and it was about to get worse. Just before taking off for a dunk, Felix planted his foot and felt his left kneecap snap in two.
“I swear it was like a life-flashing moment,” Felix said.
The injury led him on a tour of self-discovery in which he reinvented himself as an app developer in Silicon Valley, as well as the Tony Robbins for college athletes. This week, though, Felix can once again call himself an NBA player.
On Sunday, Felix defied the odds as a non-guaranteed training camp invitee and made the Washington Wizards’ final 17-man roster, completing an improbable two-year comeback from his fractured left patella.
“I’m happy for him,” coach Scott Brooks said.
“He’s one of those players you want him to have success. He’s had some tough times early in his career and he fought back and he’s stayed positive and kept working. He’s earned this spot. He wasn’t given it. He earned it.”
After most Wizards practices, the 27-year-old Felix is the last player on the court. Even the mundane routine of free-throw shooting sparks the megawatt smile on his face. It wasn’t always this way — Felix once hated basketball.
An air force family, they bounced between states.
While his two older brothers found stability in basketball — with mom Beverly coaching — Felix was five-foot-five with skills that lagged behind his peers.
Instead, he loved skateboarding and would much rather jump over a box than practise his jump shooting.
“He was short for a long time, I didn’t think he was going to grow,” said Beverly, who from her sideline perch could hear the joking from the stands. “Parents even commented how short he was.”
The adults were nice compared to the kids at school. Besides being small, Felix looked different than most Arizona kids who liked skateboarding and said he was “bullied.” It also didn’t help that Felix was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder and was stigmatized for attending special-education classes. Beverly vividly remembers hearing the advice from counsellors to medicate her son and learning second-hand how teachers tried to steer him away from college.
“What they said he couldn’t do, he did,” Beverly said. “With Carrick, we wouldn’t let him fail no matter what.”
Before his sophomore year, Felix sprouted in height and with this growth spurt, his passion for basketball developed as well. After junior college, Felix earned a scholarship to play at Arizona State and during his fourth season, his life changed. Felix was going to be a father to a little girl.
“Do I leave (school) or stay to take care of her?” Felix asked himself.
He continued to play basketball, but gave every dime of his student-athlete stipend to support the mother of his child. Broke and virtually homeless, Felix spent parts of the season couch-surfing and living out of his car.
His unsettled life showed on the court. One night after a game, former ASU assistant coach Dedrique Taylor stopped Felix for a “come to Jesus meeting ” in the parking lot. Felix sprawled out on his car in tears, finally confessing the weight on his shoulders.
“He was probably ashamed and embarrassed and didn’t know who to turn to,” said Taylor, now the head coach for the Cal State Fullerton men’s basketball team. “He thought things were over and heading in the wrong direction. It was a bump in the road, but it didn’t need to define his future.”
In his final year of eligibility, Felix took Taylor’s advice on changing his daily habits to heart and made the Pac-12 all-defensive team and was named the conference’s scholar-athlete of the year while earning his master’s degree. Behind this work ethic, Felix was a 2013 second-round draft pick of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
“It was one of the best metamorphoses that I’ve been a part of and I’ve seen with my own eyes,” Taylor said.
On Sunday morning as Felix walked into the Wizards’ home locker-room, he began receiving congratulations from the guys he can now call teammates.
“No matter what your dreams are, you can make them come true,” Felix said. “I’ve been called stupid. My teachers said I would never graduate, I was in special ed.
“I’ve lived different types of lifestyles and been through God knows what. To be able to go through that and be able to teach it to others and help people overcome adversity and get to their goals, it just means a lot to me.”
No matter what your dreams are, you can make them come true. I’ve been called stupid ... I was in special ed.