‘What a journey’ for Middleton
Middling at A&M, wing blossomed into NBA All-Star
COLLEGE STATION — Elston Turner Jr. once owned a frontrow perch to Khris Middleton’s fanatical competitiveness — when the two competed in PlayStation video games in their Z Islander apartment in Bryan a decade ago.
“We had some heated soccer matches,” Turner said of the routine on-screen collisions with his college roommate. “Khris, he was really just super competitive in everything he did, on and off the court.”
Middleton, Texas A&M’s most inconspicuous professional sports star in memory, is now hoping to lead the Milwaukee Bucks to a Game 3 victory in the NBA Finals against the Phoenix Suns on Sunday night in Milwaukee. The Suns won the first two games in Phoenix.
“They took care of their home court — we have to find a way to do the same,” Middleton said. “We’ve been in this hole before. It’s not going to be easy, but we’ve got to find a way to do it.”
The Bucks can take heart in already rallying from an 0-2 deficit in the second round of the playoffs against the Brooklyn Nets. They also can take heart that one of their leaders has spent his career overcoming the odds — and the plentiful doubters as an unheralded second-round pick by the Detroit Pistons out of A&M in 2012.
“We knew what Khris could do, but the country didn’t get to see how talented a player he was because of the injuries he had his junior year,” said Turner, who starred at A&M a decade ago and is the son of former Rockets assistant Elston Turner Sr. “I saw firsthand how special of a player he was in college, and I saw his potential.
“The fact that he’s gone beyond what people thought he could do — words can’t describe how happy I am for him.”
Middleton, 29, pledged to then-A&M coach Mark Turgeon and top assistant Scott Spinelli out of Charleston, S.C. in the summer of 2008, choosing the Aggies over Tennessee, South Carolina, Michigan and Oklahoma. He wasn’t even a national top-100 recruit in the class of 2009 (checking in at 102nd on 247Sports.com).
Early in Middleton’s A&M career, Turgeon said of his low-key wing: “He’s going to be a great one for us.”
Turgeon was partly right — Middleton was mostly middling in college, but he’s been great in the NBA. Middleton has scored at least 32 points in four postseason games this season alone, and he has scored a combined 40 points in the two Finals contests to date.
Middleton in 87 college games never scored 32 points in a single contest. But a harbinger of his future NBA success came when he scored 31 points as a sophomore in an overtime victory over Arkansas at American Airlines Center in Dallas, home of the NBA’s Mavericks.
“What a journey it’s been,” Spinelli posted to social media last year about his (now) most-heralded recruit. “… Under the radar, never ranked, you just kept getting better!”
Middleton, a 6-foot-7 forward, is a two-time NBA All-Star (2019, 2020), all while never making first-team all-conference at A&M. When Middleton in March 2012 mulled bypassing his senior season to turn pro, an Oklahomabased newspaper columnist wondered via social media, “At what, darts?”
Like Turner Jr., then-A&M basketball operations director Peter Warden was an up-close witness to Middleton’s potential in college, and his late bloom as a standout basketball player.
“Khris consistently worked at his game, and was certainly skilled and talented,” Warden said. “But his junior year at A&M, he didn’t play nearly as much as he hoped because of injuries, and no one saw his full potential in college because of that.
“But when Khris came back to A&M about a year or two later one summer to hoop with the guys, you could suddenly see this massive growth in his game, especially in the way he handled the ball and moved with the ball.”
Asked if a decade ago he foresaw Middleton’s success at basketball’s top level, Warden laughed.
“If I had seen this coming, I would have been a scout,” Warden responded. “You just have to give Khris credit for elevating his game.”
Considering A&M is a football school, Middleton in some ways at the university is best known for bringing two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo to a game against Alabama in October 2019 at Kyle Field.
It didn’t help Middleton’s A&M basketball fame that Turgeon bolted for Maryland after Middleton’s sophomore season, and the Aggies finished his junior year 1418 overall and 4-14 in Big 12 play under first-year coach Billy Kennedy.
Middleton, who played in 20 of the Aggies’ 32 games that season, wasn’t even A&M’s leading scorer in 2011-12. That distinction belonged to Turner, who has spent the past eight years playing pro basketball overseas.
Turner said there were still hints here and there of Middleton’s potential, especially when he scored 11 of his game-high 28 points in overtime as the Aggies edged Missouri in a top-15 showdown 10 years ago.
“I redshirted that year, and that was first time I saw him take over,” Turner remembered. “He was clearly the best player on the floor, and Missouri had a great team that year. From that game on, I knew Khris had a chance to be really special.”