The journey of Vander Blue
Former MU star hoping to catch someone’s eye in NBA
Three years ago, Vander Blue was on top of the basketball world. After playing in the shadows of players like Jimmy Butler, Darius Johnson-Odom and Jae Crowder his first two years, Blue culminated a breakout junior season at Marquette by leading the Golden Eagles to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament.
With a knack for making big
plays at crunch time — what MU fan doesn’t remember his gamewinning drive with a second to go against Davidson? — he had Marquette close to a Final Four, 10 years after the Golden Eagles last made it to the marquee event.
Marquette’s surprising run ran out of magic in the Elite Eight, with the Golden Eagles scoring 39 points on 22.6% shooting in a loss to Syracuse. However, with its top three scorers set to come back from a team that claimed a share of the Big East regularseason title, Marquette’s future looked bright.
And then came news that shocked many Marquette fans. Blue, who had flashed great promise in his junior season, was leaving for the NBA. Blue was considered to be a late second-round pick at best, which made the decision hard for many to grasp.
It’s been a long, winding threeyear journey since then for Marquette, which has undergone
significant changes but has yet to make a return to the NCAA Tournament after qualifying eight years in a row.
But it’s been an even more tortuous journey for Blue.
“I thought even when I left the team was still in a good spot to be successful and still make some noise,” Blue said in a recent interview. “I felt like the team was still in good hands, but at the time, really, my heart just wasn’t there anymore. I wanted to pursue my dream and do the best I could do.
“I thought that I had a good enough résumé to actually get drafted at the time, but everything doesn’t happen the way you expect it to happen.”
Right now, Blue, 23, is in a good place.
The 6-foot-4 combo guard, who was born in Milwaukee and played high school ball at Madison Memorial, is in his second season with the NBA Development League’s Los Angeles D-Fenders. He is averaging 26.7 points, 5.0 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.8 steals per game while leading his team to a playoff berth.
As locations go, it’s hard to beat playing in L.A.
“Waking up every day, 70 outside with a smile on my face — it makes your job a lot easier,” he said.
At the start of his professional career, Blue wasn’t in such a good place, mostly because he was rarely in one place for long. He went unpicked in the 2013 draft and had to scrap through the less-glamorous tiers of pro basketball, hoping to catch someone’s eye for a shot at the NBA.
He’s played for 13 different teams over the past three seasons, including four in the D-League and one in Israel along with auditions for NBA squads in summer leagues and preseason camps. Twice he’s made it onto an NBA roster, playing a total of five games while on shortterm contracts.
The start of his pro career began with clearing one of the most important hurdles he would face — reconciling with his mother Rita Blue.
Rita refused to speak to Vander following his decision to go pro. After talking to her baby boy, the youngest of three, virtually every day of his life, she refused to answer his calls or texts for about a week.
“When you have a young man that’s no longer a boy, you kind of go back and forth,” she said. “At that time I was mad because I wanted him just to finish school. Get your degree and then after that you can go on, move forward, do whatever you want to do, but you’ll still have that degree to back you up.”
When the two did sit down and have a discussion, Vander explained his decision. For him, it had always been his dream to play in the NBA. His mother had never doubted that, not after watching him eat, sleep and breathe basketball since he was 3 years old, slicing the sleeves off his shirts and cutting socks so he could look like former NBA star Allen Iverson.
“It’s never been about the money, it’s never been about the fame, it’s always been about my love for the game,” he said. “I felt that what I’d done at Marquette that year, just leading that team far into the field at a really high level, our team being successful, Elite Eight, the draft being not the best draft I felt like it was time, it was time for me to go.”
Rita still thought he should finish getting his degree in communication studies, but if this was the course of action he was going to take she wasn’t going to abandon him. She knew, and he acknowledges to this day, that if he didn’t have her in his corner he wouldn’t have anyone.
“I might not agree with him all the time, but I didn’t want to just leave him out there with the wolves,” she said. “Because here’s a young kid who wants to go into the league and there were several individuals coming at him from different angles and that’s when I said, ‘You know what, Rita, if he’s going to do this then he’s going to need that support system that he can trust because people will take advantage of you.’”
Convincing Rita proved to be the easy part. When she jumped on board she did so with both feet, helping him with the business aspects of being a pro for the first few months before returning to her normal role of mom and confidante. They talk almost every day and she’s still involved in his decisions when asked, while also offering some opinions — sharing her thoughts on his games and telling him things like he’s overdue for a haircut, which is currently the case — when she feels the need.
Finding a new place to call home was much more difficult.
After going undrafted, Blue spent the 2013-’14 season bouncing from team to team, playing for eight squads in two countries over the span of nine months. He never played more than 12 consecutive games with any of his teams. He told ESPN The Magazine at the end of that season that he had a hard time remembering where he was or where he was going. Also, his credit card got denied constantly because he moved around so frequently.
Blue started his odyssey playing for the Houston Rockets and Memphis Grizzlies in the NBA’s Orlando and Las Vegas summer leagues. He then joined the Philadelphia 76ers during the preseason but failed to make the team. Up next was a seven-game stint with Maccabi Rishon LeZion of the Israeli Basketball Super League, but Blue left after eight lonely weeks on foreign soil.
“I had very, very expensive phone bills,” said Rita, who would wake up in the middle of the night to talk or FaceTime with Vander.
Following some time off, Blue played four games with the D-League’s Delaware 87ers before catching his first big break. He signed a 10-day contract with the Boston Celtics, playing his first NBA regular-season game on Jan. 22, 2014. He entered midway through the second quarter and scored his first NBA points about a minute later, nailing a seven-footer on his first attempt.
But things didn’t go as well from there. He followed that bucket by missing his next shot as well as a pair of free throws and committing two turnovers before heading back to the bench to conclude a four-minute run.
“The first time that I got called up with the Celtics I can probably say I wasn’t as ready as I thought I was,” Blue said. “I sort of got thrown into the fire there; I know that’s how it is. That first game vs. John Wall . . . I just wasn’t as ready as I thought I was.”
Blue didn’t finish the 10-day contract with the Celtics. He played one game with the D-League’s Maine Red Claws before heading back to Delaware for another month. A fourteam trade then sent Blue to the Idaho Stampede, where he played the final 11 games of his nomadic season.
Since then, he’s found a stable situation with the D-Fenders and has thrived. The team’s first-year head coach Casey Owens, who has been coaching professionally since 2001, has forged a unique relationship with Blue over the course of the season.
“For some reason, sometimes Vander’s reputation I think is misunderstood,” Owen said. “To me, when I came into this year coaching him I’d coached against him a couple years ago and had heard some things that maybe he had an attitude problem and this and that. I never knew what any of those things were. . . .
“He's become one of my favorite guys of all time. He's incredibly coachable; he’s got a great personality. Once he trusts you and once he trusts the situation and sees that winning basketball is the goal then he kind of lets that guard down. He’s a sweetheart of a kid.”
A two-time D-League all-star, Blue has been on a tear since early January, scoring 20-plus points in 28 of the past 29 games, including a stretch of 23 in a row — a D-League record. With 46 points over the final two regular-season games, he would set the league’s single-season scoring record.
For the past few months, Blue’s been playing alongside former Marquette standout Lazar Hayward, which has been a positive addition for him and the D-Fenders.
“I come in every day and my coaches believe in me, my teammates believe in me, the GM, everybody involved they all believe in me,” Blue said. “They sort of put the keys in my hands, I just want to make sure I deliver, so I work as hard as I can, I play as hard as I can every night for them.”
Blue’s only time away from the D-Fenders when he joined the injury-riddled Los Angeles Lakers for the final two games of last season. Some may remember that stint for Blue’s off-centered jersey, which was actually a Wayne Ellington No. 2 jersey with a 1 awkwardly stitched on to make a 12.
But Blue remembers his a 15-point, eight-assist, seven-rebound performance while playing the full 48 minutes at the Staples Center in the last game of the season.
“(Getting) that experience I think that helped me carry on to this year,” he said. “I don’t know how many people can say they’ve played 48 minutes in an NBA game for the Lakers, so I’m just using that experience and I’m more ready than ever.
“I’m really trying to develop as a player and a person. I’m watching more film and going as hard as I can go, taking all the opportunities that I can get. It’s been a blessing for me being able to play in so many places.
“I haven’t been able to stick in the NBA — that’s what the ultimate goal is — but I feel like that’s on the way.”
Over the course of his ups and down, Blue has never been far away from his Marquette roots.
When he took the floor for the D-League all-star game at the Ricoh Coliseum in Toronto on Feb. 13, he wore Marquettethemed Air Jordan XX9’s — the sneakers with the huge Golden Eagle logo emblazoned on the side that the team wore on its trip to Italy last summer. He’d received them from Marquette director of player personnel Travis Diener and has often worn them in games since.
While struggling to get his career going, he’s relied on the support network he built at Marquette to get him through the tough times. He’s still close with Johnson-Odom, Jamil Wilson, Crowder and former head coach Buzz Williams and even texts a bit with Steve Wojciechowski, a coach that he never played for.
“Marquette is in his blood,” Rita said. “He keeps in contact with some of the players there, they’re actually really good friends. Those kids are awesome.”
Blue describes Crowder, who has established himself as one of the top players on the Celtics, as his brother and a best friend. They text each other after games, but their relationship goes deeper than that with Crowder trying to teach Blue the things he’s learned from his four seasons in the NBA.
“I’ve flown him to me just to get away from certain situations, because I want him to succeed and he really loves the game of basketball,” Crowder said. “I try to go out of my way any time I get a chance and just bring him around me, train with me in the summertime.
“Little stuff like that matters the most. I know he looks up to me.”
In addition to the positive ties, the baggage from Blue’s decision to leave Marquette early still follows him. He heard the disgust from fans and even some close to him when he declared for the draft. On Twitter you’ll still see negative tweets calling him foolish and mocking him for making a bad decision.
“He had a lot of people at that time that weren’t supporting him on his decision to leave Marquette,” Rita said. “That bothered him because he liked Marquette, he loved Marquette. . . .
“People who hide behind a computer, to me I think that they are cowards. . . . What they fail to realize, it’s still hurtful. As his mother and to see my son go through this process — it affected our entire family. As a mom, he didn’t see me go behind closed doors crying and praying for him as well because I still had to put that strong face on in front of him because I wanted him to stay strong.”
Vander refuses to call his choice a bad decision and does his best to take the negativity in stride. He tries not to engage the critics, but to an extent understands the sentiments.
Had he stayed at Marquette, he likely would have been the team’s best player and could have helped the Golden Eagles reach the NCAA Tournament. That’s not what his heart led him to do and that’s the part he believes many have misunderstood over the past three years.
“This is actually the first time I’m even talking about this Marquette thing, so I’m glad that I have the chance to talk to you about it because I really want to get out there that I definitely wasn’t trying to be selfish and put Marquette in a bad spot,” he said.
“I was just a kid wanting to pursue my dream of playing basketball, that's all it was. I still love Marquette to this day. I follow them, and I’ve got a Marquette tattoo. . . . I still plan on coming back for a game. I haven’t been back yet, but it’s definitely on my mind.”
Marquette occupies a distinct spot in Blue’s mind, but only a small area. He doesn’t dwell on the past in any way.
Right now his focus is singular — getting back to the NBA.
Even going back overseas, where he could make more money, isn’t on the table. That would be a cop-out, he says.
“Right now I’m just what roster I can get on and really help a team out,” Blue said. “Not just being in the NBA, not sitting on the end of the bench, but actually being a role player, a guy that’s effective. The Marquette guys have got a good rep in the NBA and I think teams are looking for those guys.”
Time is running out for Blue to become one of those guys this year. The NBA season wraps up on April 13.
“I don’t know,” Owens said when asked why Blue hasn’t received a call-up this year. “I think he’s a little undersized at the 2-guard and maybe they look purely at the threepoint field-goal percentage (33.1%), but what I think Vander’s done this year is really prove to people he can play both ends of the floor.
“Some of these guys that have been called up, in my opinion, Vander’s far superior to.”
Considering his time at Marquette, where he did some of his best, most memorable work with time slipping away and the odds against him, it’s hard to count Blue out from finding a way into the NBA for a chance to prove himself over the next few weeks.
“I think I’m as close as I’ve ever been to being back,” Blue said. “I believe it’s going to happen this year; it could be any second right now. I’m having a great season, our team’s winning, but I think it’s going to happen sooner than later.”
Charles F. Gardner of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this story.