NOTE: Sir Donald, a great basketball contributor on our site, recently caught up with Jerryd Bayless, "The Legynd" as he calls him, and his mother Denise Bowman. Don went on to write this post in our Inside the Locker Room forum. It's a great read.

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It's time for March Madness and Cactus League Craziness again. Spring is in the air and the local pools are beginning to fill up again. For those back East it means the snow stops falling, the lakes and rivers start to thaw out; the green starts to grows back, and the flowers begin to bloom. In Arizona the pool covers come off, the snowbirds thin out, the Suns make their annual Western Conference playoff run, and the Wildcats of Tucson try to get to the Final Four once again. The Suns just beat the Mavericks in Double OT and could go all the way this year. The Cats may have to wait another year but we'll soon find out…..

The symbology that Spring represents is interesting…….it's time for new beginnings. There is nothing like the ending of a season to clean out the old and bring in the new…….nothing like a graduation to cause one to think about the future and what it holds. There can also be nothing more informative about people than talking with a Mother about her two most prized possessions in the world…..her sons. They say the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree. I wanted to see that for myself.

I sat down recently with Denise Bowman, Jerryd Bayless' mother, to talk about the basketball season just passed, some memories of his career so far, his graduation, and his future down in Tucson as a Wildcat. Ms. Bowman teaches and serves as a counselor at a local Junior College.

She's watched her son's career up close at almost every game and occasionally perused the papers and hoops message boards with the wary eye of a savvy parent who is successful in her own right and knows a lot about how the world works and what makes people tick. "Nobody rises to low expectations," she likes to say.

Though some of the things people say every once in a while are hurtful she never comments on any of the boards. She doesn't believe people are open to listening and that once their minds are made up about a kid or a team they will defend their own position no matter how ill conceived or biased it may be. She has always been very leery of the influence of big business on high school sports including the all too familiar fan adulation that comes with it.

I took no notes and didn't record it so the comments in quotes are my best recollections. Much of it is paraphrased but they capture the things we discussed more at length. "I never wanted basketball to rob my sons of having normal childhoods. You never get those days back. Once they're gone they're gone forever," she said. I agreed. How many of us would do anything to get some of our youth and innocence back.....

"People come to the table with all sorts of their own biases for or against someone or their team and there isn't much you can do to sway them," she added. She says, however, that many are right when they criticize what happens to some kids on their way to an elite D1 school or even the NBA and she thinks things have definitely gotten out of control. Who can disagree with her that the lure of big money and endorsements has hurt the sport in many ways especially at the high school level?

Even so, when it comes to protecting them from such outside influences she knows what she is doing with her sons. Her oldest boy is Justin who graduates with Jerryd but from Morehouse College in Atlanta. He will start out working for Morgan Stanley on Wall Street. She glows with pride when she talks about him.....the soon-to-be college graduate.

She says Justin may end up being more successful than Jerryd but after having come in later and joining the conversation her youngest boy disagrees……"No way Mom, I think I can make more money than him," he says with an easy smile. She laughs and says her boys have always been very competitive.

Jerryd credits his brotherly battles with Justin, who also played at St. Mary's when his kid brother was just a small boy, with making him a much better athlete. It also helped to create the tremendous drive within him that he thinks has been there since he was around 10 years old.

They say the only professional ballplayer in the extended family was his Father's Grandfather who played baseball in the old Negroe Leagues long before Jackie Robinson broke the Major League color line with the L.A. Dodgers. The family always liked sports but nobody played much basketball until Justin and Jerryd. Denise's Mother is German and says she got Jerryd's name from Andres Jarryd who is a Swedish eight-time Grand Slam Doubles Champion in tennis.

German speakers pronounce their vowels differently than Americans so she changed the "a" to an "e" so that they would pronounce it the way she wanted them to. The "e" helped them to say it right but then the nurses in the hospital thought his name was "Jerry D". His family still teases him about that one and calls him that occasionally to embarrass him. He laughs and shakes his head even now when she brings it up.

She says, "Jerryd was like a disaster waiting to happen when he was growing up because he played everything so rough. His severe injury as a sophomore was only the second worst thing that ever happened to him. He fell out of a tree once, landed on his head and his arm, almost killed himself, and I had to rush him to the hospital thinking he could be paralyzed. That was the first time he broke his left wrist. Another time he fell hard and a big screw hit him right between the eyes and we had to get stitches," she says…..they both laugh. "That was crazy," he says shaking his head again.

Her family has been close to Frank Johnson's family since Jerryd ran track with Frank's daughter in the third grade long before he became the Suns Head Coach. "We were all friends long before anybody knew how good he was really going to be. Frank would invite him over to play some ball every once in a while and then when he got older he started giving him some tips on how to play the right way. Eddie Johnson was another friend who helped out. There have been a lot of people that have helped Jerryd develop and most of them have been friends, or friends of friends. "We were very lucky," she says.

I mention that it is true that it takes so much more than just raw talent these days and they both agree. I say to Jerryd, "You know Jordan said he wasn't even the best player in his own county in North Carolina. You may not even have the rawest talent as a basketball player in high school right now even in Arizona. I saw a kid at a street ball tourney that may have as much raw talent as you do. His name is Michael Purdie," I said to him with a grin. "I know about him," he says seriously. We both agree that there are probably a lot of kids that could do what he has done if they work hard, study hard, and listen to their coaches and parents.

I start asking him some questions about his career, this season just passed, and his other interests in life. "I like a lot of different things," he says. "Like what?" I ask. "Well, like Ping Pong. I just love that game," he says with a broad smile. I forget to bring up the tennis connection in his name. "What do you think you want to do when you're done with basketball?" I ask. "I don't know yet but I think about it all the time. I really do. I've changed my mind a few times," he says.

"What are you going to major in at the U?" I ask. "I think I want to run my own business someday so probably business," he answers. "But it's a really tough program so I'll just complete my general requirements for now and then I'll make up my mind after that," he replies. His Mother adds that it is not true that he will be one and done and then declare for the draft as some have assumed. It's obvious to me he is very serious about his academic education and his 3.7 GPA at a tough school is further validation of that.

I ask him about his favorite memory as a HS ballplayer and he mentioned the second game against Brophy his freshman year. He said that although they had already played once, when they played that second time it all hit him that the rivalries are what it is all about in HS. I was thinking that's true for college too and that doesn't bode well for ASU. He says he is looking forward to playing against his good friend Christian Polk again.

His mom chimes in and says that Jerryd works in the St. Mary's office after school as part of their work program. He doesn't get paid because it's just a part of the overall education there. I ask him what he does and he says, "We don't get to go home early our senior year. I go to the office after my classes and carry boxes around for them and deliver letters and stuff." His mom says one of the women who works there kidded her that Jerryd had been very helpful with his unique language skills around the office. I ask if she means foreign language skills and she says, "No, she said he had just taught her what 'Hollatchaboy' meant," and they both then chuckled at the table.

We turn to more serious subjects. "You know a lot of people thought you guys would never get as far as you did this year with such a young team at St. Mary's," I say. He looks me right in the eyes and responds, "I knew we could do it." "Really, with such a young team?" I say, but he says again with even more conviction, "I really just believed in us and knew we could do it".

The coaching staff at St. Mary's is a tight knit group and no doubt helped convince him what they could accomplish together if they kept the faith. Especially former AZ '89 POY Damin Lopez who attended Apollo and played guard for his Dad David just as Jerryd has. "I'm really tight with Damin," he says. I ask what they talk about and he says that Damin always says he was a better shooter in HS. I say Damin still has the 5A record of 10 treys in a game and that he never matched it. Jerryd says, "Yeah, but I'm gonna get him down in Tucson," as he grins.

Denise mentions that even before Dave Lopez and Gary Ernst played together at Grand Canyon College they were basketball rivals in high school. He mentions a recent article about Kobe Bryant in Slam Magazine called "Driven" and his mom then says he cut it out and showed it to her. He said to her at the time, "This is how it feels most of the time Mom. This is what it's like." I said that it's okay that they never won the big one because Michael Jordan never won a high school championship either. He says without smiling, "I know" as he looks down…. He knows a lot about Jordan.

Jerryd has played with His Airness several times since he was a freshman in his Nike camps and still marvels at his ability even in his forties now. "Don, for twenty minutes I think he would still be the best player in the NBA. He kills the best guys in the league when they try to guard him even at his age. It's amazing. I'll always remember playing with him but it was a little crazy too."

"Crazy? What do you mean?" I ask. "Well, when you make a mistake or something while you're playing with him he tells you right then and there on the court what you did while you're still playing." I chuckle to myself having remembered Jerryd doing the same thing a few times. Now I know exactly where he got that from! The drive for perfection can be an obsession for elite athletes….

"Then sometimes when you might make a great play or something and you might want to say 'See, I did it right that time', but you can't say anything to him because it's not like your just talking to somebody who is only a mortal. He is an immortal," he says with awe. I ask, "What about at the high school level? Who was your favorite player?" He says with no hesitation, "Kyle Singler" of South Medford, Oregon and headed to Duke. "I've known him since I was a freshman and we played on the Junior Team USA together. We still talk from time to time and I just really love the way he plays the game," he said.

I ask, "So how was it to play for the Junior Team USA?" He says, "It was a great honor. It was also very hard, like boot camp in a way, because they had us isolated with no TV, no video games, just all these kids in the rooms together with nothing to do when we weren't practicing or working out which was pretty much all day long. We had to find ways to entertain ourselves so we got into some harmless mischief but that part of it was a lot of fun at the time. This one night we all went out and …….," his mother stops him abruptly. "Do you really want me to hear all this stuff," she hints ominously, and he then says a little sheepishly, "Uh, no, uh, I guess not……..NOTHING happened Mom". I nod and say, "Yeah, never mind, it's cool". Then we all laughed again …..

I ask, "Jerryd your 18 and a man now and you know Mother's never really learn how to let go of a son right?" He rolls his eyes in jest like any other kid and says, "TELL me about it." Then he smiles broadly and his mother laughs as she leans in close to him. "And don't you EVER forget that either young man," as she chides him in mock seriousness. "Don't worry mom, I won't," he says, completely serious.

We moved on to discuss his team next year at the U of A. "You guys are gonna be pretty good next year in Tucson don't you think?" I ask. "Oh yeah," he says, "we're gonna be really good!" I say they have a good team this year too but they drew Purdue and then Florida in their bracket in the NCAA Tournament. We talked about Mustafa Shakur driving the team on offense from his PG spot and that if he is on against Purdue they should win that one. Then comes number one Florida…..

He will inherit Shakur's spot next year due to graduation. It's obvious he's done all his homework on his future team and we talk about the 6'11" Kirk Walters coming back at center for his Senior year and the 6'7" Jamelle Horne possibly replacing Marcus Williams who may be declaring early for the NBA draft according to an AZ Republic/Tucson Citizen quote from Lute Olson. His preparation for that takeover continues when he plays again with some of the best in the land in the McDonald's and Michael Jordan All-Star games in a few weeks. He may be the first player from Arizona to ever play in both games. "It would be really fun to play with Mr. Jordan again," he notes.

Denise Bowman will never be able to control the often hurtful and untrue things people say about her youngest son. But she can rest assured his love and respect will never be diminished by anything he experiences in the game of basketball no matter where he plays, even as he travels throughout the Pac10 Conference. I failed to mention it but I saw her once when her oldest boy came into the gym at Horizon when on Christmas break and called her from his cell. He doesn't know me and I was right behind him as he walked in and sat down.

She was already there and situated in the stands to watch Jerryd's game begin but when she got the call from Justin she jumped up off the bench and ran down the bleachers and back up again to go give him a big hug. It was hard to miss her. That is my favorite recollection of their family and something anyone's Mother would have done after a son returns from school so far away. The Legynd isn't always the main attraction with his Mother. To her he's just another young son who needs a lot of love and guidance and the occasional kick in the gluteus maximus.

"We only have six days for a vacation together this year because of our schedules," she said. "Both of my sons are graduating this year and I want them to have as much fun as they can together with our family." They will go down to Mexico and play on the beach for a few days as a family. His Mom then says that although it may seem like he is very vocal and outgoing out on the court the truth is he is as introverted as he is extroverted. She adds he needs a lot of downtime to think and reflect like anyone with a thoughtful personality and driven intellect.

She adds, "I have always warned Jerryd it wasn't going to be easy but we will be alright as long as he remembers what is important. The most important thing is that he is proud of what he stands for as a person. There have been a lot of people that have helped us out along the way on this journey together. We both want to thank everyone out there who has supported Jerryd throughout his high school career. There are so many of them".

"Jerryd, now that you are leaving us is there anything you want to address that has been said about you that has hurt you," I ask. "Some people say I'm arrogant and all that, but I'm really not," he says with sincerity.

The check comes and I reach for it but his Mother says, "Oh no, I'll take that." I refuse and say, "I knew this was coming, so how about if we split it," and she then agrees. I later give Denise her change and we all stand up and shake hands. Jerryd looks at me and politely says; "Thank you," and I say, "No, thank you. When you're 70 years old you'll still be talking about playing with Michael Jordan when you were young. Maybe someday far into the future, if we are all lucky, an old man somewhere will still be talking about having played with you when he was young!"

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Everyone at ArizonaVarsity.com wants to wish Jerryd the best of success at Arizona and beyond. Thanks for the memories.