Whatever Happened To The Dream Henderson

Tristan Thompson, former St. Benedict's standout, hoping for a return to ...

CHICAGO — The next destination in the odyssey of Tristan Thompson will soon be known.

In the past five years, Thompson has played for three high schools and spent one year playing for Texas. Come the June 23 NBA Draft, he’ll find out his next stop.

“I’ve been living out of a suitcase,” said the 6-foot-9 power forward who is expected to be a lottery pick.

Actually, Thompson, a Toronto native, might be able to make a return trip to his birthplace. The Raptors have the No. 5 pick in the draft, and Thompson said it would a “dream to play for his hometown team.”

If it doesn’t happen, Thompson will continue his travels. It’s an odyssey that really got going when Thompson left St. Marguerite d’Youville School in Toronto to enroll at St. Benedict’s Prep for his sophomore season of high school.

It was there where Thompson first became well-known, developing into one of the nation’s top prospects. But it also where negativity surfaced.

During Thompson’s junior season, he became embroiled in a heated exchange with St. Benedict’s coach Danny Hurley in a February 2009 game against Passaic Tech. It led to Thompson’s being dismissed from the team , sending him to Findlay Prep in Henderson, Nev., where he would play as a senior.

“That was three years ago, and people still ask about it,” Thompson said about the incident at the NBA Draft combine, which ran Wednesday through Saturday in Chicago. “So it really opened my eyes. Whatever you do as a young man can come back and haunt you and people question it.”

Thompson, 20, said he’s moved on from the incident. He said he and Hurley “are still close” and he “texted him the other day.”

Thompson won’t give details on happened with Hurley. But he said he’s matured since then.

“Players make mistakes,” Thompson said. “I was young. Players and coaches both make mistakes. We got to learn from it. Me and Coach got into it, and I was obviously dismissed. But you got to learn from things like that. I think it helped me mature as a man. We just bumped heads. Frustration kicked in for both of us.”

It might not have ended well for Thompson at St. Benedict’s. But he believes his choice to join Hurley’s team played a key role in his development as a player.

Tarec Saffiedine now gets Scott Smith at Strikeforce "Fedor vs ...

Penick's Analysis: This fight makes a lot more sense for Saffiedine than the Santos fight did. Smith may be nearing the end of his career with the level of abuse his body has been put through during the entirety of his fight career, and specifically in his last several fights, but he's still got the punching power to stop a young prospect cold. For Saffiedine, this is a fight against someone that has a recognizable name for Strikeforce's fanbase, and a chance for him to put on an impressive performance over that name. It should be an entertaining fight for the fans outside of Chicago next month.

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Dan Henderson vs. Jon Jones, and Gilbert Melendez vs. Frankie Edgar would be fantastic fights. But let's face it, The UFC light heavyweight and lightweight divisions are deep enough where they don't need to hotshot a title fight involving either of those guys. Yes, they needed to do that at Welterweight because people were so desperate for a challenger for Georges St. Pierre that they were actively campaigning for him to fight Anderson Silva (a fight that makes as much sense to me as Edgar vs. St. Pierre), but it's unnecessary to do similar stunt-casting at LHW and LW... Another big fight card, more instances of really poor judging. At this point, it doesn't seem as though anything can be done to fix this plague. About the only thing that might work is to tell every fighter that they have to go for finishes, or that they had better be so dominant that it's a foregone conclusion who won. Even then, it might not be enough to secure a victory with some of these judges. Taking the judges out of the equation is the best way to go for fighters. Sure, there's all sorts of tweaks and adjustments that could be made to better the judging, but...

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