My Close Encounters with the NBA Draft  

The 2016 Chino Hills HS Team featured Three top NBA Draft Choices

November 18, 2020

90045 -  It was the winter of 2016 in Los Angeles, and I was on my way to watch a high school team that I’d followed throughout the season, one that I thought was better than any high school team I had ever seen, and that is a long list, considering I have been watching high school basketball for 50 years.  

The Verbum Dei High School (Los Angeles) teams of the 70’s blew my mind, my own St. Bernard High School (Playa del Rey) teams of the 80’s were nationally ranked in the USA Today polls, and we might as well finish off the catholic trilogy with a mention of the great Mater Dei High School (Santa Ana) teams of the 90’s and 2000’s.

Religion aside, I was fascinated by the 2015-16 Chino Hills High School boys team.  The three Ball brothers, Lonzo, Liangelo and LaMelo were fascinating. Their over-the-top father, LaVar, was a bigger than life character.  The team’s incredible freshman talent, Onyeka Okongwu, was almost more fun to watch than the Ball brothers.  They were an unselfish, unyielding, high flying act that played top bill everywhere they went.

Chino Hills had traveled to multiple states and beat the best the country had to offer.  The more astounding fact is that these players remained in their own community, attending a public school instead of a private school.  I loved the way the community of Chino Hills, a city of 75,000 people in San Bernardino County, 40 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, would line up days before home games to get tickets.    

On this late February night of 2016, in the CIF-SS Open division quarterfinals, the Chino Hills Huskies would travel to play at the the Inglewood High School Sentinels, which was only a few miles from my house, and a few blocks from the Fabulous Forum, the scene of the “Showtime” Los Angeles Lakers back in the 80’s.  

I rolled in with my friend Ray Castro (aka “The Boxcobbler”), chatted with my friend James Butts, the mayor of Inglewood, who I have known since he was the chief of police in Santa Monica.  Mayor Butts, the man that brought the Rams back to L.A., where they play in the state-of-the-art SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.  

Ingle-WHAT?

I remember watching Paul Pierce playing in the same gym for the Sentinels in ’95, 13 years before he would wear green once again and win an NBA title with the Boston Celtics.  But on this night, there would be no Sentinel star player leaving the court in a wheelchair only to return to the court and lead the team to victory.  I am pretty sure only the Boston Garden has a wheelchair on hand for such theatrics.  

The Huskies put on a show that night in the the “City of Champions”, routing the home team 112-78.  I may have suspected, but did not know for sure, that on that night, between me, Lonzo, LaMelo and Onyeka, three of us would be top draft choices in the NBA draft.  Lonzo was the #2 pick in the 2017 draft, LaMelo and Onyeka are projected as top five picks in tonight’s NBA draft.  

I am not quite sure how I was missed in the ’86 draft, considering I had a cup of coffee with the College of the Desert Roadrunners back when future Chicago Bulls general manager Gar Foreman was the coach.  Guess the NBA already had enough 6’2” power forwards that were especially good at screening out and fouling.   

Almost five years later, I do indeed put that 2016 Chino Hills team at the top of my list for all-time high school teams.  35-0, scored over 100 points 18 times, finished as State champions and named the USA Today National Champions.  

Three top five drafts on the same high school team, let’s see Bronny James and Sierra Canyon School (Chatsworth) top that. 

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