COLUMBIA -- Michael Dixon Sr. knew something was wrong with his son. The slumped shoulders, the sullen demeanor.
As Dixon Sr. sat in the stands before Missouri started its basketball season with an exhibition game in Joplin, Mo., he learned what his son, Michael Dixon Jr., had recently discovered: He would not start for the Tigers.“I didn’t know if I was being punished or if they saw something that I didn’t,” Dixon Jr. says of coach Frank Haith and his staff. “I just knew I wasn’t starting.”Dixon Sr. taught his son to trust his coaches, so he didn’t like his body language that day. But he also understood his son’s disappointment. Dixon Jr. was entering his junior year with NBA aspirations and started 17 games the previous season while averaging 10.3 points and 3.5 assists.“But to his credit,” Dixon Sr. says, “he shook it off and played a pretty good game.”It wouldn’t be the last time. Now more than ever, it has become obvious that Haith knew exactly what he was doing when he decided to start Phil and Matt Pressey and bring in Dixon, a 6-foot-1 guard from Lee’s Summit West, off the bench. A thin playing rotation made thinner because of a preseason injury to forward Laurence Bowers meant Missouri needed another offensive weapon off the bench. And Dixon has become that force for the nation’s third-ranked team. Through 25 games, Dixon is averaging 12.4 points and 3.0 assists while playing starters’ minutes (25.8 per game) and earning rave reviews from opponents. “No coach who faces their team thinks of him as a sixth man,” says Baylor coach Scott Drew, who watched Dixon score 16 points and hand out six assists Saturday. “He’s a starter and a potential all-conference player ... regardless of whether he starts on the court or on the bench, he’s one of the best guards in the country.”If you ask Haith, Dixon is also one of the toughest guards around, too. Dixon developed this trait thanks to several valuable learning experiences he’s gone through since high school, all of which have helped him thrive in his new role.“I kind of just grew into it, really,” he says.To this day, Michael Dixon Sr. remains one of Lee’s Summit West coach Michael Schieber’s favorite parents. In fact, he likes to joke that Dixon Sr. should teach a class on how to properly raise an athlete. Schieber says Dixon Sr., who was a star basketball player at San Jose State in the early 1980s, never once questioned the tough love he dished out to Dixon Jr. during his run on the LS West varsity.For example, Schieber had to bench Dixon in the second half of a game against Ruskin his sophomore season because he wasn’t playing well.“I simply remember taking him out of the game and him arguing with me coming off the floor,” Schieber recalls. “I remembering hearing his dad yelling from the crowd, ‘You tell him coach, you tell him!’ He always understood what I was trying to do.”Or the time against North Kansas City in Dixon’s senior year, when Schieber benched Dixon, who was already committed to Missouri, for showing up a referee after a questionable non-call.“He asked me ‘Daddy, why do you think coach Schieber took me out?’ ” Dixon Sr. says. “And I told him because you were acting like an (idiot).”This story makes Dixon Sr. laugh. He sees now how moments like this strengthened his son’s on-court resolve and respect for authority, and most important, Dixon Jr. sees it, too.“That’s something my dad and coach Schieber gave me,” Dixon Jr. says. “I learned to respect what coaches say, never take plays off and always play hard.” Dixon took this approach to Missouri, and it helped his first year, when he knew he wasn’t going to start. But after he became a part-time starter last season, he figured this would be the year he’d finally be a full-time starter next to sophomore Phil Pressey, whom he calls the best pure point guard on the team.“When I realized I wasn’t (a starter),” Dixon Jr. says, “it hurt pretty bad.”But he knew that sulking and feeling sorry for himself wasn’t going to help. If he wanted to make an impact on this team, he was going to have to earn it.“All I was thinking about was, ‘I’ve got to start doing something at practice or performing great in these first couple of games so that I can work my way back into the starting lineup,’ ” Dixon Jr. says.
Dixon opened the regular season by scoring double-digit points in five of Missouri’s first seven games, but he still didn’t look quite right to Dixon Sr., who thought his son was forcing things instead of letting the game come to him. “Michael has a loving family of uncles, aunts, grandparents and friends,” Dixon Sr. says, “and I really feel a lot of them talked to him about how (he) should be starting, and I really think it affected his play early.”Dixon’s shot selection eventually came to a head in Missouri’s 81-71 win over Villanova on Dec. 6, when he had seven assists but drew the ire of Haith for his two-for-13 shooting.“He took some tough shots, and he knows that,” Haith said afterward.Shortly after that Haith sat Dixon down and ran through the game tape. Haith praised Dixon’s good decisions, pointed out his bad ones and explained exactly what he wanted him to do in those situations.“I didn’t play bad,” Dixon says. “I missed shots that I don’t normally miss. But I did realize (that) the quality of the shots you take is what they worry about.”Dixon’s shot selection quickly improved. He was 19 for 30 from the field in the next three games and scored a career-high 30 points against William & Mary on Dec. 18, which prompted Haith to reassert how important Dixon is to Missouri’s success, even using Dallas Mavericks veteran Jason Terry as an example of a sixth man who made his team go.“It’s not who starts the game,” Haith said at the time, “but who finishes (it).”As Haith would see on a rainy night weeks later in Austin, Texas, few can finish a game like Dixon.
The head coach saw the father a month later, and the two embraced. The night was Jan. 30, and Frank Haith wanted Michael Dixon Sr. to know how much he respected his son’s basketball skills, particularly after what he had just witnessed.“Boy,” Haith said, “that boy has got a big set of onions.”“He really does,” said the proud papa.Dixon Jr. had validated Haith’s decision to make him the sixth man long before Missouri’s 67-66 victory over Texas. But his performance that night, when he dropped in a team-high 21 points and made the game-winning layup, exemplified Haith’s reasoning.When the Tigers needed energy, Dixon brought it, occasionally punctuating made shots with Kevin Garnett-esque screams. When the Tigers needed a cool head, Dixon had one, even after committing a flagrant foul. And when the Tigers needed a basket — they trailed by one as a result of the foul — Dixon got them one, converting a driving, left-handed layup with 31 seconds left. “I haven’t been around a guy that has the kind of moxie he has,” Haith says. “He’s pretty special.”Dixon is showing no signs of slipping, either. He’s averaged 14.6 points and 5.3 assists in the three games since MU beat the Longhorns and says the only time he really thinks about coming off the bench these days is when the starting lineups are introduced.“I don’t think Mike will ever tell you he accepts it,” Schieber says. “But he understands his role within the team, and he’s making the most out of it.”But Dixon remains a competitor, and that’s something you just can’t turn off. When asked whether he expects to start next season as the Tigers try to replace five key seniors, well, you pretty much know the answer, don’t you?“That would be awesome,” Dixon says. “That’s what I expect to happen. That’s what needs to happen.”But if he doesn’t?“All I want to do is win,” Dixon says. “And if that means me coming off the bench, then so be it.”
