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As other guys played in a pickup basketball game, Rush leaned against the bleachers and looked forward: Toward the NBA draft, toward hopefully being selected in the first round and the guaranteed millions that would come with it.
There was a break in the action. Brandon stood and jogged toward the court. He just wanted to shoot a few hoops from the side. Just a moment to play before getting back to the sideline to watch.
What’s the worst that could happen?
“He ran out there, shot and made a couple of them, and then he missed one and he went to shoot a layup,” said John Walker, Rush’s former summer league coach and mentor. “He went up and came down. And it popped.”
That was it. Ligament damage. Surgery. A summer of grueling rehab before him. Another year of college and KU — the things he’d left behind him thrust back into his life, whether he liked it or not.
And, as it turned out, a terrible day that would mark the beginning of Kansas’ road to a national championship.
•••
There’s something about seeing a star with all that natural ability having to reach deep down where talent doesn’t matter. That’s what the summer of 2007 was for Brandon Rush: Day after day of rehab, of pushing himself to take a weak knee and turn it back into something he could use.
“It was not the way he wanted to spend his summer, going into a rehab facility and just pushing and pushing and pushing instead of going out there and playing basketball and having fun,” said his brother, JaRon.
On Nov. 15, against Washburn, all that hard work paid off. It had been 24 weeks of exhausting work, and now here Rush was, walking onto the court at Allen Fieldhouse with 16 minutes, 17 seconds left in the first half, the crowd going crazy.
“I got chills all through my body,” Rush said. He tucked in his jersey. He pulled on the drawstring on his shorts. A massive black brace encased his right knee.
That was the start. He scored seven points during 12 minutes of play that game. Ten days later, he dropped 17 against Arizona. He scored 17 the next game, too, and there was a sense that Brandon Rush was back.
“He showed that his knee is back nearly 100 percent,” KU’s Mario Chalmers said after the Arizona game.
Not exactly.
It was a comforting thought, but over the next two months, Rush averaged only 12.2 points a game. During that stretch, he never scored 20. Kansas coach Bill Self knew they needed more from the junior, and he took pains to make it clear Rush had to be a star for this team to accomplish what it was capable of accomplishing.
He said it after a lackluster performance Rush had in January against Loyola (Md.), when he scored only nine points on seven shots.
“It’s pretty sad, three years into it, that a coach has to tell a really good player to be aggressive playing the game of basketball,” Self said. “A coach should never have to tell his leading scorer the past two years to be aggressive. But we have to do that way too often.”
The next game, Rush put up 19 against Nebraska.
It was typical. Bad game, rebuke, big game, step back. Rush scored a then-season-high 19 points against Missouri, then he put up nine against Baylor, 10 against Texas and seven against Colorado. And Self would be there again, reminding him: Take the shot. Be aggressive. Carry this team.
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