After being cut by the Atlanta Hawks in training camp, Booker played five games with the Denver Nuggets and 16 games with the Golden State Warriors during the 1996-97 season. He did eventually make it to the NBA, first playing 11 games for the Houston Rockets during the 1995-96 season. Melvin Booker played in the American minor leagues for the Hartford Hellcats and Pittsburgh Piranhas and had two stints with Grand Rapids. Said Devin Booker: “I could tell he is still kind of hurt by it.” But draft night was one of the worst nights of my life.” It’s unheard of for a player of the year in his conference and a second-team All-American to go undrafted for reasons I don’t even know today. I felt like and thought I would be drafted. “My draft night was one of the worst nights ever,” Melvin Booker said. His scoring talent was probably more suited for today’s game as his height - at his position - was held against him. The undersized point guard was stunned as he went undrafted. Unfortunately, the NBA teams didn’t love Melvin Booker during the 1994 NBA draft. “Me taking my visits from Missouri from eighth grade on, just the love that he got there is something that I’ve never seen before. “I meet a lot of people around the basketball business that talk about him like, ‘People may not know who your father is, but he could hoop,’ ” Devin Booker said. The 1994 Big Eight Conference Player of the Year averaged 18.1 points, 4.5 assists and two 3-pointers per game during his senior season. The 6-foot-1 point guard was a consensus 1994 Associated Press second-team All-America selection at Mizzou. Melvin Booker averaged 28 points as a senior at Moss Point High and signed with the University of Missouri. Melvin Booker of the Missouri Tigers dribbles the court during a game against the Kansas Jayhawks. With Devin Booker falling in love with basketball as a child, he had an easy role model to follow in his father. I was trying to make up for the times I missed when I was gone.” “Ever since he was 8 months old he was coming with me in the summertime. I owe her all the credit for allowing that to happen,” Melvin Booker said. Melvin Booker gave strong credit to Gutierrez for doing “a great job of keeping me connected” while he was playing professional basketball and allowing him to get off-season time with his only child. He spent the summers with his father in the latter’s hometown of Moss Point, Mississippi, a predominantly black town with around 13,000 people that also had its share of crime and poverty issues. The couple never married and cooperatively co-parented their son who was predominantly with his mother due to his dad’s professional basketball career.ĭevin grew up in Grandville, Michigan, a predominantly white town of about 15,000 people that is a suburb of Grand Rapids. Devin’s mother is Victoria Gutiérrez, a Mexican-American who has two other children. Melvin Booker, his African-American father, played for the Continental Basketball Association Grand Rapids Mackers during the 1995-96 season. “This was a social setting he needed to be around to know how blessed he had it because he was around a lot of kids with the typical urban story with no father in their lives … Those were the things he needed to see and didn’t see before.”ĭevin Armani Booker was born on Oct. So I came to pick him up after school and the first thing he said was, ‘I don’t know about this, dad.’ I remember dropping him off at school that day and staying about an hour to make sure he had his classes scheduled correct. “The city I grew up in and the high school was predominantly black. “He’s from a suburban, predominantly white town,” Melvin Booker told The Undefeated. While going back to Michigan did get strong consideration, Devin Booker’s perseverance not only led to an NBA career but also a close bond with father. It wasn’t an easy move for a teenager who only knew suburban life to switch to an “urban environment” at a high school where his dad was a star. It took a lot of persuading for former NBA player Melvin Booker to get his son to move to Mississippi away from his mom to best aid his hoop dream. After his first day of high school in Mississippi, Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker had his dad quite worried that he was going to pack his bags to go back to Michigan.
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