Looking back, before the Dallas Mavericks acquired Willie Cauley-Stein today in a trade with the Golden State Warriors, they almost missed out on securing the talented 7-foot center.
Well, actually the entire NBA almost missed out on Cauley-Stein.
There are soothsayers – and there are plenty of them – who were convinced that following his high school days, Cauley-Stein was going to take his exceptional talents to the college football ranks and ultimately to the NFL. That’s how prolific the tall and lanky athlete was with a football in his hands.
After transferring from one Kansas high school to another as a sophomore, Cauley-Stein only played one year of high school football at Olathe Northwest in Olathe, Kan.