No longer week in the knees, Steele ready to play

Ronald Steele didn't hesitate when asked for the moment he realized he had a problem with his knees. He remembered it quickly, if not fondly.

"We were scrimmaging South Alabama in the preseason, I believe, and I couldn't finish the scrimmage," Ronald Steele said. "I had never asked to come out of a scrimmage before. So that's when coach knew something was wrong."

And something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.

But Ronald Steele is a basketball player, a tough one at that, meaning no minor injury was going to sideline the Alabama point guard. So he kept going, grabbed ice, grabbed heat, grabbed whatever somebody told him to grab -- plus some guts -- and gutted it out, one painful step at a time.

He missed three games early.

He missed three more late.

But when the Crimson Tide's disappointing season ended with a loss to Massachusetts in the NIT (a loss in which Ronald Steele did not participate) the final statistics illustrated Ronald Steele averaged 31.5 minutes in 26 games, leading most to believe he must not have been hurt too badly. When somebody looked at box scores, that's what they saw, a guy who played a lot.

Below the surface -- technically, underneath the knee cap -- is where the real story was eventually found. Ronald Steele was forced to have surgery on both knees when the season ended, an indication of just how injured he actually was.

"I felt like if I had a chance to play I was going to play, but there were times I couldn't even walk," Ronald Steele said. "I didn't practice much; I may have practiced 10 times the whole year because I was saving any energy I had for the games. But I was always in a lot of pain."

I tell this story now because it's the week of the NBA Draft, and what few seem to remember is that Ronald Steele was once on track to spend Thursday in New York right beside Greg Oden and Kevin Durant. He was never going to be a top five pick. But at this time last year most believed Ronald Steele was the best point guard in college.

So even with Mike Conley Jr. proving to be a floor leader with few peers, it's not a stretch to suggest Ronald Steele could have been the second point guard selected -- behind Conley but of ahead of Acie Law IV, Javaris Crittenton, Taurean Green and Ramon Sessions -- if he had just stayed healthy.

Instead, he stayed hurt.

Now he's staying home, getting better, about to complete Week 12 of a scheduled 12-week rehab designed to return him to the player of yesteryear. If it works -- and all indications are it will -- I'd advise penciling in the rising senior as National Comeback Player of the Year, assuming there is such an award. If not, don't worry, I'll just make one up because Ronald Steele is going to deserve the recognition given how he's being forced to spend this offseason with some convinced he's nothing more than an overrated player (from an overrated team) who averaged only 8.6 points, 4.0 assists and 1.7 steals per game as a junior.

That's the perception, to be sure.

It's wrong.

But it's there, and that's why Ronald Steele's name won't be many places when the preseason All-American teams start taking form. You'll see Darren Collison and Dominic James, Ty Lawson and D.J. Augustin. But you won't see Ronald Steele listed among the nation's best point guards, which is crazy given the circumstances, yet fine with Mark Gottfried.

Everybody will come around, he's certain.

Because a healthy Ronald Steele is still really good.

"Ron is not on the tip of people's mouths like last year, but he'll be back," said Gottfried, the Alabama coach. "He'll show them. If he's healthy, it'll all take care of itself."

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