I didn’t realize it at the time, but I landed in Mansfield during a Golden Era of boys basketball.
I inherited the Mansfield Senior basketball beat in 2000 and sat courtside as the Tygers won four district championships in my first six seasons as the lead reporter.
Senior High reached the Sweet 16 in 2002, 2004 and 2006 and made a storybook run to the Final Four in 2005. The Tygers also reached the Final Four in 1999 and the Elite Eight in 2000. There’s never been a run like it before or since.
Those teams featured some of the greatest players in city history, including current coach Marquis Sykes, NBA Draft pick Ricky Minard and future pros Antonio Graves, Yima Chia-Kur and Jon Avery. In addition, Senior High churned out future Division I recruits Lance Hood, Shabby Reed and T.J. Lindsay.
It wasn’t just Mansfield Senior cranking out major college prospects in the early-2000s. Ohio was a breeding ground for some of the greatest high school players in state history.
The conversation about great players from the Buckeye State begins and ends with LeBron James, the NBA’s all-time scoring leader who is averaging — get this — 24 points, 7.6 rebounds and 9.1 assists in this his 21st season in the league.
The Chosen One had a dunk earlier this season reminiscent of Michael Jordan’s signature shot against the Portland Trail Blazers in the 1991 NBA Finals. Except Jordan switched hands for no apparent reason and kissed the ball off the window.
By contrast, James elevated and was met near the rim by 7-foot-1 Dallas center Dereck Lively. James switched the ball to his left hand and hammered home a windmill dunk with his off hand — immediately making a poster out of Lively.
Oh, and James is 40 years old.
Before he was the No. 1 draft pick by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2003 NBA Draft, James was a see-it-to-believe-it talent at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary. He was a three-time Ohio Mr. Basketball winner and scored 2,646 points.
James made a few appearances in north central Ohio. The Irish, who were coached by former Ashland University coach Keith Dambrot at the time, played in a holiday tournament in Ashland County when James was a freshman and visited Crestview the following season. Hillsdale twice played James and the Irish in the postseason. Suffice to say, it didn’t end well for any of our local teams.
Not surprisingly, James was the top-rated senior prospect in the state in 2003. Brookhaven’s Drew Lavender, a 5-foot-7 dynamo, was ranked behind James. Lavender played two seasons at Oklahoma before finishing his collegiate career at Xavier. He scored 1,428 career points and played professionally in Europe.
No. 4 on 247Sports’ list of Ohio prospects that year was Senior High’s Graves. The 6-foot-3 guard signed late with Pitt, but played in 33 games as a true freshman for Jamie Dixon’s Panthers. Graves scored 786 points in four seasons before embarking on a long pro career that included a season with the Canton Charge, the Cavaliers G League affiliate.
Two years after James won his final Mr. Basketball award, Cincinnati North College Hill’s O.J. Mayo won the first of his two awards in 2005.
Mayo began his prep career in Kentucky in the seventh grade (middle-schoolers in Kentucky can play varsity basketball). He and high-flying teammate Bill Walker led NCH to back-to-back Division III state titles in 2005 and 2006. The Trojans beat Loudonville in the 2005 state semifinals before topping Ironton in the finals. The following year, NCH beat Cleveland Villa Angela-St. Joseph and future Ohio State standout David Lighty in the title tilt.
As for Mayo, he played his final high school season in West Virginia, spent one season at USC and was the No. 3 overall pick by the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2008. High school teammate Walker, who began going by Henry in 2014, played at Kansas State and bounced around in the NBA with the Boston Celtics, New York Knicks and Miami Heat.
Lima Senior’s Travis Walton was the state’s top recruit in 2005. Mansfield Senior beat Walton and the Spartans in the district final at Ohio Northern that spring. Walton played in 143 career games for Tom Izzo, averaging 6.6 points and six assists a game. Walton spent time with Graves with the Canton Charge during the 2011-12 season.
Mansfield Senior lost to Raymar Morgan and the Canton McKinley Bulldogs in the 2005 state semifinals. Morgan teamed with Walton and Lakewood St. Edward’s Delvon Roe at Michigan State. The Tygers beat Roe and the Eagles in the 2005 regional semifinals and future Ohio State center Dallas Lauderdale of Solon in the regional finals. Morgan played professionally in Israel, Turkey, Germany, Greece, Russia and France.
Ohio’s 2007 Mr. Basketball was the greatest high school scorer the state has ever seen.
Upper Sandusky’s Jon Diebler scored 3,208 points and led the Rams to the Division II state championship as a sophomore in 2005, teaming with older brother and current Ohio State coach Jake. Upper Sandusky beat Dayton Dunbar in the semifinal that year despite 26 points and 12 rebounds from Dunbar’s Daequan Cook. Upper Sandusky returned to the state final in 2007 during Jon’s senior year, before falling to Dunbar 87-85. Diebler scored 48 points in the championship game.
Both Cook and Diebler played at Ohio State, though their time in Columbus didn’t overlap. Cook and Lighty were both members of Thad Matta’s heralded 2006 recruiting class, along with Indiana high school teammates Greg Oden and Mike Conley. Cook spent one season at Ohio State before declaring for the 2007 NBA Draft. He played in the NBA with the Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, Houston Rockets and Chicago Bulls.
As for Diebler, he arrived at Ohio State in 2007 and joined forces with Ohio greats Lighty, Lauderdale, Kosta Koufos (Canton GlenOak), William Buford (Toledo Libbey) and B.J. Mullens (Canal Winchester). Koufos and Mullens both played in the NBA, while Diebler played professionally in Europe for a decade.
Columbus Northland’s Jared Sullinger was Ohio’s Mr. Basketball in 2009 and 2010 and led the Vikings to a Division I state title in 2009, along with teammate Trey Burke. Sullinger would star at Ohio State for two seasons before going pro. He was selected in the first round of the 2012 NBA Draft by the Boston Celtics and played with the storied franchise from 2012 to 2016. He later joined the Toronto Raptors.
Burke, meanwhile, went to Michigan, where he was the Big Ten Freshman of the Year in 2012. He led the Wolverines to back-to-back national championship games and was the nation’s player of the year his last season in Ann Arbor.
Burke was the ninth overall pick by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the 2013 NBA Draft. He played for the Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards, New York Knicks, Dallas Mavericks and Philadelphia 76ers.
Canton GlenOak’s C.J. McCollum joined Sullinger on the All-Ohio first-team in 2009 but was an under-the-radar recruit. He was ranked No. 17 on 247Sport’s player rankings and played collegiately at Lehigh, where his stock continued to rise. McCollum was selected by the Portland Trail Blazers with the No. 10 overall pick in the first round of the 2013 NBA Draft and currently plays for the New Orleans Pelicans, averaging 22.1 points a game.
Ohio has continued to produce major-college and NBA-level talent, but not at nearly the rate it did during the 2000s, a Golden Era of Ohio high school basketball.