By FRED KRONER
fred@mahometnews.com
Brett Melton has played in hundred of basketball games, scored thousands of points and created millions of memories.
He played with and against athletes who would become NBA players, and that was as a member of AAU teams before he even reached college.
And yet, his first memory with basketball is not one of the plethora of positive moments he has enjoyed.
“I was 5 or 6,” Melton recalled, “playing in a YMCA league in Champaign.
“I fouled out in my first game. I cried and cried and cried. I thought I did something bad.
“I don’t know if I ever fouled out again.”
Another childhood basketball moment is also prominent in his mind.
He wasn’t in uniform.
“My ultimate memory was not one where I was playing,” Melton said. “In fifth grade, I became a ball boy at the state tournament.”
Thanks to an arrangement his father — M-S administrator Mike Melton — helped orchestrate, Brett Melton was on the court with a number of other students from Lincoln Trail Elementary School, including Lucas Hamilton, Jeff Karr, Ryan Martin, Kyle Ryan and Jonathan Wills.
“I got to meet high school players, like Kevin Garnett (from Chicago Farragut), who ended up as NBA players,” Brett Melton said. “That’s one of the things that helped ignite my interest in basketball.”
One of his upcoming memories will also center around an event in which he won’t be playing.
Brett Melton is one of four persons selected to the third Mahomet-Seymour Education Foundation Hall of Fame.
He will be enshrined on Sept. 27, as part of homecoming at the high school, along with Ryan Berger, Dani Bunch and Robert (Moose) Handlin.
The other three upcoming inductees were profiled in recent days.
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Melton was starting his junior year at M-S in 1998-99 when Dan Ryan arrived in the district as a mathematics instructor and an assistant basketball coach.
He became aware of Melton before he ever saw him play.
“I remember hearing the buzz about having to see this Melton kid,” Ryan said. “At the time, I was only three years removed from my own high school experience in Joliet.
“In the mid-’90s, Joliet Township was nationally ranked and had multiple D-1 players each year. We were good.”
With that background in mind, Ryan went to the M-S gymnasium for the first time to watch Melton.
“I remember walking into the gym with a bit of skepticism about this Central Illinois sensation I’d been hearing all about,” Ryan said. “Well, Brett didn’t take long to erase that. I certainly wasn’t expecting a 6-foot-5 kid who could jump out of the gym.
“With his high release point, Brett’s shot was essentially unblockable.”
Ryan soon learned that Melton had a deft touch and was accurate well beyond the traditional 19-foot, 9-inch three-point line.
“I’ve heard it said shooters don’t even need the rim,” Ryan said. “But even Brett’s swishes were different — they barely even touched the net. It’s hard to describe.
“My first year, at Thanksgiving, I remember being on the bench at Combes Gym for the News-Gazette Classic. And by numbers alone, Brett had a phenomenal tournament, averaging like 37 points a game against tough opponents, too.
“He’d have guys draped all over him, and Brett would just rise above them and next thing you knew, the ball was settling into the very bottom of the net. It wouldn’t touch anything until settling into the very bottom of the net.”
There was one less doubter in town.
“I’ve never seen anything like it at the high school level,” Ryan added. “The only thing I can compare it to would be how baseball folks say you can tell a really special hitter by the sound their bat makes when they’re hitting: it’s just different.
“And that was Brett’s shot; it was just different.”
**
That shot was refined by a person who technically was never Brett Melton’s coach.
“My father,” he said, “taught me to shoot the right way.
“I didn’t make all my shots, but I kept shooting it the right way.”
Brett Melton’s reputation was well-established before he put on a high school uniform for the first time.
He was part of an M-S eighth-grade team, coached by Brad Oakley, which won the IESA state championship in 1996.
In high school, Randy Sallade was the varsity coach each year of Melton’s career.
“He was fantastic,” Sallade said. “Sometimes when you’re that good, you don’t think you have to listen.
“Brett was very coachable and tried to do the things I asked.”
One other person who was instrumental in Melton’s development never served as one of his coaches.
“Ultimately, credit has to go to Rod Cardinal, from the UI (former athletic trainer),” Brett Melton said.
Cardinal’s son, Brian, made the jump from a Class 1A program (Tolono Unity) to a four-year career at Purdue and ultimately he played in the NBA for 12 seasons.
“My dad reached out to Rod and asked, ‘What did you do for Brian,’ “ Brett Melton said. “He referred him to the Illinois Warriors, in Chicago.
“That’s where I started in eighth-grade and where I got my exposure. If I didn’t do that, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the (college) looks.”
Melton’s Warriors teammates included future NBA standouts Darius Miles, Dwyane Wade, Eddy Curry and Quentin Richardson.
They were part of a team that won the NIKE championship in 1998, the summer before Melton entered his junior year at M-S.
**
Melton established a standard of excellence during his prep career that will be difficult to match.
Nearly two decades after his graduation, he still holds M-S school records for:
— career points (1,872);
— points in a season (645);
— career three-pointers (267);
— three-pointers in a season (94);
— three-pointers in a game (nine).
He was a two-time Area Player of the Year, by The News-Gazette, and was rated as a top 100 player nationally. Bob Gibbons had Melton ranked 78th overall and seventh among Illinois high schoolers in 2000.
To have a season like he did as a senior (23.9 per-game scoring average) was more impressive after what he did as a junior (22.9 per-game scoring average) and as a sophomore (21.4 scoring average).
“He was obviously a target,” Sallade said. “Teams set their sights on figuring out ways to shut him down.”
Thanks to Melton’s teammates, it was a tough task.
“He was a phenomenal shooter,” Sallade said, “but a lot of those shots, he wouldn’t have had a chance to shoot if not for the kids he played with.
“There were a lot of things we did, setting screens for him.”
**
Melton played two years at the University of Illinois — earning one varsity letter — and two years at the University of San Diego — totaling 545 points.
Those stints were followed by a brief professional career in California and Mexico.
Along the way, Melton put considerable time into basketball.
“I absolutely fell in love with basketball,” he said. “It’s what I did everyday.
“In the neighborhood, we’d play football and baseball, but I played basketball year-round. I played at the end of the cul-de-sac in February when the hoop was frozen and the ball wouldn’t go through.”
His former coach, Sallade, acknowledged, “he was a hard worker.”
In retrospect, Melton sees that he should have directed a part of his efforts in a different way.
“I was always a pretty good shooter,” Melton said. “I focused a lot on that.
“It didn’t catch up to me until college. My ballhandling wasn’t as good as others.”
Sallade understands the mindset Melton — and others — exhibited during their teenage years.
“It’s human nature for people to want to work on things they are already pretty good at,” Sallade said. “It’s hard to bear down and put time in on things you’re not so good at. It’s hard to focus on those areas.”
**
Like all athletes, eventually Melton became an ex-athlete.
“When basketball was done, it was very different. Very depressing,” Melton said. “You lose your identity. I was always Brett The Basketball Player.
“If I grew up as Brett The Good Person Who Played Basketball, it might have been an easier transition.”
He filled his days with a myriad of jobs.
“All kinds of sales,” he said. “Cars. Furniture. Real estate. Mortgages. Education.
“I failed a ton.”
Melton started college as a sports management major, but that wasn’t offered at San Diego, so he switched to communications with a minor in business, graduating in 2005. He earned a master’s in business in 2009.
“I realized Corporate America is not what I wanted to do,” said Melton, who earlier this month moved his family from Mahomet back to San Diego, where he has lived most of the time since 2002.
He is starting his own insurance agency (HCIP) and will continue doing basketball-related ventures, such as shooting clinics, and will increase his non-profit ventures that help underprivileged children.
“I’ve always been positive and motivated,” he said, “but now for the first time, I am positive and motivated and know exactly what I want to do, and that’s a difference-maker.”
His next project is personal.
“I’ll be starting a podcast — I Am More Than An Athlete — which will be part of the non-profit. I want to help former athletes transition into the business world,”
Melton and his wife, Talia, will welcome twins — a son and a daughter — this spring. The couple has one daughter, Zoe 2 1/2.
“My goal,” he said, “is to impact as many people as possible.
“Through basketball, I help kids and point them in the right direction. The non-profit has helped over 1,000 people in Zambia. Insurance is a great way to help people.
“I enjoy educating people on what they’re getting.”
The Mahomet-Seymour Education Foundation is well aware of what it is getting: another quality Hall-of-Famer.
M-S Education Foundation
Hall-of Famers
Class of 2019
Ryan Berger 1998
Dani Bunch Hill 2009
Robert ‘Moose’ Handlin Coach
Brett Melton 2000
Class of 2018
Craig Buchanan 1993
Frank Dutton Coach
Sharon Farley Goff 1980
Brian Haag 1989
James C. Kroner 1939
Rob Porter 1984
Class of 2017
Ed Grogg Contributor
Brian Herriott 1987
Eric Mark Johnson 1975
Phil Knell 1963
Melanie Moore Paxson 1990
Maureen Scott Renaud 2002
Marty Williams Coach
