Ankle-breakinâ good

Metro point guard on road to greatness

By Kyle Ringo
The Metropolitan

DeMarcos Anzures breaks ankles with a smile on his face.

The 5-foot-11-inch sophomore point guard is in the midst of his best season, leading the Metro menâs basketball team to an 18-2 record and leaving opponentsâ best defenders in his wake.

He is Metroâs top scorer, assist and steals leader, and maybe its best player. And he demonstrates it with at least one two-second jaw-dropper each game.

Usually it happens near the top of the arc, the three-point line, on the basketball court.

Anzures is dribbling the ball waist-high, generally righthanded, but not always.

Suddenly the ball rises a bit higher than it did the last time it hit the floor. About chest-level.

Anzures moves to the left, his dribble crossing over quick as a striking snake. He gets a little extra power on the ball from its chest-high rise. The defender goes with him. Anzuresâ quickness sucks him in.

He stops and stands straight up like a cobra. The defender canât stop and canât believe what is happening to him.

Anzures gives the ball back to his right hand with a quick dribble behind the back. He jumps. The defender struggles to pick himself up off the floor.

Anzuresâ shot is on its way. As it floats through the air, spinning backward. He is already preparing to play defense. The shot splashes through the net. Anzures smiles at what heâs just done.

The defender shakes his head and sneers at the pain in his ankles.

ãItâs my favorite move,ä Anzures said. ãI think that is my go-to move.

ãI know I can go to that move if Iâm in trouble.ä

Considering where Anzures comes from, it makes sense that he can make players look foolish on the court. He was once the Class 4A player of the year in Colorado high school basketball at Skyview High School. And itâs in his blood.

Fred Anzures, a point guard himself, lettered in basketball all four years (1973-1977) while at Colorado State University. He is DeMarcosâ father, his rescuer ÷ his ãmotivation.ä

Fred Anzures got paid to play for a year after college. He played in the Mexican Leaguesâ infancy. He did it because he loved to play, but also because he had an infant of his own to take care of ÷ DeMarcos.

He would send money back from Mexico to DeMarcosâ mother in Colorado. He wanted the best for his son.
He received a call one day from the San Antonio Spurs. Doug Moe, then the head coach of the Spurs, was offering him the chance of a lifetime, a tryout.

Anzures accepted and figured he would take the opportunity to check in on his son in Colorado.

He never expected what he found upon arriving at his ex-wifeâs home. It shook the basketball right out of him. His son needed a more stable environment.

ãI never made it back to the airport,ä Fred Anzures said.

Instead, he started looking for work, and a baby sitter. It took a while but he found both.

After spending a year on welfare, Fred Anzures began building a life for himself and his boy. Much of it seemed to be spent around basketball courts.

When DeMarcos was only 2, his father caught a glimpse of his boy dribbling a regulation size basketball near the sideline of a game he was officiating. He earned extra money as a whistle-blower and still does.

From that time on, Fred Anzures knew he was raising a ballplayer.

ãI never tried to push basketball on DeMarcos,ä he said. ãI tried to raise him up in the church.ä

His faith is all that has kept him from attending all of DeMarcosâ games. If his son has a game on a Wednesday night, the night he regularly goes to church, he chooses belief over basketball.

There are plenty of other times father and son share in the company of a hoop and backboard.

Occasionally Fred and some of his seven brothers will get together for a backyard blowout. It usually turns into a trash-talking pickup game. DeMarcos says he doesnât get involved, but his father disagrees.

ãHe plays,ä Fred Anzures said. ãHe doesnât want to admit it because he still gets beat by dad.ä

Maybe that is why DeMarcos emulates his father and holds him up on a pedestal. Maybe itâs because, like his father, he grew up without the bond shared by children and mothers. Fred Anzuresâ mother lost her fight with cancer when he was 11.

No matter why, the Anzures men are tight.

ãHe is the only one I can depend on,ä DeMarcos said. ãWhat ever he says goes.

ãI listen to him. What ever he wants me to do, Iâm going to do it.ä

DeMarcos proved that when, in his first year at Metro, one he sat out to work on his grades, he thought about leaving for the Marines. His father wanted him to stay. He improved in the classroom and now he is sometimes shocking on the court.

ãI want to be able to tell my family one day ÷ if I have one ÷ I accomplished something in college,ä DeMarcos said.

ãHere is my banner, and this is what I left at that school.ä

A banner is something his father never had.