Dontonio Wingfield slowly fades from the spotlight
Paul Dehner Jr. / Albany Herald
ALBANY — The call came during a hazy summer afternoon in 1994.
Gloria Wingfield arose from bed and tried to shake off another day of sleep after yet another late-night shift of cooking at a local food plant.
On the other end of the telephone was her eldest son, Banastreus. He delivered a shocking revelation: His brother and her son, Dontonio, was declaring himself eligible for the NBA Draft.
“I said, ‘Oh no, he’s not,’” Gloria Wingfield recalled. “He said, ‘But, momma, it’s on the news.’”
All she could do was call Dontonio and beg her son to reconsider.
“I focused on him getting a degree from college, staying in school,” she said. “I told him he has got to finish school. But it was too late; he’d made up his mind.”
Dontonio Wingfield should have listened to his mother.
If nothing else, he should have listened to somebody. Or he should have discussed his decision to go pro with University of Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins. Wingfield should have disregarded the agents slipping million-dollar deceptions in his ear.
“I had an opportunity to stay in Cincinnati and be a leader,” says Wingfield, as his standard baritone peaks into regretful exclamations. “I was a leader by my ability on the floor, but college could have taught me how to be a leader off the floor.”
Instead, he journeyed into a world of wild spending and unabashed excess.
He entered that crazy world as a wide-eyed 19-year-old without a clue.
These days his decision would be considered commonplace. Eight freshmen were selected in the 2007 NBA Draft alone. There are programs, seminars and mentors specifically arranged to help young players.
Back in ’94, however, it was a league unprepared to assist a manchild in adjusting to its high- profile lifestyle.
“Honestly,” Huggins said, “I thought he needed another year. I thought one more year and he’d have been really ready. But I understood.”
Indeed, Huggins understood. He understood Wingfield’s lifelong wish to transform a single mother who raised three boys into a well-to-do retiree with frequent-flyer miles.
