The only limitations are the ones people place on themselves, the first deaf player in the NBA told a gymnasium full of deaf children and teens.
Lance Allred, 31, played for the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2008 and Indiana Pacers two years ago. He spoke Friday to participants in the Deaf Sports Academy, which wrapped a weeklong camp at California School for the Deaf.
“More important than if you fail or succeed is the fact that you tried,” Allred told the 74 campers along with their coaches, parents and a few other family members.
Campers, ages 6 to 18, came from all over the country, some from as far as Vermont. They got to choose among five sports: basketball, softball, flag football, dance or soccer, camp director Jeremias Valencia said through sign language interpreter Sabrina Bryant, outreach coordinator for the academy.
Valencia and Allred had played together in 2002 in Greece at the Deaf World Championship.
Allred told the campers that when he was young he struggled with balance, which is regulated in the inner ear. He has had a 75 to 80 percent hearing loss since birth. He uses digital hearing aids now small enough to fit inside his ears and be unaffected by sweat when he plays basketball.
When Allred was 13, he said, he was good at Nintendo but not much else. He was the only deaf kid in his small town, struggling in a hearing world without sign language and forced to attend speech therapy twice a week at school, which he said he hated.
Then he started to grow, really fast, and his family moved to another town. He got to high school and the coach asked the tall new boy if he wanted to play basketball. Allred, now 6-foot-10½-inches, said he thought it would be a way to make some friends so he joined the team.
“When I started playing basketball, people laughed because I was so clumsy,” he said. He told campers most of them are better than he was when he started to play.
But he desperately wanted to be considered normal, Allred said, so he worked really hard at basketball, to the point where he wasn’t normal anymore. He made varsity and eventually the NBA.
The NBA is “a tough gig,” but Allred, now a free agent and newlywed, said he enjoyed his time there.
