West Mifflin grad Chris Giles heads overseas for basketball showcase

At his coach's suggestion, former Seton Hill guard Chris Giles would often make a big play and jog back on defense smiling, a set of pearly whites greeting the opposing team.

“He has a beautiful smile,” Griffins coach Tony Morocco said. “So I told him, ‘When you steal the ball, make a basket or dunk, smile at your opponent, give them all those pearly whites.' He had more people upset at him for doing that.”

That smile, controversial or not, might be the only thing that translates well during Giles' latest adventure.

The 6-foot-4 guard recently was selected to play in a showcase basketball tournament in China, a nine-game, two-week trip that began with a flight to Hong Kong via San Francisco three days ago.

“I'm not nervous about it at all,” Giles said last week by phone. “It's just crazy to process, to even think about going to China.”

Giles (West Mifflin) is the only NCAA Division II player on the roster, which was assembled by Bruce O'Neil, the president of the United States Basketball Academy and a chief consultant to the Chinese Basketball Association. Giles is also the only local player.

Morocco knows O'Neil well and had been pitching Giles, who was second on the Seton Hill team in scoring (18.5 points per game) this past winter, earning second team All-West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference honors.

The trip won't cost Giles a dime, and it exposes him to a bevy of scouts looking for younger players eager to continue their careers overseas.

The only thing he'll have to do is learn Chinese.

“Most of the kids that come out of a school like ours have to go to a combine or pay their way,” Morocco said. “It's a herd mentality; everybody and their brother goes. Some of the guys aren't even good candidates.

“This is completely different. This is a selected team of very high-level players that go and have the pedigree.”

Giles will compete against squads from Norway, China and Latvia. The 10-player squad will be coached by Billy McKnight, who spent time as an assistant at Oregon.

“This is really a shot in the arm for Western Pennsylvania kids,” Morocco said, “That just because a kid didn't go Division I, there's still hope to do different things.”

Giles starred at West Mifflin but mostly relied on his athleticism to score. He refined his shot at Seton Hill and became a better rebounder, shooting about 48 percent from the field and pulling down 5.2 rebounds per game his final year.

“He's also going to surprise people over there because he's a good defender,” Morocco said.

Because he was notified about two weeks before he would have to leave, Giles didn't have a passport ready — and didn't have enough time to have one mailed.

So he and his mom, Arlene Dukes-Bates, drove to Philadelphia at 3:30 in the morning about 10 days ago to pick it up.

“That's the kind of person she is ... always there,” Giles said. “She's helped me so much throughout my career and through this.”

Though he still needs to finish one class this summer, Giles walked with his graduating class May 12 and plans to student-teach this fall.

That is unless something comes out of his two-week tour of China.

You know, something to smile about.

“Not to toot my own horn, but I would say that I'm pretty explosive and athletic,” Giles said. “That has carried me a long way through basketball. As long as I can try to make some explosive plays and do things I've been doing since I was a kid, I think I'll be good.”

Jason Mackey is a freelance writer.