| KC kid |
04-27-2013 06:40 PM |
Demtirius Harris
Harris' emergence as an NFL prospect happened almost overnight. A basketball player for Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he averaged 9.1 points and a team-high 5.3 rebounds per game.
After the 2012 season ended, the Kansas City Chiefs called head basketball coach Rob Jeter to see if Harris was potentially interested in a football career. That got the ball rolling, and more than a dozen NFL teams scrambled to begin evaluating him.
"Things are happening very quickly for Demetrius," Jeter told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. "Like I told all the (NFL) coaches, if you want him to shoot free throws, that's not your man. But if you want him to catch a football, he can do that."
Harris was on the Chiefs' radar because two years ago new GM John Dorsey, when he was with the Green Bay Packers, when someone at an all-star game in Arkansas told him to keep an eye on Harris down the road. Dorsey made a note, and sure enough he inquired two years later.
Harris was an all-state football and basketball player in high school, but focused on basketball at Wisconsin-Milwaukee - turning down an offer from Arkansas State to play both sports.
"I always (scout) five or six basketball guys a year," Dorsey told the Journal-Sentinel. "We went to Portsmouth, Va., one year to evaluate 50 basketball players. Mid-majors is where you make your money on stuff like that because they're not in the pool for basketball."
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