West Virginia guard Javon Small (7) creates space for a shot during a game last season in Morgantown. (Photo by Kevin Kinder/BlueGoldNews.com)

MORGANTOWN — This is sort of the sad side of a wonderful story, the one that played out on Thursday night in a made-for-TV moment that probably should have some Emmy category in which it could be considered.

It came in the middle of the second rounds of the National Basketball Association Draft that was being shown on ESPN; coming as the 48th pick of the league’s annual draft was being announced.

The Memphis Grizzlies owned the pick, and as the words went out across the room in Brooklyn, NY, and across the nation that the Grizzlies had selected guard Javon Small of West Virginia, the entire nation’s attention was drawn to the elderly gentleman at Small’s family table.

“My boy!” he shouted when Small’s name was called, shaking a fist into the air as the tears started to flow.

At that moment, with the TV cameras zeroing in on him, he leaped to his feet and again reiterated “My boy!”, shaking his head in glee, his arms held skyward.

Javon Small’s grandfather had erupted with more emotion than even Small would publicly display. Certainly there was a bubbling cauldron of emotion within him, and surely this was his moment, the result of so much work, so many long hours in the gym, some much sweat, so much pain.

But it was immediately obvious that it was a moment he would share with his grandfather.

As the television interview with him began, the camera was directed to his grandfather.

“To see my poppa over there with me, he took me to every single tournament since I was a little kid. He rarely misses any games. That’s what I do it for,” he said.

And that leads us to the sad side of such a happy story.

No one mentioned his grandfather’s name. No one had ever detailed the relationship, even though it had been known that Small was a part of a close, nuclear family from Indiana, first South Bend, then Indianapolis. His mother, Jovanna Wright, had often been at his games in West Virginia, and he would refer to that upon occasion.

It was clearly a warm, loving relationship, one that carried over into draft night.

As Small entered the draft, he came with his mother, social media catching them, noting that Jovanna Wright was wearing a green outfield.

“It’s my mom’s favorite color, I guess,” Small said on the video. “She’s out there from South Bend, where Notre Dame is, even though I represent West Virginia.”

On this night, though, he was wearing a green blazer, it was noted.

“We got to coordinate,” he said, wearing a smile. “She’s got to copy me. She always copies me.”

And after that, they walked into the future together.

Now, as he was being interviewed, he was asked about the meaning of it all.

“It’s a childhood dream come true. It’s amazing. My biggest inspiration was my family, really,” he said.

This all transpired seven or eight hours after I had spent time interviewing WVU Athletic Director Wren Baker. It was a wide-ranging interview, not about the draft or the basketball program, but about the new world of college sports. And there came a time in the midst of it that we talked about one of the big changes in this new world was that fans — and media — no longer get to know the athletes.

They come, as Small had, for one year, maybe two.

It is no longer a three or four or five-year relationship between fan and athlete. Part of the reason is the brief stay, part the regimen with which interviews are conducted.

The media — be it TV, radio, print or sports Internet sites which are more interested in recruiting than who is being recruited – is limited, by its own choice, to four, five or six paragraph items rather than stories that fail to dig into the personalities and relationships of the athletes.

Baker acknowledged that is a problem moving forward and that the university has on its own, through its quickly stretching social media presence, in which it offers up some interesting vignettes trying to create a getting-to-know-you moment or two.

Being someone who has always looked more into the people playing the games and what got them there and how moments affected them and how they affected moments, I urged Baker to look into creating a more one-on-one, personal situation for such relationships to develop and be used to let fans know what players are like and how they became that way.

There were no promises, other than that a discussion of it would be brought up, just those hours later it became so starkly obvious as to why that is necessary.

For, most embarrassingly, I had to admit I did not know Small’s grandfather’s name or the story behind the relationship, while the Media Relations Department at WVU did not have the name and there was really nowhere to turn to get it, for the cupboard was quite bare as there were no teammates left on the roster, no coaches who had coached here last year.

I would hate to see them have to present that Emmy to a man known only as Javon Small’s “poppa”.