Sometimes, it’s not all about the ring.

Sure, winning championships should be every player’s goal. And don’t get J.R. Giddens wrong, he said leading the University of New Mexico men’s basketball team to unprecedented heights was his top basketball priority this season.

But for Giddens, the talented transfer from Kansas University who made more headlines for getting knifed than for knifing through defenders, there’s much more to life than firing jumpers and dishing no-look assists.

The 21-year-old Oklahoma City product says he always has realized that.

But until recently, it really didn’t hit home.

“I’ve seen him mature a lot. I think he kind of gets it now – before, he didn’t,” said J.R.’s mom, Dianna Giddens. “I think New Mexico has been very positive for him. When Florida won the national championship – they were (previously) recruiting him – I said, ‘That’s the team, J.R. You could have had a national championship ring!’

“He said, ‘I think it’s best I didn’t have a national ring. It’s best that I learned what I needed to learn in New Mexico.’ That was a total shock.”

This season, Justin Ray Giddens plans to shock the Mountain West Conference with a style of play that made him a McDonald’s high school All-American.

But physical splendor isn’t the whole story with the gifted 6-foot-5 junior wing.

New Mexico wing J.R. Giddens shoots around in Davalos Center at the University of New Mexico.

Giddens came to New Mexico with the reputation of a pampered troublemaker, a selfish ballplayer who left Kansas by mutual agreement with the coaching staff after his part in a bar fight. Giddens pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor battery charge, was sentenced to a year of probation and ordered to attend a two-day anger-management class. During the altercation, he was stabbed in the back of the leg.

That, however, was Kansas. This is New Mexico, and Giddens said things have drastically changed.

“Last year was great,” he said of sitting out as a redshirt transfer. “It’s been beautiful for me, because I could find myself, create a new basketball personality and an off-court personality. I’m a different J.R. People don’t know me. I have a selfish image because of my confidence, but that’s not how I am. I like to pass, I’m one of the most unselfish players on the team.

“I’m like a car with tinted windows. It looks nice, and everybody thinks it’s a certain way on the inside, but you can’t see – and it’s completely different. You don’t know if I have leather interior or not. There’s a mystique. But people on the team, coaches and my family, they know.”

Giddens says that his family, parents Charles Ray and Dianna, younger sister Breeanna and older sister Portia, also is aware of his major makeover. He admits to having been a handful for his parents, but says that – like his bar-hopping days – is in the past.

“I used to argue with my parents,” he said. “Now we have discussions. They give me advice, and I listen.”

His mother agreed.

“That’s definitely true,” Dianna said. “He’s learned a lot. He went through all of it, because a lot needed to be learned. Everything happens for a reason. He just wasn’t getting it, and he had to take this little detour.”

Making changes

Giddens also acknowledges other past mistakes. He said he slacked off in school and put himself into harm’s way too many times with poor decisions.

But life is a learning process, and while Giddens regrets certain things he has done, he also says he has become a better person because of them.

Instead of going to bars and nightclubs, he said he spent free time having Xbox nights with teammates, he and senior-to-be Aaron Johnson often engaging in all-night battles on the video games.

“I know there’s a time in your life, in everybody’s life, where things just clicked and you find yourself,” he said. “God does everything for a reason, and that’s why I feel I came here. I’ve learned from errors in my past. That’s how you learn, going through life’s experience, you see new things.”

UNM coach Ritchie McKay, who said he booted Giddens from practice “probably 20 times” last season, said the youngster’s growth had been remarkable.

“I haven’t seen many players mature so quickly,” McKay said. “He’s really learned from the circumstances at Kansas, and is even showing leadership now.

“I’m sure we’ll butt heads again and he’ll get thrown out of practice,” the coach continues with a grin. “But he always comes back, usually humble and contrite. I love that about him, he’s got a great heart. Lobo fans will love and embrace J.R.”

Of course, the true test of Giddens’ about-face will come in the heat of battle amid the basketball season, during those inevitable times when things don’t go one’s way. When the shot doesn’t fall and the calls go against you.

Giddens wasn’t able to shake off a good number of those times at Kansas, at one point refusing to do media interviews for nearly two weeks after getting miffed at a story printed in his hometown Oklahoma City paper.

“We were told he wouldn’t talk, but it wasn’t really an issue because nobody was trying to interview him anyway,” said Gary Bedore, Journal-World assistant sports editor. “There were a lot of players to talk to. He was a pretty good kid for the most part. But he could get moody.”

Giddens also found trouble off the court prior to his brawl in the Moon Bar parking lot in Lawrence. He was arrested, but never charged for a plot to defraud an Oklahoma City Wal-Mart, and also was involved in a car accident in the wee hours of the morning.

Big expectations

On the floor, Giddens averaged 10.7 points, 3.7 rebounds 1.1 assists a game in his two seasons with the Jayhawks. McKay said he expected those number to ascend this year, calling Giddens “the best player in the Mountain West Conference.”

Simply being the best player Giddens can be is one of J.R.’s prime goals. He constantly studies video of NBA stars, trying to mimic the moves that make them great. His former AAU coach Al Johnson, now on the coaching staff at Texas A&M, sends Giddens DVDs of players and stays in constant contact with him.

“He’s such a good student of the game,” Johnson said. “He learned a lot at Kansas, and coach (Bill) Self did a great job of teaching him. Now he’s even increased that knowledge under coach McKay and his staff. We’re always bouncing questions off of each other.”

Johnson, who also was Giddens’ assistant high school coach and neighbor, said he, too, had seen a major change.

“He’s a great kid, and I’m glad to see a lot of the maturation process. … It was a case of he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he made poor decisions. I think he’s learned dramatically, and it made him a stronger and better person and more appreciative of what God has given him.”

Said Lobo assistant Brad Soucie, “J.R.’s really been a pleasure to coach. He’s hungry to learn how to be a better player and is a tremendous student of the game. … A lot of players don’t see their own weaknesses and what they need to improve on. J.R. is the total opposite. We can share his weaknesses, and he will concede that and work on what it takes to be a better player.”

Making the grade

Being a standout pupil is something that transcends the basketball court for Giddens. Mom Dianna said he was a “straight-A student before he became a big basketball star.”

J.R. says he let his grades slide for a period, but has experienced an academic resurrection, spending as much time reading novels as playbooks.

“I’m definitely going to get a degree. Like they say on TV, a mind is a terrible thing to waste,” Giddens, a university studies major, said with a broad smile.

“We are student-athletes – the student before the athlete. If I blow out my knee, I’ll always have a degree to fall back on. Plus, knowledge is power, just like on the court. Sometimes you’ve got guys with all the talent in the world, but they just don’t get it. If you’re serious in school work and serious on the court, it makes you more of a cerebral player.”

The scholastic rebirth was, in part, due to the tutelage of UNM professor Dr. Finnie Coleman. Giddens, who will travel with Coleman to Mexico later this summer for a class in the black experience in the country, first met the professor in a hip-hop culture course.

The class has made Giddens much more aware of the oppressions African-Americans have battled for generations.

“It changed the way I’m thinking. I’m thinking outside the box now,” Giddens said. “People say our generation has no fight, and (Coleman) has challenged us to question every-day norms. … It’s really opened my eyes.

“A lot of people hear hip-hop culture and think it’s all about rap and such. But it’s the blues, it’s society and a lot of things. I’m hip-hop, I’m a young African-American. And being African-American, you want to know about your history. … Sure, you have Black History Month in February in school, but you really don’t learn anything deep in just a month.”

Coleman said he met Giddens a year ago, but had prior knowledge of him while teaching at Texas A&M. Coleman followed Big 12 Conference basketball, and said he heard the stories of the troubled Kansas standout.

“It’s not exactly a Cinderella story, but here’s a kid who a year or two ago was written off, who had a bad rap,” Coleman says. “I had heard about him and thought, ‘Oh, here’s another kid who got into trouble and is gone like a lot of young black athletes.’ … But you can’t judge a book by its cover. I’ve set high expectations for J.R,. and he works long hours. … Something got through to the kid; I feel like we got through.”

And while Lobo Nation is simply concerned with Giddens being the next great hoops star, Coleman said he’s much more than that.

“He’s a good kid, intelligent,” Coleman said. “And genius comes in a variety of factors. He absolutely possesses a very keen mind, he’s very bright. He has the potential to do anything in life, whatever he sets his mind to.”

NBA aspirations

What Giddens hopes to eventually do is play in the NBA, and that shot might come as soon as next year. If Giddens reaches his playing potential this season, McKay said the NBA would be waiting – and the coach won’t try to convince his star to stick around for his senior season.

“I definitely want what’s best for J.R.,” McKay said. “He’s a good kid who’s maturing in our program. He has questions to answer himself, but if he gets those questions solved, he’s a lottery pick. Anytime you have a chance to have a player achieve that, you have to be excited for him.”

Giddens said he’s prepared for the onslaught of inquiries all season about whether he will go pro after his junior season. He said he understood that’s part of the business, but that he has more pressing issues at hand.

The Lobos have made the NCAA Tournament just once in the past seven seasons and have never won back-to-back games in the Big Dance. Pit attendance tumbled for seven years, and Giddens says it’s time things change.

“Sure, the NBA will be in the back of my head, who doesn’t want to be a millionaire?” he said. “But I’m focused on what’s going to bring this team together and be a leader on and off the court. We want to go above and beyond this year. I see teams like (2006 Final Four participant) George Mason, I think, ‘why can’t that be us?”

Lobo sophomore post Daniel Faris said Giddens constantly encouraged the team during offseason workouts. He said Giddens spent time with each of them and “he’s a great teammate. You can see a big change in him, the way he’s taking over as a leader and helping everybody get together. He spends a lot of time with the freshman, helping them with their games and making them feel accepted. And he’s a phenomenal player.”

With Giddens, Penn State transfer Johnson and junior college transfers Jeffrey Henfield and Jamaal Smith, the Lobos will feature a lot of new faces prominently. The talent appears to be there.

But how will it mesh?

“I look at New Mexico as pieces of a puzzle,” Giddens says. “I feel like I can play anywhere in the country. So could Aaron Johnson. He’s the best rebounder I’ve ever seen in my life. We have a great junior college point guard with Jamaal Smith. … Right now, we’re a puzzle with a couple big pieces. … And if we can put all the pieces together in the puzzle, I think we can beat anybody on a given day.

“Coach McKay is doing a great job of setting big goals and making us believe in them. Why can’t we go to a Sweet 16? Why can’t we go to an Elite Eight? Why can’t we go to a Final Four? Because we’re not a Kansas, North Carolina or Duke? Because we don’t recruit McDonald’s All-Americans every year? That doesn’t matter. I tell the guys, “We’re going to get everything we can out of this season because of our work ethic and our coaches.’

“We’re not individuals. We’re what’s on our jersey – we’re New Mexico, we’re a team. I’m not saying we’re going to win a national championship, but we’re going to come out swinging. We’re going to hit first and we’re going to do big things – even though the world might not believe it yet.”

And maybe then, it will still be all about that ring.