The Tale Of Carsen Edwards' Tape
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BOSTON — Carsen Edwards was frustrated.
He wasn’t happy.
He was “broke down.”
He didn’t understand how he could play varsity basketball as a freshman and then have the same coach tell him he was going to be on JV as a sophomore. Couldn’t stomach hearing that coach tell him he'd never be a high-major college player.
So then-teenager Carsen Edwards had what he thought was the perfect response: He was going to quit.
He wasn’t enjoying basketball anymore anyway.
He wasn’t getting the kind of attention his teammates were from Division I schools.
He wasn’t getting any love, really, from colleges.
He didn’t need basketball, even though he’d been playing since he was 3. Because, really, he only started playing because older brother Jai played. And Carsen wanted to do whatever Jai was doing.
Didn’t matter Carsen had developed into a pretty good basketball player by then.
He’d just play football. He’d started that when he was 4, because of Jai, too, even though Carsen was "nothing but helmet and pads” back then, his mom said. Even though he’d take a hit — Texas doesn’t mess around in football: It was full contact, even at that age — and cry and need Jai to pick him up and carry him to the sideline.
Yes, definitely, he’d play football.
Because how was he supposed to keep playing basketball on JV while Jai was finishing his high school career on varsity?
“Things weren’t really looking good for me,” Carsen Edwards said. “Just going from high school (varsity) and just not enjoying the game anymore and not getting along with coaches, and I didn’t want to play anymore. It came to the point where all my friends around me were getting recruited, all the schools they wanted to go to, and I wasn’t.
“It was a tough spot for me.”
Carla Desmuke-Edwards saw her youngest son was hurting. But she also knew he wasn’t going to get what he wanted — or at least what he thought he wanted. She wasn’t going to let him quit.
She knew what would come from not relenting: A character-building experience.
It certainly was that for Carsen because mom's you-can’t-quit directive was paired with a surprise: She told him football was no longer part of the equation.
“If we had let him quit, he wouldn’t have gotten anything out of it,” Desmuke-Edwards said. “I said, ‘If I let you quit (basketball), you’ll keep quitting. You’ll quit your job when you don’t like it. You’ll quit your relationship when it doesn’t work your way. So I can’t let you quit.’ He didn’t understand it. He was so upset. He did not go to one football game his junior year or his senior year. He was that upset that I said to just focus on basketball and see what happens.
“I think he’s glad he did. I think he’s OK with me for not letting him quit. I think he’s OK that he hung in there.”
Mom was right. Per usual.
Ultimately, Carsen Edwards was bumped back to varsity from JV that year and helped Atascocita High School deep into the Texas state playoffs.
Ultimately, he averaged 23.6 points and 4.9 assists as a junior.
Ultimately, he averaged 26.3 points and 5.1 assists, posted a triple-double, dropped a school single-game record 50 points — by sticking 13-of-15 three-pointers — and led Atascocita to a 38-1 season and an appearance in the state finals as a senior.
Ultimately, he finally got that big-time college offer he was craving.
Ultimately, he was a pivotal piece to Purdue’s Sweet 16 run a season ago and even more so this season, as the Boilermakers earned a No. 2 seed and will play Texas Tech Friday for a spot in the Elite 8.
Ultimately, he became an All-American in only his second year of college. On a team loaded with all-stars.
One person has never doubted any of this could happen, even when Edwards himself may have.
“My mom continued to push me, continued to tell me she believed in me,” Edwards said, reflecting on that pivotal moment in his basketball life, years ago now, when he was ready to quit.
“I’m happy about that. My mom seems to know the best thing for me, so it was good that she did that.”
So Carsen Edwards goes through the process.
About 20 minutes before Purdue tips off, Edwards grabs the white athletic tape and spins it around his left wrist. One, two, three times, getting a good base. He doesn’t really need it for support of the physical kind: He doesn’t tape his wrist at all in practices. But what Edwards writes on the tape, what he feels in that moment to scribble in black sharpie? That offers support, in the way that matters more than any injury-preventing wrap could.
Starting this season, Edwards has written reminders, just for him, he says, on that tape. They’re simple — it’s not that significant of a surface to write on, honestly — but they’re powerful in their simplicity.
They’re reminders of his “why.”
And those always include his mom.
In one way or another.
Maybe he’ll carefully write: “Mama still stressing.” Maybe it’ll read: “Mama tired.” Maybe, it’ll say: “Help mama out,” which has been the most-recent message of late, including this NCAA Tournament.
Edwards is a hesitant to clarify the messages or say what the black-marker writing will declare for Purdue’s showdown against the Red Raiders Friday, though he already knows.
“It’s not like it’s so much of a difference or a change or I decide what I put,” Edwards said Thursday inside Purdue’s locker room, downplaying the ritual. “It’s just what I’m thinking about.”
And it’s rare he’s not thinking about Mom.
Though Carla says she has a good relationship with all of her children — Madison is 24, Jai is 21 and Aspen is 13 — she was a stay-at-home mom for most of Carsen’s life, which is probably one reason they developed such a tight bond.
Though some of that intense need was shaped through heartbreak, too.
When Carsen was 3, Carla lost a baby boy. About two months later, Carsen went to play at a neighbor’s house but wasn't supervised when he came home, so he crossed the street alone. And got hit by a car.
The impact threw little Carsen about 75 feet. He broke his leg in three places, fractured his arm and had bruising to his head and back.
“We had a tough year,” said Carla, referencing, too, how the death of one son meant she kept Carsen as her baby probably too long afterward. “My husband (James) traveled a lot, so Carsen was for me just to take care of. I had to pack him everywhere for 4-6 months until he got the cast off.”
Regardless of the circumstance, she rose for her kids.
"She just does everything," Carsen said. "I don’t feel like there’s nothing she can’t do."
Maybe it's because of that kind of respect. Maybe it's because Carsen wasn’t Carla's first child. Maybe it's because his personality traits are so similar to hers — the nurturing nature, the outspokenness, the emotions always simmering near the surface.
Whatever the reason, Carla always has been able to reach Carsen, to soothe him, to move him, to motivate him.
As a kid, Carsen was often nervous, so she’d send him off to school with a sign language “I love you” to settle him. It’s why Carsen does it now, before games, whether she’s in attendance or not. (And she will be Friday at the Garden.)
When he was uncertain of his basketball future, she didn’t just order him to stick with it, she worked to help facilitate it, lugging him to tournaments across the country, hoping exposure could help him land that college scholarship.
Instead of flipping out when she found out he gave away a pair of expensive sneakers to a middle school classmate, she just asked him to be honest for the reason he did it. Carsen said a kid was being teased for how he dressed “and I felt like he had no comeback for it, so I was like, ‘Well, dang, I want to give him a pair of shoes so that would be one thing they’d leave him alone about.’ ” That may have been a Carsen decision, but it was born out of his environment, of being taught to see a need and meet it.
That kind of gesture made mom's heart swell.
And she should have told him so.
She should tell him now. She knows she doesn’t tell him enough, how special he is.
When Carsen said recently his mom is the toughest person he knows, he meant it in the best way, in a quality-to-be-admired way, in him being impressed with all she’s done and all she continues to do for her kids.
It’s why he used to have her in his phone as “Superwoman.” (Now, it’s “Boss Lady.”)
But when she’s told he said that — how tough she is — Carla assumed it was because she’s tough on him, which she is. If he wants to be an elite-level player, someone has to tell him he’s not always great. Someone has to tell him he could play with more intensity on defense. Someone has to tell him to watch his shot selection. Someone has to do more than just puff up his ego.
Usually, it’s her.
And, probably, it’s because that’s how her dad always was with his four girls. He should have complimented more. He should have said he loved them more. He should have said he was proud of them — all who earned master’s degrees and support their families — more.
Carla knows she can fall into the same pattern with her kids. She’s trying to be better about it. So she recently told Carsen she was proud of him.
“I’m not going to lie, when she told me that, it did take me by surprise,” he said. “I was like, 'Really?' She doesn’t really tell me that often, but I just try to do the right stuff, be the kid she raised. I feel like I’m doing the right thing, for the most part."
He means off the court, being the guy who is quick to help others in need, the one who will welcome someone new, the one who doesn't like when someone is being left out.
But he easily could mean on the court, too.
Edwards' transformation from his freshman to sophomore seasons for the Boilermakers has been remarkable in that he's developing more skills and clearly becoming one of the nation's best guards, but he's found a way to not overshadow a group of successful, impressive-in-their-own-right senior teammates.
He's almost embarrassed to talk about his own accolades — and they're significant, with first-team all-Big Ten the least of them — and is almost reticent when asked about something he used to say to his mom often as a kid because of the implication.
He never wanted to leave his mom, always made him sad to think about it, so he'd tell her, "I'm going to build a house right next to yours."
He won't say if that dream still is alive, though it likely would be an achievable one.
Because that wrist tape tells the truth: He still has plans to "help mama out."
“I feel like if I can play well and, I guess, things go my way, I have an opportunity to, I guess, kind of, pay my mom back for all that she’s done for me,” he said in a very Carsen-like way of not wanting to publicly admit he, really, is a good player and, really, could pay her back.
“I honestly believe I wouldn’t be here without her. (The tape is) to always remember why I’m playing and that’s where I am today.”
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