What happened to Denby's Sidney Mitchell?
While speaking on the phone with long-time Detroit Public School League sports announcer Daryl Weaver, he brought up an unfamiliar name from back in the day: Sidney Mitchell of Detroit Denby. Who was he, and why hadn't I heard of him before? Weaver didn't seem to have much that he wanted to say. So I tried reaching out to Mitchell's former head coach at Denby, Rueben Washington, but he didn't want to talk. Neither did some of his former teammates. Now I really became intrigued. So I did some digging, and it led me to why people shy away from the name Sidney Mitchell.
Detroit PSL basketball in the 90s was no rec league. If you were considered one of the best then, you really had game. Names such as Jalen Rose, Emmanual "Hard Work" Bibb, Willie Mitchell, Robert Traylor, Winfred Walton, Antonio Gates, Willie Green, and others dominated that era. And you can add Sidney Mitchell to that list.
Mitchell was a 6-3 guard for the Tars, and one of the best in the state. For a bigger guard, they said he was athletic and smooth, had a killer first-step, and his mid-range jump-shot was outstanding. His former classmates even believed he had NBA potential. That's a lot to put on a high school player from the far east side of Detroit, but that's how highly Mitchell was thought of on the court at Denby.
From the time he stepped foot into high school, Mitchell was on the varsity team at Denby. Some say people in the school were jealous of him and his early success. That's easy to see. Starting on varsity in the PSL was almost unheard of during that era. He made the PSL honorable mention team as a freshman in 1995, then was named to the All-City second team in 1996 as a sophomore, and before you knew it, he was on the All-City first team as a junior in 1997. Mitchell was a gifted basketball player, and everyone knew it.
"That was Rueben Washington's baby," said Mitchell's former teammate at Denby Rashad Lee. "He looked after him for a few years. Coach Washington recruited him out of the 8th grade, and he came right in starting. There were a few guys who didn't like that. Back then, there weren't a lot of guys coming in and starting as freshmen on varsity as I can remember. Maybe guys like Willie Mitchell, Jermaine Jackson, or Winfred Walton, but it wasn't too many guys coming in doing that."
"Allen Iverson was his favorite player. He practiced the crossover like Allen Iverson. He had a nice wind-up crossover, and a nice hesitation move. We had the snap-off pants back then, and Allen Iverson used to have half of them snapped up, and half of them open. So Sid took that from Allen Iverson. That was his style. He wore No.22."
As a sophomore, Mitchell helped the Denby Tars reach the state semifinals, before losing to eventual champion Saginaw in 1996. As a junior, Denby won the city title over King. Tom Izzo (Michigan State) and Steve Fisher (Michigan) were coming on Kelly Road to recruit him as well, so basketball life was going well for him.
"I knew of him by freshman year, because he was already on varsity," said Dante Darling, who played basketball at Central. "They used to always talk about Corey Robinson (Finney), Terrell Riggs (Finney), and Sidney Mitchell. They were the east side. But Sidney stood out because he was doing everything by himself at Denby. He was ahead of his time."
The ABCD Camp was the premier high school basketball camp in the 90s, with all of the top players from around the country participating in it. In the summer of 1997, Mitchell was invited to attend the camp in Teaneck, New Jersey with a few other top guys from Michigan, which included Darling and his Central teammate Antonio Gates, Teremun Johnson (Deporres), Omar Ziegler (Redford) and LaVell Blanchard (Ann Arbor Pioneer).
The top players in the nation around that time were names you might recognize, like Corey Maggette. Vincent Yarbrough, Quentin Richardson, Dan Gadzuric, Al Harrington, Demarr Johnson and Rashad Lewis, who were also at the ABCD Camp, where Mitchell and the group from the Detroit area shined.
"All of those guys were on USA Today," said Darling. "None of us were on the list of top players for the class of 1998. But me, Antonio, Sidney and the others knew we were better than those guys. We were all on the same team called the Detroit Pistons, and we said that we were going to destroy these guys. We won every game there, and beat everybody bad. Those boys had talent, but they didn't have any heart. We were really good."
"But Sidney was ahead of his time. He had game like (Richard) Rip Hamilton. He had a nice mid-range game, could run off picks, that boy was unreal. It was unreal, the performance he displayed down there at the ABCD Camp. But I noticed he was also on some political stuff. He would also question how they were making money off of us and how we couldn't get paid from it. I didn't know him that well in Detroit, so I didn't know if that was normal for him or not. But he was talking about this stuff 20 years ago. He was before his time in a lot of ways."
Off the court, Mitchell was described as very popular in Denby, but stayed to himself and had one girlfriend named Kenyetta. He was from the east side near Jefferson and Lakewood and was known to dress nice, listen to Wu Tang Clan, watch Martin. He was your average teenager in 1990s Detroit, who just so happened to be really good on the basketball court.
Mitchell and teammates Lee, Ronald Hearns, Duane Williams, Toberi Jones, Ed Smith, Bruce Lawrence and others helped Denby win its first and only basketball city title in 1997, but lost shortly after to Grosse Pointe South in the first round of the state district playoffs. That would be the final game Mitchell suited up for at Denby.
With Mitchell, there are more questions than answers as to what really happened to him, but stories circulated that his marijuana was laced while at a party at some point during the summer of 1997. He was a known weed smoker, but it never effected his play on the court. He had a few run-ins with Detroit Police that summer, arrested for disorderly conducts charges, and one DUI charge, where he led them on a chase. He hadn't even started his senior year of high school yet, and his once-promising life was coming to and end.
They said he began to lose his mind, and was delusional, side effects of possibly being drugged. There are stories of him walking around the neighborhood with a full length mink coat on in the summertime. He wasn't himself anymore. They said he was hanging around with the wrong crowd, and as great of a basketball player as he was, not everyone wanted to see him succeed.
"I used to call Sid "Superman" in high school," said Chris Moore, who played football at Denby. "We had heard stories of how he was acting over the summer, but one day he had came to school during senior year, and we were all happy to see him. He was the hero of the school. Everybody loved him. But when he walked in the class, he didn't know who we were. Sid didn't have a haircut, he was growing a beard, and he looked bad. He had on a long-sleeved Coogi sweater, shorts, and some Timberland boots. But it was hot outside. I asked him what was wrong, but he was acting weird, and was responding like he didn't know who I was."
This was obviously unusual to Moore, who ran cross country with Mitchell, so they knew each other, and it wasn't like him to look and act the way he was. Maybe the rumors of him being drugged were true. What else could explain his behavior in Denby that day, and over the summer?
"When the bell rung, he got up and just took off running out the classroom and everybody started laughing," said Moore. "So, we're in the hallway, and he's out there bouncing a basketball. The security guards told him to put it up. He continued to bounce it, slammed it hard one last time, and left out the school. He was gone for the day."
"The next day, Sid came to school in the morning with a dog. He came in the school with the dog, which made everybody scramble and run. He was really messed up. Security was trying to stop him, but he had a big dog with him. And he just kept saying that he was taking his dog for a walk. He even became aggressive. People really had tears in their eyes, because at this point, we knew he was gone. They messed his life up. They sent us all upstairs and I never saw Sid again."
Mitchell never played basketball for Denby during his senior year, and was barely able to attend school as a regular student. The outstanding basketball player, son, brother, boyfriend, and friend that everyone once knew was gone. He would have been of the top players in the entire state that season, and a serious candidate to win Mr. Basketball and play in the Big Ten.
He couldn't continue on going to school at Denby, and was even enrolled at Southeastern at one point but never finished high school in 1998 like he was supposed to with his classmates. He tried to take his own life, shooting himself in the eye. He died on September 24, 1998 from complications from his gunshot wound, after slipping into a coma. He was just 19-years-old. His funeral was held six days later at a church not too far from where he grew up, during a closed casket ceremony. Mitchell had suffered pain for a year or so, both physically and mentally, but wouldn't have to anymore.
"His life ended in a bad way," said Dennis Moses who grew up with Mitchell. "It's a lot of people that was in his inner-circle that know the truth. We all grew up together off East Jefferson. He hung with the wrong crowd. It was a sad situation. But on a lighter note, he was by far one of the best talents to come off of the east side."
Indeed he was. Often Mitchell's name is never brought up when the best guards ever from the city are discussed. But he belongs right there. He tasted early success as a basketball player at Denby, and was destined for more greatness on court, but that was all taken away from him for some reason, and by who, we may never know. Mitchell's life ended with tragedy, but it will be remembered by how many lives he touched with the way he shot and dribbled the basketball.