After Miles Heide’s freshman season at Mount Si High School outside Seattle, coach Jason Griffith gathered Heide and his family for a meeting to map out the next three years. Griffith talked about Heide becoming the best big man in the state, competing for a state title at Mount Si, being a coveted college recruit by the time he was a senior.
Jason Heide, his father, listened intently and said: “You do realize he just played JV.”
Griffith laughs about it now. “I truly believed,” he says, “this was where Miles was going to get.”
He did because of genes. Heide’s father is 6-foot-11, his mother 6-4, his older sister 6-7. All three played college basketball, his parents at Oregon State in the late 1990s, his sister at Cal and now Oregon State as well.
But he also did because of parenting. Jason and Sissel Heide got it, understanding the pitfalls of America’s obsession with youth sports, understanding that centers take longer to develop than guards, understanding that the best player in middle school isn’t necessarily going to the same in high school or college, understanding the turtle sometimes wins the race. Embracing the virtue of patience in an instant-gratification world.
Heide is a 6-10 post at San Diego State now, getting rare rotation minutes for a true freshman big — even starting once — on an 8-2 team that returns to the floor Tuesday night against NAIA Saint Katherine following a 10-day break for final exams.
The same Heide who was demoted to the “B” team on his eighth grade AAU club and played JV as a high school freshman.
“We’ve drilled into his head that it’s a process and it’s going to take time,” Jason Heide says. “Some kids get frustrated because other kids develop so much faster. I’ve seen it so many times and experienced it myself. You know, some kids will develop so fast and everyone thinks they’re so great, and by the time they’re a senior in high school, they don’t even play basketball anymore.
“It’s a long game. Miles has always known that. It doesn’t mean that’s easy to go through, but he bought into that. I think he sees the reward and benefit of being patient and keep working. It’s definitely paid off for him.”
Or as Miles puts it: “There’s a lot of experience that’s happened in front of me that’s been ed down.”
Jason Heide and Sissel Pierce were both from small towns in Washington but on opposite sides of Seattle. They didn’t meet until Oregon State, in the athletic training room.
“When you’re stuck there, hooked up to a (muscle) stim machine for a half-hour,” Jason says, “you’ve got to make conversation with somebody.”
Sissel, a year ahead in school, won a state title at Wiskah Valley High and ranks in the Oregon State’s career top 10 in field-goal percentage and blocks. Jason Heide’s coach at Issaquah High told the Seattle Times when he committed to Beavers that “he’s a late bloomer but he’s blooming at a rapid pace.” By his senior year at OSU in 2000-21, he averaged 13.8 points and ranked second in what was then the Pac-10 in shooting at 55.1 percent.
They married, moved back to Washington and had two sons and two daughters.
“The idea was never, oh, we’re going to groom a bunch of basketball players,” Jason says. “It just kind of ended up that way.”
He insists they never pushed their children toward their sport, and as proof they don’t let them travel ball teams until sixth grade while encouraging them to play other sports (Miles picked football). With all projected to be tall, they also dialed back early expectations and ingrained the sense that the goal was to be good at 18, not 12.
“I don’t know, we’ve always had the philosophy that we wanted to start them a little bit later, let them be kids,” Jason says. “I feel like kids are getting burned out so much and so quickly these days. Miles wasn’t always the best kid on the team and he didn’t always play a lot (in games), especially through eighth grade.
“When he was cut from the ‘A’ team and put on the ‘B’ team, I think that provided a little bit of motivation for him. Once he saw things were happening, even after a couple years working on it and not really seeing results, it just kind of took off from there.”
That was his sophomore year, his first on varsity in a Mount Si program that annually ranks among the best in the state. He averaged 7.5 points and 9.4 rebounds per game.
Junior year: 14.5 points and 10.1 rebounds.
Senior year: 17.4 points and 13.4 rebounds
But even as a junior — true story — Heide never attempted a single jump shot. It didn’t mean he wasn’t practicing them; he was. He just wasn’t fully ready to unveil that dimension of his growing skillset in games, and Mount Si — which had several college prospects on the perimeter — didn’t need him to.
“It definitely takes longer for taller players to develop,” Heide says. “My sister went through that. I saw that in her. My parents went through it, too. They just said, ‘It’s step by step. You’re going to build each thing brick by brick each month, each year.’ They preached that to me.”
SDSU coach Brian Dutcher first saw Heide at a high school event in Arizona during the spring of his junior year. He was so smitten that he made himself the lead recruiter, a rarity for Division I head coaches who regularly delegate recruiting grunt work to assistants.
Every time Dutcher went to see Heide, he had added another element to his game — a turnaround, a fade-away, a mid-range jumper. By the end of the summer, he was taking and making 3s.
It’s hard enough for true freshman to get minutes in a transfer-fueled era where college teams have adopted a get-old, stay-old mantra, especially on a team coming off an appearance in the national championship game. It’s even harder for a true freshman big.
“It’s the hardest position to come to in college basketball, to go from a high school big to college big,” Dutcher says. “In high school, you’re playing on eggshells. If you turn the wrong way and someone falls down, it’s a foul on you. They always call over-the-back, whether you are or not. You get triple-teamed when it goes inside. You can’t play physical at all, then you come up here and all it is, is physical.
“But I’m really happy with his development. Obviously, he needs to get better, and he knows that. And he will. There’s only so much you can do. Time is important to the development of any player. Sometimes you just have to be patient and know it’s going to take time to become a really good college player.”
Heide understands that. His parents understand that.
“I can definitely tell, especially in situations where the coaches may get on him,” says SDSU senior Reese Waters, in his fourth year of college basketball after spending the first three at USC. “As a freshman, I know I wasn’t able to take it. I would get very frustrated. I like that when they do get on him, he’s quick to ask a question, he’s quick to say what he may have thought and he’s quick to fix that mistake he made.
“I’m pretty sure he understands that the coaches are there to help him, they’re not there to break him.”
Heide’s stats through 10 games are modest: 9.9 minutes, 2.3 points, 2.0 rebounds, six blocks, four steals. But he’s playing behind a sixth-year senior (Jaedon LeDee) who ranks sixth in Division I in scoring, and three other starters are in their fourth or fifth seasons of college basketball.
Against UC Irvine, with LeDee sidelined by a sprained elbow, Heide became only the sixth true freshman to start a game for the Aztecs over the past decade. The others: Lamont Butler, Nathan Mensah, Matt Mitchell, Jeremy Hemsley and Trey Kell.
“He’s learning from the fire hose, he’s getting it full tilt,” Jason Heide says. “He’s doing exactly what he should be doing — he’s defending well, he’s getting rebounds, he’s changing shots. He’s getting good game experience, which is super valuable for a freshman. He’s not one of those kids who’s worried about how many shots he’s getting or how many points he’s scoring. He just wants to do his job and keep progressing, keep getting better.”
The long game. Heide is among the biggest gym rats in a colony of them at SDSU, constantly staying after practice to grow his game, free throws one day, 3-pointers another, mid-range jump shots, defensive slides, rebounding drills. Step by step, brick by brick.
“It’s not the first time he’s been through the process,” his father says. “It’s just starting over, only at the next level. … I think the kid who started the season to the kid who ends the season will be two different people.”
