Another sluggish, sultry summer day was wrapping up in San Jose. It had been the kind of weather that steamed pavement and made clothes stick to skin — the temperature hit 91 degrees that day — trying its best to lull the third largest city in California to sleep.

Rex Walters couldn’t sleep, though. The most important evening of his life was rapidly approaching, and the sun couldn’t set fast enough.

The 23-year-old University graduate with the smooth basketball stroke waited in his parents’ house, and he was antsy. Walters knew that night — the last night in June of 1993 — had something special in store for him.

The National Basketball Association’s annual draft was taking place, 2,500 miles away in Auburn Hills, Mich. There, the top American amateurs and European players would be picked by one of the league’s teams. Walters, a two-time All-Big Eight first team selection at Kansas, expected to be chosen in the first round.

He just didn’t know when it would happen.

The same blueprint of uncertainty awaits three more Jayhawk first-round hopefuls tomorrow night. At that time, the NBA draft commences once more — this time in New York City — and it will contain all the pressure of a buzzer-beating, game-tying three-point attempt in the national championship game.

Kansas underclassmen Darrell Arthur, Brandon Rush and Mario Chalmers have signed and sealed away their status as amateurs by hiring agents and staying in the draft. Now, they are waiting anxiously to be delivered to a team just like Walters was 15 years ago.

For Walters, trying to keep his routine ordinary on draft day was a necessity. Wake up, shower, work out at the local gymnasium and eat. But clearly, this was no ordinary day.

“It was going to determine where I was going to live and the people I was going to meet,” said Walters, now 38 and men’s basketball coach at the University of San Francisco.

He came home early to help clean his parents’ house, where nearly 30 friends and family members were coming to support him.

Home, surrounded by the people who loved him, provided a sense of comfort. He could’ve hopped on an airplane to sweat out the evening in an expensive suit, sitting with other first-round hopefuls in the draft night green room. Things just wouldn’t have been the same, though.

“I’m a pretty simple guy,” Walters said. “I didn’t need all that.”

Still, not even the cozy confines could drown out his apprehension and churning stomach. Walters’ demeanor became more serious in the hours leading up to the draft.

As the minutes droned on and friends tried keeping him relaxed, Walters tucked himself away from the living room chaos to his own room. He stared straight at the television set, waiting for a decision to be made.

The phone rang occasionally. If it wasn’t his agent updating Walters on the latest draft scenarios, there were calls from other franchises stating their interest in the 6-foot-4 shooting guard.

Ultimately, however, there was nothing Walters could do but watch and wait.

“For someone like myself who wants to control every situation, it was pretty difficult,” Walters said.

Fifteen times NBA commissioner David Stern strolled to the podium, making life-changing draft declarations. New homes awaited those men. New friends. New money.

Walters yearned to join that group as the lining of his stomach continued to disagree with him.

Then, the statement he worked so hard for so long to hear finally arrived.

“With the 16th pick in the 1993 NBA Draft,” Stern said, “the New Jersey Nets select Rex Walters, from the University of Kansas.”

The rest rushed by like a blur. Quick phone talks with Nets head coach Chuck Daly and general manager Willis Reed. A celebratory trip to Tony Roma’s restaurant for ribs. An early morning, cross-country flight in the works for a contract signing and his first press conference as a professional. He really was a first-round draft pick, and soon he would have the $650,000 rookie-year salary to prove it.

The first night of the rest of his life had begun, and sleep was the last thing on Walters’ mind.

* * * * *

NBA Draft Night.

It’s a rite of passage for the best young basketball players on the planet. Years of struggle and months of speculation and hype are whittled down to one evening with a staged production under bright lights. NBA prospects have their stats and body types dissected by analysts as every move is captured for a national television audience.

When Arthur, Rush and Chalmers declared for the draft, the hope was to cash in on their national championship season at the University. There is no better way for them to validate their departures than with a selection in the draft’s first round. Only those top 30 picks receive guaranteed contracts and financial stability for life. A player not drafted there must make a team’s regular-season roster to earn a salary.

Rush’s agent, Mark Bartelstein, knows the stakes will be high.

“It’s a tense night,” said Bartelstein, who is the CEO and founder of Chicago-based Priority Sports and Entertainment. Bartelstein also represented Walters 15 years ago. “It’s a night of great expectation. Suddenly, everything’s out of their control and they’re waiting for their name to get called.”

Bartelstein said he usually had a pretty good feel for teams that were interested in his clients.

“But on draft night,” he added, “anything can happen. And it often does.”

Despite the draft’s unpredictability, Arthur, Rush and Chalmers are projected to join the growing list of first-round draft selections at Kansas. In the 61-year history of the NBA draft, 20 Jayhawks have been chosen in round one, including 10 players since Walters. Among the most notable KU first rounders in school history are NBA Hall of Famers Wilt Chamberlain and Jo Jo White and recent NBA finals most valuable player Paul Pierce.

Typically, only potential lottery picks — those expected to be taken in the top 14 — are invited to attend the draft in person. Arthur and Rush may well be in that mix. Current draft projections list Arthur going anywhere from 10th to 18th and Rush between 13th and 25th. Chalmers, meanwhile, could be taken as high as No. 26 but could also slip to round two.

Kansas’ most recent first-round pick, Julian Wright, attended the draft last year and was taken 13th overall by the New Orleans Hornets. He said most NBA teams already knew their top draft choice before draft night. That decision is based, in part, on a player’s individual workouts with specific teams, interviews with those close to the player and even IQ tests.

Having played with all three of this year’s early draft entrants at Kansas, Wright gave his assessment of their chances while at a KU summer basketball camp two weeks ago.

“Obviously, these workouts can do a little bit in terms of where they will fall,” Wright said. “But I think they will all be in the first round.”

If the three do get drafted in round one, the nervous energy should dissipate. Even the 30th and final pick in this year’s first round has a pay scale guaranteeing him more than $1.5 million during the next two seasons.

* * * * *

With so much riding on every first round selection, it’s hard to believe there was once a time when things were different — when the NBA draft came and went for the University’s top professional prospects without them even knowing.

Bud Stallworth laughed at the mere thought of the draft being televised 36 years ago when he was selected in round one.

“It wasn’t like that,” said Stallworth, who works on campus as budget manager for Design and Construction Management at the University. “I’m serious. I know I wasn’t watching TV if they had it on. The fanfare, I mean, it was nothing.”

Stallworth is part of a small group of former Jayhawks — six, to be exact — taken in the NBA draft’s first round before the made-for-TV specials began annually in the 1980s.

Before then, six- and seven-figure salaries were the exception and not the norm, and players hardly ever declared for the draft without first finishing college.

Guys like Stallworth sat around wondering if somebody might call them about a draft that had taken place sometime during that week. There was no draft night hub to convene at — in fact, the draft didn’t even take place at night.

Stallworth was in his campus apartment when he received word from his agent that the Seattle Supersonics had taken him with the seventh pick in the 1972 NBA draft.

Unlike Walters or Wright, who met with team officials immediately, Stallworth didn’t fly out until two weeks after he was picked to meet with Seattle’s owner and review contract details. He chose the Supersonics over the American Basketball Association’s Denver Rockets, who drafted him at mid-year into their league.

For Jo Jo White, the news came at a college all-star game in Hawaii in 1969. At the time, White had to worry about two drafts — the NBA and the military. He said he actually received a two-year injunction into military service before the NBA draft, which scared some teams away from selecting him.

But Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach took care of that. He secured a six-month stay in the reserves for White instead of two years in the service. Boston then chose White with the ninth pick in the 1969 NBA draft, and Auerbach called to let him know.

Then, there’s Walt Wesley’s story.

The 6-foot-11 center was sitting in class atop Mount Oread when he was drafted in May 1966. He didn’t find out until later that afternoon, after he headed for Allen Fieldhouse to play pick-up hoops with the team. KU coach Ted Owens told him the news: the Cincinnati Royals took him with the sixth pick of round one.

Wesley hadn’t even heard from Cincinnati, but he called his parents to let them know. Not until weeks later, after he graduated from school, did he finally see the city and team that drafted him.

“It wasn’t a big party,” Wesley said. “We weren’t all sitting around waiting. We didn’t call everybody and say, ‘Well the draft is taking place, we’re going to sit and watch.’ It’s a different day, and a different era.”

That much is clear from listening to the University’s former first round draft choices talk about the current state of the NBA draft.

Stallworth said the competition to get drafted now was tougher because of the influx of foreign-born players.

Wesley says there is more pressure on the athletes to perform immediately.

White cites NBA teams’ desires to draft players on potential and not skill level.

Even Walters’ draft experience seems slightly removed from the shoe deal and video game endorsement era that has become more prevalent among top picks.

But for all the differences, one element of the draft remains the same all these years later. It’s an element that Arthur, Rush and Chalmers, despite their angst, are just one day from finding out about.

“You’ve got to be happy man,” Stallworth said. “That’s human nature. All you’ve got to do is show up and practice and play for the rest of your life, and you’re cool.”

- Edited by Rustin Dodd