Utah Utes basketball: Lance Allred chronicles his amazing life in new book

Once when he was a student at the University of Utah, Lance Allred received an incomplete for his grade in a Middle East history class. It didn't make sense to the academic all-conference basketball player with a 3.8 GPA, who had submitted a well-researched 10-page final paper.

Puzzled and concerned, Allred typed up a letter and put it under his professor's door, questioning the incomplete grade, since he had done all of the work. A couple of days later, the professor told him why.

Apparently the paper was so well-written that the professor assumed the paper had been plagiarized because Allred was an athlete. After seeing other examples of Allred's writing, the professor realized his mistaken assumption, apologized and gave Allred the grade he deserved.

Some folks might wonder the same thing as the professor about Allred's new book, "Longshot: The Adventures of a Deaf Fundamentalist Mormon Kid and His Journey to the NBA." How could a 28-year-old basketball player write such a fascinating, funny and entertaining book?

The former East High, University of Utah and Weber State basketball player's book has detailed stories about his growing-up years in the polygamous, Fundamentalist LDS Rulon Allred clan, his challenges with hearing loss and an obsessive-compulsive diagnosis as well as a post-traumatic disorder aggravated by three years playing under coach Rick Majerus. It's topped off by the fulfillment of Allred's decade-long dream of making it to the NBA.

Allred wrote most of the book during a lonely winter he spent in the north of France during his first year of professional basketball.

"It's about having a dream and chasing it," he says, "because more important than whether you fail or succeed, it's whether you try."

Allred grew up as a gawky kid who talked funny and had large hearing aids on his protruding ears and was often made fun of by his schoolmates. He didn't even take up basketball until he was 14, but despite just average athletic ability, Allred made it all the way to the NBA in 2008 on sheer determination and spent two months with the Cleveland Cavaliers (yes, he knows LeBron James and calls him a "pretty down-to-earth guy").

After he was called up to Cleveland from the Idaho Stampede of the NBA D-League, Allred was featured in a story on NPR radio. A representative from Harper-Collins heard it, called his agent and said, "hey, this sounds like a wonderful story, we'd like to send a ghost writer out to get Lance's story.' "