SUGARLAND, Texas — Mike Newlin is an island unto himself.
If the 52-year-old Newlin was a participant in the second season of "Survivor," he would be the least likely to be voted off the island. His competitive juices, brilliance and spiritual life would make him the lone "Survivor."
The former Utah All-American (1967-71) is nothing if not resourceful.
"First of all, the key to life is to be around superior people," said Newlin, who was a Rhodes Scholar and an academic All-American for Utah, too. "Sports is a challenge, but when you're in a college atmosphere, it has little significance without succeeding in your academic environment. That's the truth.
"If you are given the opportunity to do both, and you don't respect them and want to achieve in both, then in my mind you have failed. You have cheated yourself."
By his own admission, Newlin has been "a loner." Yet he excelled in team sports for the Utes and later with the NBA's Houston Rockets, New Jersey Nets and New York Knicks.
"The NBA has changed so much," said the California native. "I see guys come into the league completely unprepared, not only with the basic fundamentals, but for life, too. It's such a non-artistic game. They fall in love with their dunks and forget what makes a team successful: being a great teammate. Defense isn't even in their game. They have no idea what would make the people around them better . . .
""That's a given they can dunk. That sells tickets. But not the game as a whole. It doesn't matter how many dunks they made. Basketball in its purest sense is played within the brilliance of your mind. And also within the team concept. The actual flow of the game . . . not from the non-artistic things the game brings to the individual."
For his 13-year NBA career, Newlin finished with a 15-points-per-game average. But what he is most proud of was his foul shooting, because of the long hours away from the game it took to perfect it. His 87 percent career foul-shooting average is fourth-best all time.
"Everyday, after practice, I had to shoot 100 swishers (no rimmers) before I left the court," Newlin said. "That was an easy thing to ask of myself. I didn't feel compelled to do it. I liked perfecting my shot. If you feel compelled to do something, you're doing it out of fear. That's an issue of insecurity for me. I was not impressed with it, because I liked doing it. It was expected of me.
"But I am proud of myself, because I took the time to do it."
Newlin is a multimillionaire, not just from his basketball career, which was actually played before the big money started flowing from the owners, but because of his life's endeavors.
Excuse the pun, but Newlin has found his Camelot — a business, Camelot Desserts, which is the second-largest distributor of desserts in the nation. He also is a real estate tycoon.
"They are my mini-empires, because I was driven to build them up," Newlin said. "I wasn't expected to succeed in doing them. When you first get into something like these things, you might face a couple nasty rejections. But when driven to succeed, there are tiny miracles along the way. Something like that impresses me.
"I never relied on anything I did in the NBA to make my life a success. It was just living up to my God-given talents. You shouldn't extract from that to give you satisfaction for the rest of your life. The glory evaporates. The applause dies down. The sun goes down."
While playing for the late Jack Gardner's Utes, Newlin finished with a career average of 23.1 points per game, which made him the fourth all-time leading scorer, with 1,849 points. His free throw percentage of 83.4 places him third behind Keith Van Horn's 85.1 percent and Michael Doleac's 84.3 percent.
"I really loved my time in Salt Lake City," Newlin said. "It's one of the greatest cities in the world. I met my mentor and one of my best friends, Bill Gnadt, while attending school there. He's the greatest natural resource in Utah.
"He really taught me mental toughness. He got me into weights before it became the thing do to. But what I really enjoyed was his brilliance in making me aware of my surroundings. He had the greatest influence on my life."
Newlin has mastered four different languages — English, German, Hebrew and Latin. He also has read the Bible 25 times in his life. "You can say that I put my faith in Christ," Newlin said.
He still has a nightly radio sports talk show. And he did color with the Houston Rockets for six years. "I always said to myself that when I started to repeat sentences and become redundant, I would quit. And I did."
He is such a perfectionist that he is working now on his golf game.
"People said that when I played basketball, I left everything on the court, attempting to become a complete player," he said. "That's why I am attacking this game the same way. If I didn't, I would be cheating myself. Then, I would have failed."
And Newlin couldn't live with that.
E-mail: torch@qwest.net