By STEFAN MODRICH, Staff Writer
Brownsville Veterans Memorial’s Damian Maldonado is well-known for his offensive prowess.
The Chargers’ leading scorer this season also was the team’s most efficient, scoring 16.4 points per game and shooting 42 percent from the field.
But the 6-foot-4 senior also set single season career-highs in steals, with 45, and blocks, with 21. Maldonado led Brownsville Veterans with 225 rebounds, 142 of which were defensive boards, making 2019-20 the third season in which he racked up at least 100 defensive rebounds.
He is The Brownsville Herald’s 2019-20 Defensive Player of the Year.
Brownsville Veterans coach Larry Gibson has seen Maldonado continue to evolve as one of the Rio Grande Valley’s top all-around players.
“His biggest thing is leading by example,” Brownsville Veterans coach Larry Gibson said. “This year, he was a little more vocal.”
Few know Maldonado better than his coach, and Gibson knew his star post player wanted to make a run to at least the third round of the playoffs and was disappointed to have fallen short of that goal.
“He has nothing to hang his head about,” Gibson said. “I’ve enjoyed coaching him for the last four years … he’s always been a special kid. Very few (others) have had the heart that he has had.”
One of the main reasons why Maldonado will live on in Chargers lore was the stage in which he delivered one of the most clutch performances of his career — making the game-winning 3-pointer in a bi-district playoff victory over La Joya Palmview on Feb. 25 to cap a 38-point, 14-rebound performance.
But it took a key defensive sequence in which Maldonado was heavily involved to set up that last-second shot.
Against the Lobos he had six deflections, a block on a layup attempt by Palmview’s Irving Gamez that led to a layup for teammate Matthew Maddox and a defensive rebound during the contest’s final 90 seconds that allowed the Chargers to put their fate and the ball in the hands of their best player.
In an 80-75 win over Corpus Christi Veterans Memorial on Dec. 5, 2019, Maldonado had eight defensive rebounds, four steals, and three blocks. He had four steals in a 76-40 win over Kingsville King on Dec. 6, 2019, and four steals and four deflections in Brownsville Veterans’ District 32-5A opener, a 53-39 win Jan. 3.
Maldonado said he takes pride in his defensive rebounding and ability to quickly get in the flow of an offensive possession, but also utilizing his size and quickness to expand his range outside the paint to the perimeter.
“I don’t think a lot of people scored on me specifically,” Maldonado said. “I don’t think it’s ever happened where I faced up someone at the 3-point line and they were able to get a jumper off on me. I’m pretty tall, I’m pretty heavy, so you can’t really move me that much.”
Maldonado felt tightness in his back following a hard fall in a District 32-5A game against Edcouch-Elsa, but he played through pain in a loss to Pace.
“It hurt to turn over in my bed and sleep (the night before the game against the Vikings on Jan. 21),” Maldonado said. “But I had to play, because it was the Pace game.”
Even though he pulled down 10 rebounds despite being hobbled in his first matchup with Pace, the loss served as a wakeup call for Brownsville Veterans.
“We were getting a little high-headed,” Maldonado said. “Myself included. We didn’t think we were beatable. … We hadn’t lost since early December. We were blowing teams out, and we were playing really good. Pace just came out on us and played really hard, and they made us play their game. … That’s how they beat us. That kind of humbled us, and that’s what we needed to win the other games.”
The second time around, Maldonado was back to full strength, recording nine defensive rebounds, three blocks, six deflections and one steal in a 65-51 win over the Vikings on Feb. 14 to clinch the district crown.
In a span of four years, Maldonado embodied Brownsville Veterans’ transformation from scrappy underdog to heavy favorite and embraced being the team to beat in 32-5A and in Brownsville.
“Everyone wants to beat (Brownsville Veterans),” Maldonado said. “When everyone plays us, they want to go at us and they want to say they’ve beaten us. They want to say, ‘I scored on Damian’ or ‘I locked down Damian.’ It is a really good accomplishment to beat us … it feels the same down here (for other teams) as it is for us when we beat (Corpus Christi Veterans Memorial) up there.”