HURST, Tex. – There's a plaque sitting on the desk of one of the assistant coaches inside the basketball office at L.D. Bell High School. It's one of those things you could've picked up at an ESPN Zone a few years ago, or received as a gift at Christmas from someone who knew you liked sports, but didn't exactly know what to get you. In bold lettering it reads, "Life is just the stuff that happens while we're waiting for the game to start."

Just a few feet away, leaning back in a chair with a huge smile on his face, in a Sacramento Kings sweatshirt and Ole Miss sweatpants, Marshall Henderson is still in the middle of all that life stuff. And he's never in more danger than he is when he's waiting for the game to start. That's been the case since high school, and it still follows him to this rainy day in February.

"If it wasn't basketball season," Henderson's father Willie, the head basketball coach at Bell, says, "oh my God. We always thought he'd wind up dead. Just the ride that he was on. He hung out with a lot of dumbasses and was one himself, and we were always worried. We're still worried now, but not as much."

Henderson stops by daily to see his dad and work out in the gym. It's been a few months since he got back from playing for the Reno Bighorns of the D-League, and he's trying to keep his mind and body occupied until the phone rings and he is told where to go next. His days aren't complicated – and that's not a bad thing – he sees his friends for lunch, goes to the lake to sit on a boat, watches the SEC Network constantly, plays basketball, and still goes out, occasionally, although not nearly as much as he used to.

It's a big change, and a necessary one, from what Henderson quickly became known for in two highly-publicized and utterly self-destructive seasons at Ole Miss. The volatile and polarizing scorer had his moments of superstardom in Oxford and delivered some of the greatest moments in Rebels history.