Catholic Central's TJ Nadeau can draw inspiration from his father on how to overcome anything

Todd Nadeau sat in the stands at Novi Detroit Catholic Central a couple of weeks ago and watched his son, TJ, match up against Birmingham Brother Rice's sophomore phenom, Elijah Williams.

The 6-foot-7 Williams had a couple of inches on Nadeau, a senior, but Nadeau had something on Williams: A certain kind of grit that let everyone in the packed gym know that he wasn’t going anywhere, and he certainly wasn’t going to back down.

It was the key matchup of the game and it led directly to CC’s surprising 55-53 upset that sent a surge through the Catholic League’s Central Division, the toughest league in the state.

Williams is the son of Detroit Pistons coach Monty Williams and is a tremendous talent, playing on USA Basketball’s national team for his age group. That mattered little to Nadeau, who was brilliant defensively.

He held Williams to 10 points, all on free throws. Nadeau limited him to four shots from the field, all of which were missed.

Almost as a bonus, Nadeau scored 12 points, converting an up-and-under move for a basket, using a double spin move for a bucket and hitting a timely 3-point basket as well.

“I didn’t know how much I was going to score in that game,” Nadeau said. “But I knew that if I could do one thing it was to make sure I guard him really well, make sure I take him out of the game. As the offense comes, the defense flows.”

It was a game to remember for Todd, who also played at Catholic Central and graduated in 1980.

But unlike TJ, the youngest of his three children, Todd, 62, never had the opportunity to play his senior year, even though that summer he had impressed several East Coast college coaches with his play at the Five-Star Basketball Camp.

On Aug. 7, 1979, Todd was operating a machine cutting aluminum at Belanger Inc. He forgot to turn off the machine when he began cleaning the blade and cut off his right hand at the wrist.

Eventually he was transported to Detroit’s Harper Hospital, where a team of six surgeons spent 13 hours reattaching the hand.

Three days later, an 8-hour surgery attached more veins and an artery from his leg was used to help the blood flow.

Todd was hospitalized for five months; once he was released, he joined the basketball team but never played that season.

He eventually played at Albion College, where he helped form a Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter after he helped design a brace he could wear to protect his hand.

Born into basketball

TJ listened intently as his father retold the story about his senior year. It wasn’t the first time he had heard it.

“I’ve heard it a few times,” he said. “I never really bug him about the details. That’s not something you want to talk about. But for the most part, I got the idea how of how it went down, what type of team CC was back then.”

Back then, CC was a state power, winning the Class A title the year before Todd enrolled.

The Shamrocks are trying to regain that lost glory under first-year coach Tory Jackson, an all-state player from Saginaw Buena Vista who was a four-year starter at point guard for Notre Dame.

Jackson wasn’t at CC last season, but watched videos of all of its games over the spring and summer and likes what he has seen from TJ so far this season.

“He’s more disciplined, more focused, more focused on winning; doing what’s best for the team,” Jackson said. “Sometimes what’s best for the team is him being aggressive, taking over. And sometimes it’s like the other day, when he’s the guy that facilitates.”

And then there are games like the one against Rice, when TJ has to be the team’s defensive stopper.

“So he’s bought in and against Rice he was so great defensively,” Jackson said. “Some people said he couldn’t defend, but he’s been showing it all season. This was the matchup we wanted to see. I didn’t want him shying away from Elijah and look what happened.”

After graduating from Albion, Todd earned a master’s degree in psychology from Western Michigan and works with Performance Psychology and Integrated Neurology in Novi, helping people overcome traumatic experiences.

“I think a lot of what I’ve been through has really put me in a position to help a lot of people,” Todd said. “I deal with people that have had life-changing events and I get it. I get how difficult it is to emotionally and mentally get through it.”

There are legions of parents who live vicariously through their kids when it comes to athletics, especially high school athletics. After the way Todd’s high school career ended so tragically, he could be a perfect candidate to take that route.

Then you throw in TJ’s mother, Julie — an all-stater at South Lyon who had a brilliant career at Miami (Ohio), where she is in the school’s athletic Hall of Fame — and you have a recipe for disaster.

But that never developed. Their two older daughters had no interest in athletics, outside of equestrian. So it was left up to TJ to choose his path.

“We didn’t want to be THAT parent, living through their kid,” Julie said. “Whatever God has designed for them is what we wanted to support them and what their gifts are.”

Once he chose to play basketball, his parents were happy to help, choosing which AAU programs to be connected with, and it progressed from there.

“It’s kind of like here at CC, it was such a good culture,” Todd said. “All of the people he played for were wonderful people. So it was more than just basketball. It’s been a real life experience from him to grow up and meet all these wonderful people and compete. He’s just happens to be very gifted at it.”

Staying a parent, not a coach

Back in the day, Todd was a gifted player, too. And he found ways to regain some of the skills he had once upon a time.

He is an amazing golfer — one-handed, of course — and he was good enough, especially when TJ was younger, to give his son some competition on the basketball court. That was especially helpful when the coronavirus pandemic made it difficult to get into a gym to play.

“Him and I would go down to South Lyon,” Todd said. “There was a church there with a bunch of baskets and we would play every day. We’d go down there and go to war against each other. I’d get him a few games, he’d get me a few games.”

Even Julie, who played professionally in Switzerland, would get in on the one-on-one games against TJ.

“I’d always go up against my dad and my mom — many times,” TJ said. “Probably when I got into high school, I started taking him down a little more.

“I was always strong. She thought she was strong.”

One of the unintended benefits of playing AAU basketball is the one-on-one time a parent gets with their child driving to and from practices and games.

Unfortunately, some parents waste that time critiquing their child to the point that their child grows to resent the know-it-all parent and stops listening.

“It’s a real balance between not being a critic and trying to tell him how to play the game,” Todd said. “When we’d be on road trips together, I asked him about what he thought of the game and he’d share his thoughts. We’d kind of have a talk about it and then he’d go to sleep.”

The Nadeaus were able to find the right mix of encouragement and guidance so as not to be overbearing when it came to their son’s basketball interests.

“I always thought they never applied any pressure on me, they never had to force the game,” TJ said. “He always told me if I really wanted it he had the opportunity to set me up in these areas.

“They said I have to want it, not them, which is a great way, too, of knowing that it was something I’d have to choose, not them choosing it for me.”

TJ has his own trouble to overcome heading into his senior season. Last season, he dislocated his left (non-shooting) shoulder, but elected to delay surgery until after AAU ball and summer ball with the Shamrocks.

Typical recovery time is 6 months, but TJ returned in less than 4 months and is still trying to rehab the shoulder.

It also serves as a reminder of what his father had gone through.

“If you do go through it, coming out on the good side, it’s not always easy,” Todd said. “He had 23 surgeries and I’ve had one. Just the one, it kind of shows you the perspective of how hard it is to know that you had something and now you can’t have it back for whatever amount of time it is.”

As he recovered in the fall, TJ marveled at how his dad was able to survive — not only the surgeries, but the reality of never being able to play a second of basketball his senior year.

Through it all, TJ was gained even more admiration for the guy he used to play one-on-one against.

“His perspective, he missed not only basketball, but school and life,” TJ said. “He was stuck in a hospital for that long. To be able to sit there and really think about all of the stuff you’re going through and missing out on is not an easy place to be in mentally.

“To be able to come out that on the positive end and be able to break through barriers and go to college and be able to figure out ways to play basketball and still do all of the fun activities in life that you enjoy and want to do that just shows the person you are to do it.”

Mick McCabe is a former longtime columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at mick.mccabe11@gmail.com. Follow him @mickmccabe1. Order his book, “Mick McCabe’s Golden Yearbook: 50 Great Years of Michigan’s Best High School Players, Teams & Memories,” now at McCabe.PictorialBook.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Why Catholic Central's TJ Nadeau can draw inspiration from his father