Michael Lee, who starred in both football and basketball at Portland’s Jefferson High, put on his running shoes and stood nervously on the track at Kansas Memorial Stadium with his best friend, Aaron Miles, and 12 other members of the 2001-02 Jayhawk basketball team.
It was late August 2001 — the first day of the school year in fact — when then-KU freshman Lee and his new college hoops teammates were told to answer the starter’s gun by completing as many laps as they could in 12 minutes.
Six-and-a-half laps stood as the minimum standard for a Kansas player to be allowed to officially start practicing with coach Roy Williams’ Jayhawk squad.