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1 @DreAllDay Introduction 4 Leaving Masterman, With Instructions 5 Organized Basketball 9 The Fall And Rise 16 Finally 25 Freshman Year of College 36 Sophomore Year 43 Junior Year 62 Senior Year 82 Epilogue & Notes 95

This is a free PDF of Buy A Game. If you would prefer to read it via your Amazon Kindle (or the free Kindle app available for iOS devices), you can get Buy A Game here for $2.99. Read More By Dre Baldwin: The Mental Handbook The Mirror Of Motivation The Super You The Overseas Basketball Blueprint

2 @DreAllDay “Peace, king.”

“Peace, king.”

“Listen -- there go the book on your life.

“Right.”

“Think anybody’ll read it?”

“No fuckin’ doubt.“

“Let’s make history, homie.”

“Aight, then.”

- NaS & AZ, The Flyest

3 @DreAllDay Introduction

I have had the idea of writing a book for a while now, and the beauty of the Internet is that anyone can put their work out there -- websites, workout videos, books -- freely without having to navigate through the traditional gatekeepers of self-expression. The Internet also allows one to experiment and do trial runs of their work, like this book: I made it free to all because the most important part of putting this out is your response; I know I can get a lot better at this writing thing and your critiques will be my first step in doing so.

What you are about to read is my story as a basketball player -- only as it pertains to basketball -- from the time I began playing the game up to and through my college years. It is to be hoped that you find it interesting, insightful, descriptive, and entertaining. If so you should tell me. If you don’t, I want to know about that too, and why. Speak your mind.

Enjoy.

#WOYG

4 @DreAllDay Leaving Masterman, With Instructions

Saying my final goodbyes after graduating from eight grade, I told Brandon, the best player in our class, that I'd see him in the future. 'Pub' games was what I was referring to, or the Philadelphia Public League, the sports league encompassing all the high schools in the city. Brandon said, "Aight, I'll see you." That was that. Middle school was over, high school was next. I left the Masterman building focused only on how I’d make the team at E&S in September.

I was on my way to the George Washington Carver High School of Engineering & Science, HSES or E&S for short. E&S was really good in basketball. Making the team there would be much tougher than making it at Masterman, which also was a high school. It was the best in the city, statistically. They didn't accept me. Thus, E&S. I was glad to leave Masterman. The shadow of being such a bad player in middle school would have loomed over me for the next four years had I stayed.

I played basketball for the first time in fifth or sixth grade during recess. I was not at all good. I couldn't dribble or shoot or pass or play defense. By eighth grade graduation, through playing at lunch every day (at least when I got picked, which was 65% of the time). I had developed one differentiating skill, meaning a skill that I was much better at than most players. A 7-footer’s differentiating skill is being 7 feet tall, for example. Standing in the corner and hitting a catch-and- shoot jumper. The shot was far from automatic but was the one thing I could do competently -- so on offense I retreated to that corner and never played beyond those means. I was not only physically incapable of affecting the game in any other way, I was scared to death of even trying and of the ridicule I’d face in response to my feeble attempts and failures.

Masterman's playground area, which was on the roof of the building, had 3 full basketball courts. The first court was always divided into two half-court games, played by the dregs of social society in our small 5th-through-8th grade community. These were the kids who only played basketball because there was nothing else to do during recess. They didn't even keep score and the goal was having fun and spending time with their friends.

The middle court was for the mediocre players and those with just enough physical ability, self-respect, and respect amongst peers to not be caught dead on the first court (me). Some competence in the game, an understanding of the

5 @DreAllDay rules, keeping score. These were also the students who were just-not-quite- good-enough to hang with the big boys. They (we?) knew it. The middle court is where you'd find me on the days I didn't have the patience to stand on the sidelines and watch the good guys play. The middle court usually featured a full- court game or a good-enough half-court game.

The third court was the Holy Grail. The best players. Being that this was middle school, the best players were the most naturally advanced -- earliest to hit puberty, biggest and tallest, most confident around the girls, etc. Sometimes I got picked for the always full-court games (always the last player picked), sometimes not. I never dribbled, can't recall ever scoring a layup, and usually took 2-3 shots per game. I had my share of air balls and bricks, and specifically remember getting benched one day -- getting kicked off the court and another guy replaced me, in the middle of a game because my teammates decided I’d messed up too much. The girls laughed. That was embarrassing.

The most attractive and confident girls always stood on the side of the third court and watched the best games -- these players, after all, were the only middle school boys who could even think of talking to them, and vice-versa. A girl I "dated" at the end of my eighth grade year was new to Masterman and told me how, at the beginning of the school year, her new girlfriends had walked her around during lunch and explained how things worked on the basketball courts -- playing on the middle court didn't earn me much respect initially, according to her recollection. I guess I’d become more attractive after I managed to become a rotation player on the third court.

The dudes on the third court could do it all -- dribbling, crossovers, throwing (and catching) tough passes, alley oops (for layups), strong rebounds in traffic. Many times that I was picked, I found myself watching the game more than playing in it. Masterman was also a high school, and the varsity basketball coach, who doubled as a gym and health teacher, started an intramural basketball program for us middle schoolers. The games would be once per week starting an hour or two before school started. These games had a referee and a scoreboard; I don’t even recall scoring in a game. The one shot I do remember making, a wing jumpshot, was made in a full court pickup run we had during the last week of intramurals. We were playing pick up only because the teacher who ran the program was out sick.

At the end of eighth grade year, our soon-to-be graduating class went on a trip to Dorney Park, a big amusement & water park an hour or so outside of Philadelphia. We all had our fun in the sun that day, but what I remember most clearly was a conversation I had on the bus on the ride back to the school from the park.

6 @DreAllDay Brandon was, to me, the best player in our class. There were only two other players in our grade that I would even have considered in Brandon's class, and he was the most complete and game-ready amongst us for varsity high school basketball as an eighth grader. He probably could’ve played a few minutes per game on high school varsity as an eighth grader. One day after school, Brandon and I got bored watching the varsity game in the Masterman gym. We went up to the roof and played a few games of 1 on 1, with him easily destroying me every time: 10-1, 10-4, 10-0... Though it didn't feel as bad as the score was because I was hungry to figure out what it was he knew that I didn't about basketball; not by asking him but by playing against him, taking the losses and adjusting. All I really learned that day was that Brandon had talent and confidence and skills, and I did not. But, partly thanks to Brandon's positive nature despite the disparity between our respective skill sets. He could’ve talked much trash and broadcast the news to everyone for their amusement but he never did. He would bring it up to me, though, if I ever got to feeling myself too much. I wasn't in the least bit discouraged.

On the bus ride back from Dorney Park, Brandon & I had a talk about basketball and our respective futures. He was staying at Masterman (and went on to play four years of varsity ball) and I was headed to E&S.

E&S was a powerhouse at the time, led by a 6-foot-1-inch scoring guard named Lynn Greer who would go on to break the school's scoring record during his senior year (my freshman year), play four years at Temple University, and become one of the most coveted players in the Euroleague. Lynn is still playing to this day. Lynn even spent one season in the NBA with the Milwaukee Bucks, though he barely got off the bench that year, and went back to Europe. They also had a 6-foot point guard named Will Chavis who went on to play at Texas Tech for Bobby Knight; Will is still playing in Europe too, mostly in Germany. The third most-talented player was Jon Cox, a 6-6 wing that could also fill it up with ease. Jon went to the University of San Francisco and is also still active overseas; last I heard Jon was in France.

When I arrived at E&S as a freshman, Lynn was a senior, Will was a junior, and John was a sophomore. By the time I made varsity, all three of them had graduated. But we'll get to that later.

Entering ninth grade, deep down I knew I was nowhere near ready to play at the level of the "Pub," neither skill-wise nor nerves/heart-wise. But, boastful as I was, I continuously told my middle school classmates and neighborhood friends in Mt. Airy that they would see me playing for E&S over the next four years.

7 @DreAllDay Brandon knew my boasts were nothing more than cocky shit talk from someone who had accomplished less than nothing as a basketball player. But, bless his heart, he was way too nice a guy to call me on my bullshit.

We got to talking about basketball, and Brandon talked about how he wanted to make Masterman into a respected program in the Philadelphia Public League The high school varsity had gone 1-20 just two years prior. I knew Brandon was very good, but he and I both knew he could not do it alone. Masterman ended up being better than terrible during our high school years, but far from a contender.

I talked about my high school basketball plans and Brandon broke down what I needed to do to make those plans happen, in what became, and still is 16 years later, the most important basketball advice I ever received.

Instruction #1: "Buy A Game." In his I'm-your-friend-so-I'm-being-honest tone, Brandon explained to me that I was garbage. I couldn't shoot, I couldn't dribble, I couldn't play D, I didn't grab rebounds. All I did was stand in the corner, and I wasn't even that great of a shooter. Without some game, Brandon told me, I wouldn't be playing for anyone.

Instruction #2: "Stop Playing Scared." I was always nervous during the lunchtime pick up games – the few that I got picked for. Careless turnovers, missing layups, giving up easy points, and just hoping to get out of the way more than trying to make plays. Brandon and I both knew that Pub games were always packed. Obnoxious students, obnoxious adults, lots and lots of girls watching, all waiting to clown you for their personal entertainment. More than enough to fray the nerves of any 14-year-old lacking any real–game experience. Like me.

It took several years, but once I finally understood, grasped, and completed my game with Brandon's instructions my game took to new levels. But it was far from an overnight thing.

8 @DreAllDay Organized Basketball

I vividly recall a few key things about basketball team tryouts my ninth grade year at E&S:

• Coach Charles Brown commending me on my handmade parental waiver form (I had forgotten to get one to take home for my mother to sign the day before tryouts; I borrowed a friend's form and copied it on a sheet of blank paper while we rode the bus home from Broad & Olney). • Lynn Greer's smooth negotiation of the floor as the previous season's starting five played for about five minutes, dominated, and sat and watched the rest of tryouts. • At schools like mine in Philly back then, EVERYBODY tried out for the basketball team. Even at a very small school like E&S there were close to 100 boys trying out (and 15-20 girls watching). Coach Brown threw together groups of five -- chosen by names on the waiver forms, not by player size or desired position -- and each guy went for broke during his five-minute run. You earned your way to second cuts from making an impressive play or two from this random-draw pickup game. • Reaching in and fouling my own teammate during one of my runs on the court. I didn’t even get a piece of the ball, and people laughed at me. We were going shirts vs. skins. I was skins with no muscles, so this gives you an idea of the kind of blind, fearful haze I was in during tryouts. • A three-point shot attempt of mine hitting the ceiling. The gym at E&S was notoriously small with low ceilings. The atmosphere for home games back then was incredible. Fans lined up single-file along the sidelines for the entire games with no seats -- all within arms reach of the game action. But Lynn Greer scored 2,000 some points in that gym with the same ceiling. So... • My lone positive play: I cut down the lane in transition, received a bounce pass, and made a layup. • I watched Coach Brown as he watched each group play. With so many people trying out, so little time, no assistant coach, and such a small space, Brown had to make snap judgements. He had two female students sitting next to his baseline seat, and had them hold the waiver forms of each five-player unit, keeping track of who was who. I looked at Coach Brown every time someone scored a basket. More than once, a player scored and Brown would instruct his "assistant" to pull that player's waiver out of the pile. With that one play. That player had made it through first-day cuts. He wasn't saying this out loud, I was just reading the body language of Brown and the girls holding the papers.

9 @DreAllDay I was unceremoniously cut the first day of tryouts my freshman year. I'd be lying to say I had expected to make that team, which went on to lose in the Public League championship game to Philly powerhouse Simon Gratz at the University of Pennsylvania’s Palestra. What I did expect, however, was to be playing some form of organized ball that year, and an opportunity presented itself shortly thereafter.

***

Charles M. Finley Playground was my local recreation center, a five minute walk from home. After years of driveway football and kickball and the old man yelling about us needing to “Go play ball at that $3 million playground!” instead of near his shiny green Cadillac, I eventually migrated to Finley for my sports fix. There was a 14 & under basketball team starting up. Tryouts were posted and I was there.

Tryouts were full of the usual neighborhood faces. We all knew each other from playing pickup on the outdoor courts at Finley and baseball, which my father coached and many of us also played. Everyone knew what everyone else could do, save for one or two new faces.

The coach of the team was a guy named Steve who, like the other Finley coaches, worked there and coached the teams. But I rarely saw any of the coaches doing any actual work, unless you call sitting in the office and eyeballing anyone that walked in Finley’s doors “work.”

Steve was a man of few words. Even though we all knew who he was, unlike the other three coaches at Finley, we knew next to nothing about his personality. The other three coaches -- Bob, Baron and Marv -- would actually play pickup basketball outside at Finley in the summers so all of us knew them and respected their authority on the game. We teens never beat them in pickup games. If we even made it interesting they would just physically overpower us to end our chances, not to mention the mental games they’d play to gain any edge. Not losing to us mattered to them. Steve appeared to be a bit older though still in his 30s, and didn't give off the aura of even an ex-athlete. Whenever I happened in the building at Finley and communicated with Steve for whatever reason, he was curt and borderline rude, every time. Every time. Before and even after playing for him. Steve just did not like having people speaking to him, period.

During one baseball game when I was 12 or 13 years old, I was sitting on the bench as our team was up to bat. Behind and above me the parents and friends watched the game, and I glanced back to see if I had any supporters in attendance.

10 @DreAllDay I saw my mother having a conversation with Bob, the most active coach of the young basketball players at Finely. I couldn’t hear them talking but I knew exactly what the conversation was: My mother demanding an explanation from Bob as to why her son had been cut from the basketball team. Or, as Bob had done once, I “made” the basketball team, but was told that I wouldn’t actually appear in any games.

Answering to defensive parents was a tough position for Bob to be in, and one of the main reasons I am not interested in being a youth coach. The simple answer, which Bob could not use, was that I was not any good at basketball. I could plainly see that when playing against and comparing myself to the other players in Mt. Airy that were my age.

But you know how mothers are. My mom was in the “everyone deserves a chance” group and went to bat for me (though ultimately failing to change the situation), but I felt much more embarrassed than proud about it. I mean, after the age of nine or ten, who wants their mom coming to the playground asking why you weren’t good enough to be on a team?

As we all lined up nervously on the baseline for coach Steve's opening statements for the 14 & under club, I remember Steve saying something to the effect of, "This is not a tryout." I wish I could recall the complete quote, but what I took from it I kept: “Tryouts” are for those that are trying to make it. For everyone else, this is basketball team practice.

At tryouts practice, Steve had us run a layup line on both the left and right sides of the basket. We ran layups for a long time, but this was a good idea: Steve could scout the most basic skill in the game first, and trim the fat. He called players over to him one by one if they looked competent. Steve finally called me over and said one of only two positive things I can remember him saying to me directly:

"What’s your name? You have talent, but you need to build this up (gesturing with both hands at my upper body), and you need to get stronger. All right? Get back in there (the layup line)."

Long story short, I made the team. We did the normal practice stuff that you do with 14-year-olds. Steve would share his philosophies sometimes. Once he was talking about how easy it was to make free throws.

“You think shooting free throws in a game is pressure? Pressure is wondering how you’re gonna feed your kids when you have a family.”

11 @DreAllDay Once, he told us that if we wanted to get stronger, we should do 50 push-ups and 50 sit-ups daily. He made a point of remarking that, “Maybe, MAYBE -- one of you will do this.” I did not.

One day as we lined up for practice Steve broke the news to us that we had a game. That day. For whatever reason, half the games we played that season were unannounced. We'd be ready for practice, and would find out we were playing a game. None of our games took place at our home gym either.

Steve also let us know that his car alone could not transport the entire team to the gym we were playing at. Did any of us 14-year-olds have a ride we could call on? I called my dad and he agreed to drive. Five of us piled into his car to the gym.

I do remember us winning the first game, and the first real confidence-building moment of my playing days happened late in that first game.

We were playing at Belfield recreation center, which was a smallish gym with a one-deep seating area along one sideline and about 5-10 rows of bleachers on top of a stage along the other sideline. With about two minutes left in the game, I received a pass in the left corner and hit a three-pointer with some hecklers yelling right on my back trying to distract me (like you see in NBA games, when a shooter takes a three pointer from in front of the opposing team’s bench). A minute later I got fouled and made two free throws to cap my five-point explosion (all my points that night). Those were the only three shots I took that game, and the deciding points in our season-opening victory.

The next day at practice as I walked into Finley’s building, a teammate jokingly called me out as the “MVP of the first game.” It felt good.

For that 14-and-under team I only remember two other events:

• Steve yelling to me to "Get [my] heart out of your throat" when I stopped an off- ball cut halfway through the lane and faded back to the perimeter during one game. • Us losing 47-7 to a team from Simons playground in West Oak Lane, the neighborhood next to Mt. Airy. On the positive side of that game, I had five of the seven points -- two foul shots after a tech, and a three I made right before the final buzzer.

12 @DreAllDay One day at school during my last period computer science class, the girl sitting next to me asked if I was attending the home basketball game after school. I said I wasn’t. I had practice of my own at Finley to be at.

She lowered her head and smirked at my answer. “You?”

Once the 14 & under season ended it was back to the asphalt at Finley. Outside of the jobs I had (from age 15-18, in order: Pizza Hut, Friendly’s, Rita’s Water Ice, McDonald’s) and school, I could be found at Finley’s outside courts practicing by myself or playing with whomever showed up at the playground. Finley had 2 full courts: “A” court and “B” Court. A court was for the best players and grown men; growing up at Finley I would watch them play and knew I wasn’t ready to be out there yet. Apart from the time spent playing fulls on B court, I would go to Finley early in the mornings and in the dead heat of the Philly afternoon summers and practice. Anything I could think of to work on, I was doing it. No programs, no instruction, no routine, no help. There were so many players in the neighborhood, the same age as me or close, that were better than me, I knew I had to do something to close the gap. The neighborhood coaches couldn’t focus on everyone, so they put their efforts into the best players -- a kind of natural selection process of basketball. For me, being out there, alone, at Finley when those other players weren’t was the only thing I knew could get it done.

Over two years playing ball and practicing daily, by age 16 I had become a star on B court, mostly due to my spot-up shooting ability. I needed to test myself out on A court.

13 @DreAllDay My sophomore year at E&S I was cut again on the first day. I didn’t play for a rec league team that fall either -- I think I spent much of that year on punishment for various offenses at home and in school (mostly academic shit, as I did just enough work to get by in school from fifth grade-on). Not much basketball got played that year. But I did have an interesting encounter with Bob, the coach that had previously explained to my mom why I hadn’t made one of his teams.

Over Christmas break in 1997, Finley hosted a high school tournament. About ten high schools in the area brought their varsity teams to play in it. Having so many high school players in our neighborhood, Finley was able to actually field two teams in its own event. One was coached by Marv, and filled with players that were playing varsity at schools that did not have a team in our tournament. The second team, of younger high school-aged players that were not yet on varsity at school, was coached by Bob.

The day the tournament began, about 15 of us second-teamers gathered in the lobby of Finley, waiting for Bob to call us into the back office for our uniforms and his introductory talk. As we waited, several players asked of each other if Bob had called them on the phone the day before. I quickly gathered that Bob had called only the players whom he wanted for this tournament team. I had received no such call, but chalked it up to no one being home at my house when Bob rang.

Bob stepped out of the office and said, “Everybody that I called, come in the back.”

Most of the players gathered got up and walked back. Two or three stayed and watched, a most forlorn look on their faces. I got up and walked towards the back with the chosen players. Hey, the phone in my home rang a lot, and I had many times witnessed my parents letting it ring without picking up.

Bob watched us coming towards him, and repeated his directive.

“Everybody that I called, come in the back.”

I walked into the back office. Bob came in last, scanned the faces in the room and asked me to step outside. We stepped into the main office, where the other coaches -- Steve, Baron and Marv -- were congregated, quietly watching this happen.

“Dre, you’re going to play in the King tournament.”

14 @DreAllDay The “King” was the tournament being held about three weeks later, over the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday in mid-January at Finley. The MLK event was a step below the Christmas tournament.

“Why am I not playing in this tournament?”

Bob just looked at me for a second and repeated himself.

“Because I said you’re going to play in the King tournament.”

The other three coaches were all watching me in silence. I walked out of the office and sat in the lobby with the two other players that had not been picked. Bob went into the back office with his chosen players, several of which were high school freshman while I, unchosen, was a sophomore.

It had took all I had to hold back the tears welling up behind my eyes in front of all the coaches during that 30 seconds in the office. I kept it together though, and watched the Christmas tournament from the bleachers in Finley, hoping Bob’s team lost every game by a lot.

They did.

15 @DreAllDay The Fall And Rise

Being that this was my junior year, this tryout was pivotal for me: even though I knew I probably wouldn’t be much of a contributor to the team, a year of practicing and going to the games would prepare me, physically and mentally (which I really needed) for a breakout senior year. And even though I had been cut on the first day of tryouts in ninth & tenth grade (I think I made a total of one basket in both tryouts combined), I still had a golden nugget of knowledge: Michael Jordan didn’t even make his HS varsity until he was a junior. So as of 3PM that day, I was still on course to be the next MJ, just as I’d planned.

Guess I should’ve told everyone else to go along with it.

I was ready and knew what to expect for tryouts: we’d play a randomly selected 5 on 5, Coach would sit and watch quietly, and a list of the best 20 or so guys would be the talk of the school the next morning. I was in great shape, I could run all day, and, with a strong running start, I could DUNK. Oh, it was on!

Only this year, Coach decided that he could get a better read on players if we played half-court, 3 on 3. No problem, I told myself. I can do more than dunk. “Let’s do this,” I thought as I was called out as part of the very first 3 on 3 group.

The player I was assigned to guard -- let’s call this guy Jim -- was a senior and had been on the team the year before. He was about an inch taller than me but I knew I was way more athletic. But 1998 was before I had ever been into a weight room -- Jim was twenty to thirty pounds heavier and at least 3x stronger than I was. I’d watched Jim play before and knew he wasn’t a scorer -- he was a strong, scrappy hustle guy whose major contribution was rebounding and tough defense. Outside of a layup, guarding Jim would be no problem for me. I knew his limitations.

Well, Jim knew his limitations too, and he knew my (literal) weaknesses.

The first play, the ball goes into Jim, posting me up (which for those of you not into basketball, means he was standing very close to the basket, and I was too weak to move him from that spot. Remember Jim & I were roughly the same height, though). He makes a short turnaround shot over me. Sensing his advantage, combined with the fact that Jim rarely scored in games, making this first basket big news, his other two teammates (also returning players) feed Jim the ball, and he keeps making shots. Over me. Again. And again. And again.

16 @DreAllDay Being that the pre-tryout mentality of how I would make this team had gone into crash-and-burn mode at this point, details are foggy. Jim scored between 5-8 points in a row on me, without a miss, as the murmurs from the sideline grew louder (into loud talk about how many times he'd score on me before Brown ended the game; I stole a glance at the coach and he, too, was entertained at the show Jim was putting on) and I was embarrassed off the gym floor. I do remember, however, a female saying after around Jim point #5, referring to me, “He should just go home.”

(At E&S, everyone came to see tryouts that year, either watching or trying out. And whoever wasn’t there wanted to know what happened the next day. I didn’t get asked on many dates after this.)

The legend of this story grew in proportion over the following weeks; Jim’s point total ballooned to 13 at one point. Even dudes in my neighborhood who didn't even go to my school heard about it through the grapevine. One day later that school year, I was a spectator at a lunchtime basketball game that Jim happened to be playing in. Noticing me, Jim scored a basket, looked my way and said, loud enough for everyone to hear: “remember that, Dre?” I couldn’t even muster a response.

I kept playing ball in the neighborhood as I always did, but by now I was having serious doubts about if my future would (or should) involve basketball at all. I had been cut on the first day of tryouts three times in a row; the last time being the worst memory of all three. But, though I was down mentally on the actual results of what had occurred in high school to that point, I didn't feel I had failed that badly: tryouts at E & S were literally ten minutes of a pickup game in which you had no control of your teammates or position. No layup lines, no skill drills. You had ten minutes to catch Coach Brown's eye with ... something, which I hadn't done. I knew the format wouldn’t change and it would be another long year before I could try out again, so I focused on what I could control: making some other team and proving my skills there.

***

I joined a team at Finley that was for 16-and-under players. Almost all of us were in the same situation: high school sophomores and juniors that hadn’t made the teams at our respective schools. A guy named Baron was our coach. There wasn't much drama about who the team would be composed of -- By around the age of 16, males where I’m from had decided who they were when it came to basketball. You wee either a) playing for your school's team, b) not as good (or experienced) as the first group guys, but still holding on to your hoop dream, or c) resigned to the fact that being a basketball player is not your future; you play for

17 @DreAllDay fun when you can. Playing for a team is not all fun and games; it requires attendance at practices, conditioning workouts and a level of discipline, even for the rec leagues -- not what the "for fun" crowd wants.

Baron (who, coincidentally, once told me that I may have more of a future in baseball [“I heard you was nice in baseball, Dre ... you'll last longer”] the summer before I joined this team) knew exactly who we all were -- on the cusp of varsity ball but not quite there yet. He made it clear to us early that we all should've been playing for our schools and not at Finley; our purpose on that team was to get ourselves ready for varsity and/or show that our schools' coaches had made mistakes in not taking us.

Our team was only 8 or 9 guys deep with no need for Baron to cut anyone -- interesting, considering that the 14-and-under team that I began my career with had a tryout with 20-plus people.

Our season started with a couple of games that we tore through -- on the road and at our home gym. We were blowing teams out -- enough that our bench guys were finishing games. I was playing center and power forward mostly, and developed a little bit of shot-blocking skill.

The best thing about this team -- and any I could ever be on -- was that we were all there to take care of business, not just playing ball because there was nothing else to do. By age 16 there was plenty to choose from if a young man wanted something to do. We all were there because we’d chose to be. And it showed on the floor.

We hosted a Christmas tournament at Finley and lost to a team from Mallory playground for the tournament title. Mallory was one of three close-by recreation centers with teams -- Simons and Mt. Pleasant were the other two -- and I made some remarks following that loss that worked to turn my basketball career around.

Coming out of the back office at Finley after our post-game talk from Baron (who was no longer in the room), someone said something about why we had lost. Whatever that person said, I corrected them on why:

"We lost because I didn't get the ball."

Another Finley coach named Bob overheard my statement and asked me to repeat myself. I did. I walked out of the office, walked home and didn't think anything of it.

18 @DreAllDay Once the new year started and we reconvened for practice, Baron called me aside. Bob and Baron were friends as well as being fellow coaches; Bob had relayed my post-loss statement to my coach.

Baron told me that, since I felt I was good enough to be getting the ball more, he would get me the ball and see what I could do. "Imma give you a chance, Dre, and we gon' see what you do."

Baron was not as seasoned as the other coaches at Finley, and that helped my cause. Not mentally encumbered by year's of experience and I've-forgotten- more-than-you-know hubris most coaches have towards players as young as we were at that point, he considered the fact that I might actually be right. Any of the other three coaches would have had a much different response to a player saying what I had said; hell, I might have been kicked off the team or nailed to the bench by any one of those guys.

Baron's openness to making me a centerpiece of the team was the vote of confidence I needed right then. I had been cut at E&S three times, and everyone that knew me had written off any thought of me doing anything significant as a basketball player -- family, friends, schoolmates. I was still holding onto the chance I could be something as a basketball player, though, and now I had created an opportunity for myself. All that was left was the easy part -- showing and proving.

(Side story: in between the Christmas tournament loss and the resuming of practice, I was at Finley playing a game of one-on-one full court with my friend Tim. Tim was always much shorter than me -- he played point guard -- he was quicker than me with a better handle and better off-the-dribble game. But my handle and ability to create was improving; along with my outside shooting, size and budding athleticism it was clear that I had potential. After quietly observing our game, Baron told me I was "better than [he] thought." Seeing this game surely contributed to his decision to draw up some plays for me later.)

Since the catch-and-shoot game was clearly my #1 skill at the time, Baron came up with a few plays that positioned me to do what I did best. And boy, did those plays work. As memory recalls there were only two plays -- an out of bounds play and one other in the half court set -- for me, but I made 3 or 4 three-point baskets every game off of those plays. I could dunk but didn't dunk in any games (back then at our age we would "tap" on defenders -- slapping the backboard with one or two hands as we finished a layup -- that was our dunking equivalent).

We ran through our league undefeated, my signature game included: a rematch with the Mallory team that had beaten us at Christmas. I remember us having

19 @DreAllDay practice the night before the game and Baron giving us a pep talk about how Mallory had come into Finley and beat us; we now had a chance to redeem ourselves in front of a big crowd (fans of both teams would show up strong since our neighborhoods were close by). All these years later, I still remember two things about Baron's pep talk:

1) He gave it as we were in the middle of working on some offensive sets, and I was standing in the left corner as he talked. 2) When he spoke about how they had beaten us and our chance to get sone get-back, I felt a shot of adrenaline running from my hamstrings up through my back. At that very moment, 24 hours before the game, I knew it was going to be a great one by me.

For games in our league, there was one referee who worked all of our games (with a random partner, but this one guy was always there). As I stepped into the center circle for the jump ball (I wasn't dunking but I was the most athletic guy on the team still), I declared to the ref and the Mallory player in the circle (a dude named Shareef that happened to be good friends with my cousin Brian) that, "We gon’ win this game." Shareef responded, "Oh, I love you too, man."

I came out on fire, making four threes in the first half without a miss. I even "tapped" on Mallory's center on a transition play, plus the foul -- a play that had the whole gym on their feet. After the ball went in, I just stood and stared at the guy I'd scored on. Since my back was to the crowd (seats are only on one side of the indoor gym at Finley) people, that referee included, thought I was trash- talking the kid. I wasn't -- I was just staring at him. No technicals were called, and the crowd was still at a loud buzz as I hit the free throw.

My dad was at the game -- he came to most of them and even drove us a couple times on the road -- but had a prior engagement that forced him to leave at halftime. He called my mom at home and told her to have me call his cell and leave a voicemail reporting how many points I ended up with -- I had had 14 at halftime and my dad was excited enough to call my mom about it. Mallory caught onto our three-point play to slow me down -- I finished with 17 points -- but we still won handily as their overplaying of our shooting led to layups.

This game was the first time I had ever dominated a game "under the whistle" -- the term we used for official games with referees as opposed to pickup games -- and it happened in front of the whole neighborhood, and many of the older guys. And anyone who wasn't there would hear about it soon. I mean, I was THE BEST PLAYER ON THE COURT that night, and anyone who saw that game had to agree. There has not been a bigger confidence-building moment in all my years playing basketball than that night at Finley.

20 @DreAllDay When the playoffs rolled around, all games took place at Belfield Rec Center (I'll admit I couldn't remember the name of this place, but I could take you right to its front door. Google Maps helped me recall the name). I don't know why -- Finley was the newest and nicest gym around our area -- but play we did. We won our first round game and in the second round we ran into -- guess who? -- Mallory again.

Their team was well prepared to stop me this time. Their coach even joked to me prior to the game to “leave that jumpshot at home”. I managed to get off only four shots the whole game for 8 points -- 2 for 3 on threes, and one layup. The scoring was low and the game was tight. We won.

After defeating Mallory, I came to find out from one of our bench players who Bill Ellerbee was at the game, and had spoken with coach Baron before the game.

Who is Bill Ellerbee, you ask? Ellerbee was the coach at Simon Gratz high school -- Rasheed Wallace, Aaron McKie, Mardy Collins, and AO from the And1 Mixtape are just a few of his well-known ex-players, not mentioning a slew of NCAA D1 players you may not have heard of. During the 90s Gratz ruled the Philadelphia Public League in both prestige and in winning. Bill Ellerbee was The Man amongst coaches to any high schooler in Philly back then.

Anyway, Ellerbee spoke to Baron because he was interested in two of his players: a guard named Terrell, and me. Rell was a sophomore at ML King high school (same school my dad went to), which had a junior varsity team that Rell was a member of. I was a junior at E&S (we had no JV).

My teammate source told me that Ellerbee was more interested in Rell since he would have Rell for two years, but he was watching both of us. Baron hadn't told us -- good idea -- but he talked a bit about it in the days between the semis and the championship game. Since Baron was also an assistant coach for King's JV team, he was personally invested in seeing Rell prosper. That definitely showed when he relayed the story of what transpired after our semifinal win.

Ellerbee walked over to Baron, said, "He has some nice things. I'll see you Thursday (day of the final)." To get what I mean, you have to envision how Baron told this story. After repeating Ellerbee's comment, Baron walked off with the pimp stroll, arm swinging hard on his left side. He couldn't hide his enthusiasm for Rell's opportunity. As for me, I was excited as hell that Ellerbee had even noticed me. But I knew that I'd never play for Gratz: no matter Bill Ellerbee's sales pitch, should it have come to that, there was absolutely no way my mom would have me transfer from E&S (a magnet school ranked as fourth-best in

21 @DreAllDay Philly) to Gratz (essentially a neighborhood school in North Philadelphia) for basketball. Never would happen. I was still happy about the possibility of that conversation, nonetheless.

Ellerbee had been sitting on the sideline not far from me after the semifinal game and said to me, "That was some nice shooting." I thanked him and said, "You're the coach at Gratz, right? Ellerbee?" He confirmed. That was the entire conversation.

Onto the championship of the league against a team we didn't even face in the regular season -- Cherashore Playground. they had watched our semifinal win and knew what they needed to do: not let me shoot any threes (I was straight-up lights-out shooting at this point -- an open three was a layup for me) and stop Rell's slashing game (as you may have gleaned from Baron's recollection of Bill Ellerbee's comments, Rell also had had a great semifinal performance).

I caught the ball in the corner on the first play of the championship game and Cherashore's defender ran out to me hard. Hard enough that I dribbled -- I barely ever dribbled in games this season since shooting threes off the catch was my specialty -- twice to my right along the baseline and made a 10-foot pullup jumper to start the game. I had not executed a move like that all year. Almost every basket I scored (of my 12-14 points per game average), whether it be a layup or jumpshot, was an assisted basket. By that point in my development I could put the ball on the floor and create but didn't use it much. I surprised everyone in the gym -- including myself -- with this opening bucket.

Too bad there weren't any more buckets.

You read that right. I finished the game with just that one basket -- 2 points -- as Baron pulled me out with a few minutes left and us down double-digits. I missed a slew of open threes that just wouldn't fall. Rell had a shaky game himself (so much for playing at Gratz, for either of us), and we suffered our only loss of the season, in the league championship game.

I hadn't felt any nervousness before the Cherashore game. If anything I was excited: I knew many people were watching me, and I fully expected to dominate in front of the large crowd at Belfield. I had come through for my team, every time, all season up to that point.

But I guess what I described, is a form of the all-too-well-known "choke." An important player playing significantly worse in a big game than he did in all the other games? Hell yes, that's choking.

22 @DreAllDay With that, my 16-and-under season was done. Despite finishing with the choke- game loss, I felt a great sense of accomplishment.

I'd proved I could be a major contributor on a team. I discovered and used differentiating skills in my game -- shooting and athleticism. Though I couldn't dunk routinely, I could sky for rebounds and had led the team in blocked shots. I had claimed I needed the ball for us to win -- then I got the ball, I produced, and we won. A serious basketball person -- Simon Gratz's Bill Ellerbee -- saw me play and took my game seriously. Opposing coaches and players came into games planning to try to stop me.

I had finally earned some respect, in some small circles, for my basketball playing ability. But the questions would only get louder at this point, now, why I was a junior not playing varsity ball at E&S.

After the 16-and-under season at Finley, I'd become quite cocky. My first chance to show out in front of an audience and I'd done it (for the most part). My outside shooting was a highly respected skill around the way. My dribbling and driving skills still needed work, but I had some natural athleticism and was about to begin a workout program that would make my athletic ability my #1 skill and force my shooting skill to take a back seat.

Growing up around a group of other people who played basketball, the taller ones of us started aspiring to dunk around age 15. Anyone taller than 6'1" would hear it from the shorter guys: "You can't dunk??!!" Even though this was coming from players who would never touch the rim in their lives, you still wanted to shut them the hell up.

Reading SLAM magazine, there were always a few ads for vertical jump programs with big promises. With no Internet -- this is the late 90s -- there were no reviews to read, nothing to download (what's that?), no way of really knowing (and in many ways, there still isn't). But I kept seeing this ad for a program called Air Alert in SLAM, and it's guarantee to add 8-12" to my vertical had my attention.

Here's what I think about vertical jump programs and their guarantees: your belief in what you can get out of these programs matters more than anything else. I hear from players interested in increasing their verticals all the time, and the question is always the same: does (fill in name of program) really work? I've explained plenty of times: programs don't work. People work. A workout program us just words on paper or a computer screen. The person using the program makes it happen. I have shared Air Alert with many friends over the years and watched them quit after a few weeks because they didn’t get the payoff fast enough; coincidentally, none of those players are playing anymore.

23 @DreAllDay I sent a $20 money order to the address in the SLAM ad for Air Alert. It came in the mail about two weeks later -- imagine sending $20 in the mail these days with no receipt or confirmation, hoping they honor their offer and don't just keep your cash -- and I dove into it.

The Air Alert program was a thin blue booklet, with (what I remember as) much of the same material as the current versions. The exercises were demonstrated in photographs -- imagine the horror teenagers these days would feel having to figure those out with no supporting video or email address to send questions to -- and the guy in all the pics was this husky looking White guy in his thirties. Nothing about the guy in the photos screamed "explosive athleticism." But this never concerned me -- I just had a feeling in me that Air Alert was the tool I'd use to catapult myself over my peers (literally and figuratively), no matter the methods.

The photos and the text explanations gave me enough info to figure out the drills, from there is was time to get to work. I did most of the exercises in the dining room and garage of the house I grew up in. I was light enough, in weight and on my feet, that my jumping never disturbed anyone else in the house, though most of the time I’d try to do it when no one was home.

I would go out in the concrete patio at home in Philly and try to measure my vertical jump. I had no tape measure or any other equipment to get it exactly right. I just wanted relative results. I did, however, know what I needed to measure: the height I could reach up while standing, compared to height I could touch when jumping. I had to measure against a wall, which kind of limited my aggression in jumping -- I used a rock to mark a line on the wall when I jumped as my jumping reach. It wasn't until 2011 that I had my first ever official vertical jump measurement.

About 3 and a half weeks into Air Alert, I told a friend about the program I was doing. We were playing a game of rough house -- which is every-man-for-himself basketball -- and I was going up and easily dunking off of a drop step on a basket I'd previously strained to try to dunk on. My speed was increasing. I was a lot more explosive and, with my improving dribbling skills, I could make myself a threat as a driver.

Air Alert had worked.

24 @DreAllDay Finally

Coach Brown stood up quickly and looked down the bench. Anyone that has come off the bench for a basketball team knows what that means. He wheeled around to face the bench and surveyed his options with his wide-eyed look. It was our first home game of the season, and I would rather get in and do nothing (or fuck up) than sit meekly on the bench the whole game like a bitch.

So I did what a player on the bench does when he wants to get into the game: made strong eye contact with Brown. He grabbed me by my warm-up shirt and told me whom to go in for.

Now, allow me to explain the situation happening here. We (E&S High School) were playing Simon Gratz early in the Philadelphia Public League season. I already told you that Gratz is (or at least was) royalty in city basketball. They didn't win every title, but they were always in the conversation. They always had a very talented squad and the name alone could intimidate opponents and fans.

E&S' home gym (the building I attended high school in had originally been an elementary school and changed to a high school; hence the tiny gym and half- size lockers. E&S has since undergone a huge renovation which included a new gym, actual grass to replace the concrete and modern architecture), aka The Pit, was the epitome of a hoops hotbox: the area around the four lines of the court so small that there were no bleachers or chairs. Fans stood one-person-deep on the sideline and fire-code-violation deep on the baselines for every game. When a player inbounded the ball from out of bounds, fans had to move out of the way. Any fan in the building, no matter their location, could have spit on a player without moving. You could literally touch a player from the crowd. Think of those YouTube videos of NYC summer streetball games where the fans spill onto the court after highlight plays. That's the E&S gym atmosphere. The Pit was a very high-energy place with plenty of girls and loud, obnoxious fans on top of you the whole game. The exact type of gym a focused, confident player would love playing in for a big game.

The exact type of player I wasn't back then.

My short time in the Gratz game was kind of a blur. I recorded only one stat: an unsuccessful field goal attempt that was partially blocked by a Gratz player not much bigger than me along the right baseline. I got subbed out during a free throw and heard a female in the crowd comment (in a normal conversational tone -- remember how small the gym was), "Yeah, get him out."

25 @DreAllDay I had finally made the team my senior year and I remember the day of tryouts well: We had a half-day of school due to some faculty meetings. Since Coach Brown was also a teacher, tryouts still started at the time they would for a normal school day, 3 o'clock. After the school day ended, I walked to McDonald’s for some food, came back and sat near my locker reading the latest issue of SLAM for two hours. There were a lot of boys trying out but a bit of a smaller crowd than usual because of the weird schedule. Most of the people trying out had been congregated in the gym but I stayed off to myself. This was it for me. I was a senior and I had to make the basketball team this year.

Brown changed the way he conducted tryouts each year. He never had any assistant coaches so there were no separate eyes and ears. For my senior year it was three on three again, but full court this time. For one, there were probably the fewest tryout participants of any year that I was there, and the team had its lowest expectations of my four years my senior year. So I guess Brown decided to take as close a look as possible at what he had to choose from.

I looked at tryouts the same way many players do -- I sized up who was returning from last season, and subtracted that number from 12 (roster spots on the team). If memory serves there were 7 returning players, so I had to be one of the best 5 outsiders. I knew I was, I even felt I could compete with most of the returning guys. I figured that, in Brown's eyes, it would be more impressive to outplay a returning player than to do well against someone who ended up not making it. Luckily, I got my chance early.

There was a player named Arnold returning from playing the previous year, a senior like I was. We were the same size, both lanky and long-armed. Arnold, though, was a power forward/center while I was more of a wing forward (though I knew I'd be asked to play the 4 if I made the team due to our lack of size). Regardless, I knew Arnold's only skills were his game experience & aggression (both much more than me) and athleticism (though I was just as athletic). The opportunity was there.

So we're going three-on-three full court, and Brown came up to our team of three before the game -- me and two juniors, one if which eventually made the team too -- and told us who would do what: you down low, you on the wing (that was me), you bring the ball up.

I guarded Arnold against the team of three returnees, and Arnold immediately called for the ball as he posted up against me. I had always been taught to not just play behind a posting up player -- because a good one could take advantage

26 @DreAllDay -- and to deny the ball, try to get in front of him. But I knew Arnold couldn't dribble and had no post moves. No fakes, no left hand, no hook shots.

Then the play that finally cemented my spot on the basketball team happened.

Arnold caught the pass, took one dribble and turned around to shoot (we were about 8-10 feet from the basket at this point). As I anticipated, no fakes or moves. He turned with the ball right in front of me, I assumed hoping to use his length and hops to get the shot off over me.

I jumped and stuffed the shot right back in his face.

The returning players on the sideline howled, hyping up the block to get Arnold going -- you can't let the trying-out guy get highlights against you. I don't recall much more from that first day of tryouts though I know I scored a few baskets that first block had sealed the deal. I just know that Brown posted a list of whom should return to the gym the next day for practice. The list would be pared down to about 15 or 16 guys, but at that point I knew I had made it. With a smaller group of players I knew I could show my skills and be recognized for them. The first day, with so many players and so little time and only one set of eyes (Coach Brown with zero assistants) watching, was the hardest. You had to grab Brown's attention in some way that he'd remember and my block on Arnold had sealed my fate. In my mind, the more Brown got to see of me the more he'd know I was good for the team -- I just had to get past the huge filter of Day One of tryouts. The rest would be easy.

I was on the team, finally. There were not many memorable on-court moments from that season but there are some notable occurrences worth sharing:

• In my first game of the season I caught a bounce pass on the block from our best player (Darien Chavis) and converted an and-1 layup. I’d "tapped" on three guys from the other team on scoring this basket. • The players on the team were not exactly all friends but we shared the reality of being the best 12 hoopers in a Philly public school, where every male thought they had a chance as a basketball player. We bonded, if you want to call it that, most with "ranking" -- telling jokes at some other player's expense for the team's general entertainment. My best joke cane when I compared a bigheaded junior center teammate to the NBA Jam video game cheat code that enlarged the players' heads to show full detail. • After a slow start and a few frustrating games Coach Brown decided to pare down the roster by 2 or 3 players. He announced it in the locker room after a road loss and told us to look on the bulletin board outside of the gym Monday morning. I spent my entire weekend concerned about the new list, mentally

27 @DreAllDay piecing together what positives about my senior year I could lean on if I got dismissed from the team. This was before we had even played a home game, thus before anyone really even knew who was on the team yet. Luckily, I made the cut. • My season high: 7 points. • I didn't get any dunks all season, though I was close to one: At a road game that we won going away, there was a break away but a teammate was further ahead of me so he got the pass and the dunk. • My friend Tim went to Central High and was their starting point guard. When Central played at E&S Tim and I made a $5 bet over who would score more points that game. Tim went to the foul line in the second quarter and sunk two free throws. With that, he won the bet, 2-0. • I started once. We played at a post-Christmas tournament at some fitness center in Northeast Philadelphia. My dad drove me there. Being from Mt. Airy he drive was only twenty minutes. All the other players had further travel getting there. Three or four guys were late arrivals and I got the start. I made the greatest play of my high school career early in the first quarter: I stole the ball off the guy I was guarding, dribbled down the floor, made a layup plus the foul (and made the free throw). This game was that season-high scoring game. • We played in another tournament at Germantown Academy. GA was a high school with a damn campus: a whole lotta buildings, green grass, security guards, pretty girls... Walking around that campus was like watching a movie to me at the time. I had never seen anything like it, and to imagine there were high schoolers the same age that I was, living like this. GA also had some great athletes. They steamrolled us. Their guards were the size of our centers, and just as strong and athletic too. Six or seven of the players who beat us went on to NCAA Division 1 basketball. • The best player on our team, Darien Chavis, and I started a sort-of pre-practice tradition of playing a running game of one-on-one. D, as we called him, was quicker and tougher than me and more experienced but I had the athletic ability and size advantages. Overall he surely won the game but I was going point for point with him at times, getting some stops and scoring on his defense. D and I were in the same classes almost all day in school and were the only two players off the team in our particular home room. We had become cool off the court (though we never hung out) and I felt I had earned a small amount of respect from him on the court in those one-on-ones. D didn't seem to be so tight with any of the other players.

Being that the three previous years E&S had had a clear-cut superstar running things -- Lynn Greer followed by Will Chavis (D's older brother) followed by Jon Cox -- D was a level below those three. Greer was the best of all -- a quick lefty with a flamethrower for a jumpshot, a nasty cross-pull combo he could get off on anyone, and he could be the consummate point guard with the flip of a switch (As

28 @DreAllDay he was for four years under John Chaney at Temple, briefly in the NBA and now in the Euroleague). Will Chavis had no great physical attributes -- barely 6 feet, okay quickness, not a leaper -- but he could be any college coach’s point guard for forty minutes and seemed to be a strong leader (Will finished his college career under Bobby Knight at Texas Tech). Cox (cousin of Kobe Bryant) had the best physical gifts -- 6'6" with a solid frame. Not a great athlete but a very smooth game; everything seemed to come easily for Jon. D was a scoring point guard that had good but not amazing quickness, and he wasn't physically overwhelming -- he wasn't a dunker and didn't overpower anyone. He was just an OK shooter that preferred driving. Amongst our team that year, though, D was easily the best, the most experienced and the most fearless. At the same time I sensed that 4or 4 guys on that team thought they could do what D did every game (D averaged 23 points per game and made All-Public League) if given the "touches." None of them did -- or even came close -- but I could feel there was resentment towards D by several players, though outwardly we all appeared to get along and do the joking and such.

When the high school season ended I felt vindicated. Not because I had accomplished much statistical production during the season -- I hadn't -- but I had done many things I'd set out to do. I had made the basketball team, the only thing I really cared about accomplishing in four years of high school. Since everybody had tried out at least once in their four years, in that sense I had beat most of the students I went to school with. In those one-on-one games with D before practice I had proven to myself that I had the physical abilities to compete with a guy who was top-20 in the city. In Mt. Airy, I was now a guy who had played varsity, finally vindicating my long days at the courts for so many summers. Mentally, I knew I could play college ball, wherever I ended up.

I remember the week after the Public League season ended, telling Tim that I was ready to start killing games anywhere I played, mostly referring to pickup at Finley. I was a couple months away from graduation, on my way to college (didn't know where yet) and my confidence was probably the highest of any graduating senior in history that had averaged two points per game.

In the fall of my senior year was when everyone in my class starts filling out college applications. Since I went to a well-respected magnet school (a school that admitted students from anywhere in the city, regardless of where they lived, because of the school’s academic reputation) I received a ton of recruitment mail from schools all over America, many of which I had never heard of, based on my academic profile.

Many schools sent me their applications with fee waivers attached (I never understood why colleges make you pay to apply for the privilege of paying them

29 @DreAllDay for your education) to persuade me to apply with nothing to lose, and it worked. I applied to about 15 colleges and paid for only one: St. Joseph's in Philadelphia at the insistence of my parents (the application fee was about $40). They wanted me to have a few 'safety schools' (local schools a student has been accepted to that could go to as a fallback in case their top choices don't work out) that were close by.

Of the 15 or so colleges I applied to, I got accepted to all of them. Outside of our college counselor's office there was a big bulletin board reserved solely for announcing which schools the seniors had been accepted to. Since I had all these application fee waivers and no real college-choosing strategy I ended up with one of the two or three longest acceptance lists in the class which was no big deal, since you can only go to one school. I still had no idea where I was going.

There was an assistant in the office named Ms. Jones that was really helpful to me. Ms. Jones was the front line person for the advisors that scheduled all the seniors’ college advisor meetings and was a really friendly and genuine woman. I spent some lunch periods in Ms. Jones' office just hanging out that year. One day Ms. Jones told me that a recruiter from Morehouse College (a famous HBCU -- “Historically Black Colleges & Universities” in Atlanta) was coming to E&S the next day and that a small select group of young men would be his audience (Morehouse is a men-only school that sits right next to Spellman -- an all- women’s school). Knowing I had all those acceptances and no real plan, Ms. Jones listed me as one of the 10 students to meet the Morehouse recruiter.

The Morehouse recruiter came in and told us a lot about the school: • Student wore suits to class once per week, to prepare ourselves for how we'd be dressing in the real world (a bullshit presumption in my opinion even then). • The basketball coach had kicked half the team off the squad the previous year for not keeping their grades high enough, even though the players were over the NCAA low water eligibility line (this may have been some salesmanship on his part, having been tipped off by Ms. Jones that there were some basketball players in his audience). • He was keen to mention Spellman's proximity to the campus. • He introduced us to the idea of the Morehouse Man: a title given only to graduates of the prestigious university.

Finally the recruiter gathered the student information cards he'd passed out at the beginning of his presentation. He read through each one briefly and then made some decisions that changed lives: he orally offered a full room & board scholarship to one of the students in the room. He then offered me and one other student half of the same scholarship. With the applications he had given us he

30 @DreAllDay made notations on those of the three men he'd offered scholarships to for when we sent in the paperwork.

This was crazy because I knew of Morehouse, but wasn't even considering any HBCUs before that day. I'm Black, and from an all-Black neighborhood and an almost all-Black high school, but I wanted to be at a college with more of a mix of races and ethnicities. The scholarship offer finally gave me a really good reason to lean towards some school. Despite my apathy towards all the choices in front of me, one thing was for sure: I wanted to get far away from home and not come back. Eighteen years had been enough.

I quickly got the application in and my parents seemed to be happy and on board with it all. The half-scholarship offer had surprised everyone -- me, Ms. Jones, and my parents. By April of 2000 I was telling everyone that I was on my way to Morehouse.

Morehouse was an NCAA Division 1 school in basketball, and the coaching staff would have no idea who I was. I didn't have any film to share with any coaches so my plan was a simple one: whatever school I ended up at, I'd find my way to the gym and make my name known. As high school graduation approached, however, my future plans changed.

My parents informed my that even with the half-scholarship awarded to me, Morehouse was too expensive, especially as an out-of-state student (college tuitions are cheaper for students that attend college in the same state in which they live). Since I'd used one of my fee-waived applications to get accepted into Penn State University, I could go there -- the Abington campus twenty minutes outside of Philadelphia -- for one year while living at home and maybe go somewhere else after a year or two.

This situation killed me for two reasons. First was that regardless of basketball, I wanted to get away from home for college -- now I'd be in the same bed I had been sleeping in since I was a kid. Abington was a commuter campus: no dorms or off-campus housing. Second, I had no feelings about Penn State at all, nonetheless the Abington campus. I had been accepted to the main campus in State College, PA, but could choose to attend any of PSU’s 23 branches across the state. I’d only applied there because of the fee waiver. There was zero excitement for me in going to Penn State.

But the financial realities of college is for a student without a scholarship set in and it was official: Penn State Abington it was.

31 @DreAllDay I looked into Abington's basketball program: Abington played in a conference of other PSU branch campuses. Abington had won the championship of that league during my senior year of high school. Then, a player could only play for two years at any of these smaller campuses (except one branch campus that was NCAA D3). Several players who helped win that title were returning as sophomores to the team. I had no worries about my ability to make the squad there -- Abington was a small campus and I knew I was better than most of the players who had just won that title. There was no doubt in my mind.

***

At the tail end of my senior year of high school, I heard that there were tryouts for a team in the Sonny Hill League in Philly. Sonny Hill was the best league in Philadelphia for high school players; Kobe, Wilt Chamberlain and any good high school player from the Philadelphia area you’ve heard of had played Sonny Hill during high school. Playing in the Sonny Hill league was a huge opportunity.

Tryouts were being held at Gustine Lake recreation center, a stand-alone building that was one full court and not much else. For some reason, though, Gustine Lake was the place for the best pickup basketball run in Philly -- I once watched an Allen Iverson documentary that showed AI playing some ball in there with a couple of the And1 Mixtape guys -- and this team I was going out for was practicing there.

The team was being coached by a guy I’d heard of but didn’t know named John Hardnett. Hardnett was well known in the city for the work he’d done coaching budding basketball players all over the city and all the best players who had come through Philly knew him. Tim (who was a year behind me) and I both went to try out. I didn’t know anyone else that was going to be there but saw a dude named Phil that I knew from Mt. Airy when I got there. Phil was about 6’2”, the same age as me and the best in our neighborhood; he’d started varsity at his high school since ninth grade.

I walked in and everyone in there was of Phil’s same pedigree: I had never met any of the other players but I could name almost all of them. They were all the stars of their high school teams whose names were always in the Daily News. These were the guys with Division 1 college scholarship offers. There were around 20 players in the gym not counting Tim and me, and you could’ve called roll by using the all-city team roster printed in the newspaper.

The best player in the gym was not to be debated: Eddie Griffin, the 6’8” power forward from Roman Catholic high school. Eddie had just been named the player of the year in city of Philadelphia and in the entire USA, and was on his way to

32 @DreAllDay Seton Hall University, which he would leave early for the NBA and play for the Houston Rockets and Minnesota Timberwolves before tragically dying in a car accident.

The second best player there was a long-armed guard about my size named Darryl Jones who played for Strawberry Mansion high in North Philly. We had played against Strawberry Mansion during the Pub season in their gym. “DJ” didn’t have to do much that game as their team was so stacked (three D1 players); they ran us out of their gym.

Jones was everything I could have wished to be at the time: smooth, game- athletic with strong ball handling skills. I would not have rated his as one of the top 5 players there when I walked in, but over a couple of practices he proved to be second only to Griffin.

Tim, me and one other guy were, literally, the only unknowns in the building (Kevin Freeman, who was playing at UCONN at the time, practiced with us to match up with Eddie, who was still scoring on him consistently). This was exactly where I wanted to be: in a gym full of great players who all had big names, with a chance to prove I belonged because I knew I did. I thought back to my one-on- one games with D in practice and these players were the same as him, just different names.

I was very athletic by the spring of 2000, and it showed in that there were only a few guys there with more athleticism than me. I had some dunks and earned myself a modicum of respect. As a guard, though, I would need to show some ball handling prowess, and the guards there were so instinctive and experienced they seemed to know where I was going with the ball before even I did. I settled into playing on the wing, though, and was holding my ground.

Since the group was 20 players deep and all of us could play, it wasn’t really a tryout: the group would be split up into two teams, both sponsored by former NBA player and current NBA assistant coach Aaron McKie. I was on the same team as Eddie Griffin and DJ, Phil was on the other team. Tim, who at his size would have had to beat out one of those point guards, stopped showing up to practices but played on his school’s summer league team (he had made varsity at Central as a junior).

I lasted only two games in Sonny Hill, as I was stuck on the end of the bench (which I couldn’t complain about, given the players ahead of me) and an embarrassing 1-minute stint in a game played at McGonigle Hall at Temple University where all the games were.

33 @DreAllDay In our first game we won going away, highlighted by a leaning and-1 dunk by Griffin which had even him laughing as he stepped to the foul line (Eddie Griffin was famously stoic and rarely spoke or expressed any emotion during any of our practices even as he dominated them with a college player guarding him). I got in during the last 3 or 4 minutes and scored 4 points, on a pull-up jumper and two free throws.

Late in the first half of our second game, I had been subbed in during an opposing team free throw, and somehow ended up in the low position, on the block, hoping like hell the shooter made his foul shot. The other team’s guy, seeing the mismatch, muscled me out of his way, grabbed the rebound and scored. Hardnett pulled me immediately.

As I returned to the bench the fans behind our bench laughed at me mockingly. Hardnett chewed me out in the locker room and I didn’t get back into a close game. I had borrowed my dad’s car to go to the game. A rare occurrence in itself; Temple’s campus is next door to E&S high school and 30-40 minutes by car. By public transportation this was easily an hour-plus trip. Phil and Tim rode with me to watch; after the game riding home, Phil told me, multiple times, not to quit. It was the best advice I never took.

Phil never said why not to quit, because he inherently knew what I didn’t: paying with and against these guys, even if it meant 2 hour round trips to games in which I barely played, was what my game needed (and why Phil was as good as he was -- playing against us regular dudes his age at Finley was child’s play for him). These were the best players in the city, period: if I quit, anything else I did in it’s place would be a step backwards. And who knows, one good spurt in a game there could’ve opened up a possibility that I didn’t see in front of me at the time since everyone who cared about city basketball came to the Sonny Hill league games.

But quit I did, and I didn’t look back until I sat down to write this book. If there was any decision I made in basketball between the ages of 14 and 18 that I could get a mulligan on, quitting Sonny Hill was definitely it. I was surrounded by basketball players who were a lot better than me. It was the ideal environment for learning and improving my game, but I did not understand that back then.

The summer of 2000 I spent doing the same as I'd been doing the previous summers: work at my job (in order through high school: Pizza Hut, Friendly's, Rita's Water Ice, McDonald's) and practice my game on the asphalt at Finley the rest of the time. By this time my athleticism was as great as it had been and on that ability alone I could grab any and every rebound and score around the

34 @DreAllDay basket well. My handle wasn't fancy but it was good enough to get from Point A to Point B. Since I'd started my basketball career as nothing more than a stand- in-the-corner spot up shooter I could still make jumpers but I was putting much more of my practice-time focus on exploiting my athletic advantages since I knew there would probably be some other shooters in college. I didn't think there would be many players waking around Abington's campus with my all-around skill set. Honestly I was feeling quite cocky as the fall semester started at Abington: I had been mentally preparing myself to go in and earn a spot on a D1 team, and now I was going to a school whose program competed at a level that was three tiers lower (I considered Abington, with its two-year eligibility rules, lesser even than a D3 program).

35 @DreAllDay Freshman Year of College

Things were about the way I thought they'd be at Abington: not much of a place for serious basketball players. Before practice began, most days there were not enough willing or able players around to even play a full court pickup game. The returning players from the team came in for pickup occasionally but even then I could tell that basketball was just something they did (even though as a team they were damn good at it). I never saw any of them in the gym alone practicing -- that's what a basketball player does. Playing pickup and practicing with the team are things you do when you play basketball. There wasn't really much of a tryout process to anticipate -- there were about 15 players who wanted to play, newcomers included, and that was the team. We had the "general interest" meeting with Head Coach Maurice "Mo" Williams; he told us when practice would start. The returning guys started to come and play pickup regularly then, about two weeks before official practice began. Coach Mo called me over one day after watching some of a pickup game and foreshadowed what would be a running issue for me at Abington.

"Dre, I see you out there dominating, grabbing everything under the sun, but it don't look like you're even playing hard. What's up with that?"

I replied that the lack of competition was to blame and, with nothing else to go off of, Mo let it go, but my inability to make a habit of playing hard -- plus my slowness in learning the plays we ran -- kept me out of the starting lineup to begin the season. I did eventually learn the plays well enough to be inserted as a starter after about 3 games. The team already had two returning guys in the back court and two in the front court, so I was a swingman.

I played mostly off of athleticism during my freshman year, as, to that point, I had very little official-game (as opposed to pickup game) experience. I ended up averaging around 8 or 9 points per game and had one dunk (a breakaway off of a steal I'd created right before halftime of one home game) that season with a couple of missed dunks, the try-to-dunk-on-two-people type. Looking back I think I was more deer-in-the-headlights than anything else during games, not exactly scared or nervous but just learning how to play "under the whistle." Even though I was far from the most productive player we had (I might've been, amongst the freshman), I knew I was the best in terms of skill.

Abington didn’t post stats anywhere so I never knew the stats besides the final scores, but like many players, I mentally counted my points out after most games. My season high at home was 12 points on a Saturday afternoon game,

36 @DreAllDay after which our point guard, riding home with me, said, “It's about time you had a good game.” On the road at one branch campus team, the floor seemed extra bouncy that night. I tried and missed an off-the-vert facial dunk on a guy. I had over 20 in that game, though, my best output of the season.

I ran into my old high school teammate Arnold when we played against another branch campus upstate that season (Arnold’s cousin, who also was in our class at E&S but I had never seen touching a basketball, played on the team at this campus), I think they were at Penn State Schuylkill, which had maybe 50 Black people on the whole campus.

Our season ended with a loss in the conference tournament at Penn State Mont Alto, after which some of our sophomore players cried in the locker room (for almost all the players at Abington then, those two years were the end of the basketball road for them).

I spent an inordinate amount of my freshman year at Abington in the campus' gym. I hung out there during common hour (the 12-1pm hour during which there were no classes) and did my homework and studying there between the time my classes ended and when practice started. Of course I worked on my game alone a lot in there (if I still lived in Philly, Abington's gym would be my workout location of preference -- in the summer at least). All times of day I'd be the only person in there, especially after the season ended and all my teammates disappeared (at least as far as basketball mattered).

After the season the pickup game situation in the gym was even more dire than it had been before the season; I can remember only one day ever that there was a full gym of people playing pickup ball. If I wasn't practicing alone I'd usually end up paying games of roughhouse (which, depending on where you're from, you may refer to as "45" or "21" -- every man for himself in a race to a certain number of points. Getting the ball was 75% of the battle in roughhouse) with whomever was in there. The competition was weak and I developed some very lazy habits since I needed very little effort or focus to dominate.

There was a guy on campus though (we'll call him 'K' since I don't recall his name) from New York, that was a bit older than me (commuter campuses like Abington tend to have much higher numbers of adult students, who have families or full-time jobs as opposed to being just students). K was a big basketball fan, though at roughly 5'5" I never saw him playing. Whenever I talked to K he would spin stories about the popular NYC street ballers -- this was 2000-01 when the And1 Mixtape was dominating every young fan's mind -- and I could tell that he knew I needed much more of a challenge than what Abington offered. Like I said, K didn't play ball, but he frequented the gym and spent much of his time there in

37 @DreAllDay the weight room. When I'd be on the court playing those meaningless roughhouse games, K started coming out of the weight room, over to the courts and beseeching me to join him in the weight room. He could see from my game that I had promise, and though I knew getting stronger would help my development (one memorable situation was a road game in which some husky White dude posted up and scored on me twice in a row off of inbounds passes, and me being subsequently subbed out of the contest), I had no idea where to begin or what the hell to do. K and a couple of his buddies did, though, so instead of wasting my time and energy on the court with the bums I started my weight room apprenticeship.

The weight room in Abington's gym was small. There were two or three bench press setups, one or two free benches and a rack of dumbbells that went up to around 80 or 90 pounds. There were weight plates for the bench press bars; the rest of the room consisted of machines (which any dummy could figure out since machines are engineered to work in one way and one way only; one thing I learned was that 100 pounds on a machine was not the same as 100 pounds of a free weight). K was short, as I said, and not very muscular either. But he had a couple of friends in the weight room that looked like they had a good idea of how things worked (understatement). K introduced me to them and they got me started on a few basic moves: barbell bench press (I could not do 135lbs for even one rep the first time I tried it), triceps skull crushers (I specifically recall one of the lifting dudes directing me to a 45-pound dumbbell once and me knowing I couldn't do the move at that weight -- I settled on 35lbs), dumbbell bench pressing, and bicep curls. Those are the four I remember from the beginning.

I wasn't at all discouraged about my lack of strength in the beginning (this was March-April of 2001). I had never lifted weights before (don't ask about the 'weight room' back at E&S) and knew there was a process to getting stronger. The older dudes that were always in there set an example for me to aspire to: I mean, here I was at 6'4" and none of them was over 6'1." They were slapping multiple 45-pound plates on the bench, pressing, then grabbing that bar and doing dead lifts. Every afternoon that I went into the weight room or walked past it, they were in there putting work in. None of them was crazy bulky but they were all rock-solid muscle from head to toe. I made the weight room part of my practicing routine at least three times per week. I started with just the exercises I had been shown, along with a heavy dose of machine work. Later I'd copy stuff I saw other people in there doing too. Working on my on-court game was still top priority though. One day while on the court alone, coach Mo happened by. Mo didn't have an office at Abington -- basketball coach at Abington was a part-time job; Mo usually came to practices and games straight from his day job in which he did something with kids, I don’t know exactly what -- so he was walking towards the athletic director's office and he stopped to talk to me.

38 @DreAllDay I can't quote Mo, but the gist of his talk was that I needed to step up my performance for the following season. He and I both knew I was way ahead of anyone else there; his main point was that I needed to have my head on straight when it came to the team and be focused on working hard every day. Then he left. Turns out that was the last time I would see coach Mo Williams until 2006.

***

As the summer of 2001 went on, I could feel and see the physical difference in my body as I kept lifting. Seeing the difference encouraged me more to keep at it and I did. With Abington being such a small, quiet campus, it was particularly dead in the summer. I wasn't taking classes but I drove to campus daily to work on my game and lift weights. Most days the gym was completely empty and I worked on everything I could think of. I didn’t have any offseason routine to follow or anything like that; I just got in there and did stuff.

My route driving home from Abington campus to my parent's house in Mt. Airy took me past Cheltenham Mall which had a Wendy's in the parking lot outside the mall and a McDonald's across the street, both with convenient drive-thru windows. I should remind you that I was 19 years old at the time, and the (junk) food I ate went in and flushed out just as easy on both ends. I stopped at that Cheltenham Mall Wendy's every day coming back from campus, taking advantage of the Everyday Value Menu -- namely the bacon double cheeseburger (always plain), value French fries, and 5-piece nuggets. The rest of my days were occupied by my job at CVS in Flourtown. That was my routine for the summer of 2001.

There was one routine-breaking event that happened that summer, though.

Many days, I would drive up to Abington campus before eating anything, park next to the gym, walk over and patronize the campus cafe for breakfast before my workout. On one of these mornings there must have been some sort of event happening on campus, as there was a group of older adults or professors sitting in the cafe lobby chatting. The way the cafe was set up, there was a seating space right at the entrance where you could see everyone that walked in or out of the cafe. Naturally many of these professors were sitting in that spot as I walked in. I didn't see any faces I recognized, so I walked past and got my food. As I was on my way out one of the older men approached me.

A Black man, in his fifties.

39 @DreAllDay "Ay man, what position you play?"

Remember, we were in the cafe -- a separate building across the campus from the gym -- and I wasn't carrying a basketball or anything. So who the hell was this guy?

"How you know I play?"

"Hey, I'm just askin'."

"I'm a guard."

I won't quote the rest of the conversation since I don't remember it word for word, but the man shared that he was the basketball coach at Penn State Altoona (which I knew competed at the NCAA Division 3 level -- a step up from Abington). He asked me about my major. I was in psychology during my freshman year, which Altoona didn’t offer, this man admitted, but they did offer Human Development & Family Studies as an alternative (not that that even mattered to the conversation as far as I cared, but he didn't know that). He gave me his business card: Kenneth Macklin, both the head basketball coach and a recruiter of minority students at Altoona (recruiting students for the campus was his full time job; the head coaching position at Altoona was, just like Abington, at the time, only a part-time gig). I still have no idea why Macklin was even there on the Abington campus that day. Next time I talk to Macklin (who is still a recruiter at Altoona) I may remember to ask him about that, and how he even knew I was a basketball player, or if he even did before approaching me. I don’t think he could have predicted I would walk into the cafe. Maybe he was planning on passing by the gym? One of those coincidences of life I guess, and a huge one.

That evening I shared my chance meet with my parents and they seemed to be open to the possibility of me transferring to PSU Altoona (which was about 4 hours from Philly in the middle of Pennsylvania). I spoke to Macklin a day later and my parents also had a conversation with him -- my parents were most concerned about the costs of such a transfer. Housing was one issue, and If any credits didn't transfer with me, along with my change of major, that might mean extra semesters of school, which were all being paid through loans. In breaking the Morehouse news to me, my parents had told me that even with loans to pay the non-scholarship costs, sending me to Morehouse would have had them in debt for the rest of their lives. I couldn't argue with that.

I guess Macklin told them enough for us to take the next step -- my dad and I scheduled a day-long trip to Altoona to meet with Macklin and see the campus.

40 @DreAllDay Even before the campus visit, I knew I was going to Penn State Altoona. Even if the campus was wack and I didn't like what the coach said, anything was better than living at home with my parents and going to fourteenth grade at Abington. Macklin had me in the bag from the moment he'd handed me that business card. The visit was nothing more than a formality.

To this day I have no idea if Macklin and coach Mo ever had a conversation before Macklin approached me in the cafe. I'm sure they had talked between my initial meeting of Macklin and my visit to Altoona. Hell, maybe Mo had set it up himself to get rid of me, ha.

My dad and I left home very early for the visit to Altoona and got there around 9 or 10:00 a.m.. Macklin calmly told me all about the program, and gave us a tour of the campus. He showed us campus housing -- the newest dormitory building named Cedar Hall. Macklin told me he could possibly get me housed in Cedar, the best and newest dormitory, come fall. In the athletic facility -- Adler gymnasium -- Macklin painted a picture for us of the campus’ signature event: Midnight Madness. He said the stands would get completely packed, to the point that latecomers would be turned away. That all sounded interesting enough.

Macklin’s explanation of his stature and position on campus showed me that he was the H.N.I.C. (that's Head Nigga In Charge, for the uninitiated) at Penn State Altoona; since he worked in admissions focusing on bringing minority students to Altoona in addition to coaching basketball, he was pretty well known by everyone, especially by all the Black students who knew him by name and he knew all of them. Macklin talked and walked like he ran shit, and as far as I could see during my visit he did.

Back in his office, Macklin went over his returning roster and asked me to share what I thought coach Mo at Abington would've said was my area for greatest improvement. I admitted that his answer would've been my up-and-down effort levels throughout the season in games and practices. Macklin made it clear to me that a similar issue as an Altoona player would land me on the bench.

Macklin also shared one other foreboding fact about his program: he played favorites to certain players. He came right out and said that. I knew that wouldn't have much to do with me -- I wasn't and have never been the "coach's favorite" type -- but it did seem important to Macklin to share that tidbit with me.

My visit ended with my dad and I talking to Macklin in the Logan Valley Mall parking lot. The last thing Macklin told me was that he was not recruiting me there to be an average player. He wanted me to be the star or at least be one of them. I had committed to Altoona during the visit, but this being D3 with no

41 @DreAllDay scholarships there were no papers to sign or fax and no press conference. That was that and it was over -- my dad and I drove back to Philly that day.

Getting back home the three of us -- my dad, mom, and me -- congregated and concluded that my transfer to Altoona was to be put in motion. I'd need to go to some office on Abington's campus and put in the necessary paperwork to have myself officially registered as a student of the Altoona campus, but otherwise the transfer was seamless since I was still in the same Penn State University system.

That night in the summer of 2001, at Finley playground, I smoked marijuana for the second and last time in my life. My friends that I hung with all smoked regularly and I was with them a lot when they did but I never partook. That night I decided to take a couple celebratory hits of the weed as I shared with them that Altoona was the next move. I think my joke-telling skills increased as a result of the weed but otherwise in felt normal. I haven't smoked anything since that night.

The rest of the 2001 summer, I was feeling the hell out of myself. I'd been recruited to play for someone's basketball team for the first time in my life, and to think, I'd met my recruiter while on campus in the summertime to practice alone. I knew that putting in the work after hours -- outside of the requirements -- was the key to getting ahead of the pack, and a (again, as far as I know) coincidental meeting while doing just that had turned into the greatest accomplishment of my basketball life to that point.

42 @DreAllDay Sophomore Year

I finished up the summer doing my usual -- driving up to Abington's campus to practice and lift, eating that Wendy's drive-thru food, working at CVS -- and the day finally came to drive to Altoona. My parents drove in my dad's SUV while I followed in my VW Jetta. I'd always had great visions in my head of what it would be like as I arrived to campus as an actual recruited athlete: girls giggling, fans clapping and holding up signs, TV cameras trying to catch a glimpse...

None of that happened.

I didn't even see Macklin until a few days after I'd gotten there. It was a fun experience moving in, though -- there were females to see and be seen by, and I was finally going away to college, a year later than I'd wanted to. Macklin had come through and gotten me a room in Cedar Hall. My mom teared up as my parents got ready to leave. Then just like that, they were gone and there I was, sitting in a dorm room alone (my roommate hadn't arrived yet) with nothing to do. We'd left Philly on a Sunday and classes didn't start until Tuesday. I walked to the Port-Sky cafe on campus to buy some food with my meal card. I knew I didn't know anyone on this campus -- I'd barely even heard of it three months before -- so I walked through the cafe not really noticing any faces until a short Black dude called out to me.

"E&S, right?"

I didn't know this guy but I surmised he'd went to my high school -- no way he could know I came from there otherwise. The graduating classes at E&S were about 150 people deep and I knew this dude wasn't from my grade. Being that I was a sophomore, he had to be a freshman. His name was Stan -- we ended up being roommates the next school year -- we chatted for a minute and I moved on.

Having eaten, there was only one thing left to do. I had seen while walking to and from the cafe that there was an outdoor basketball court, with a nice-sized crowd playing full court ball on it. I went down there and played a few games. The guys out there were inconsequential but it was fun to get out and play a bit in my new stomping grounds.

School started and I was happy to finally see some good players around. The basketball team guys at Abington could play too, for the most part; they were

43 @DreAllDay never around before or after he season though. Abington being a commuter campus played a big part in that. Altoona's students were mostly all living in on or off-campus housing, so everyone was always around and we all knew where the pickup games were.

Cedar dorm hall was set up in suites: two to a room, with two rooms sharing a shower and toilet. My first day in the dorms, I walked over to the other room of my suite when I heard a person in there. A Black dude was playing Jadakiss' album (which had just come out) on his Playstation. I was alone and bored so I introduced myself, and came to find out this dude was at Altoona to play ball too. His name was Lamar and he was from Pittsburgh. Mar was a junior that had played two years at a branch campus. He didn't have anything to do either so we hit the gym to get some shots up and see if anyone else was in there.

Mar was about 5'10"-11", a point guard. He was quick and had a consistent shooting stroke (something I lacked at that point, having shifted my focus from being the lights-out catch-and-shoot guy I was when I first started, to taking over games with my athleticism). We’d shot around for a bit when I challenged Mar to a game of one-on-one.

(Side note: I've worked out with many players who were playing college or pro ball at the time we worked out. Many of them -- more than half -- when we worked out, never brought up playing one-on-one. Any player I work out with, I ALWAYS want to play one-on-one. Not only for the competitive aspect and to challenge myself against someone I respect, but to see where the other players’ heart is at. It's important to know how tough someone is, how far and hard they can be pushed competitively -- especially if you two are ever going to be playing alongside one another. But a lot of players just want to get the shots in, do the drills and get out of there. And it's not a skill level or heart thing at all if they don’t want to play -- there are some that just want to do the drills and such, that I've seen game tapes of overseas putting in work. Just an interesting thing.)

I’ll say Mar won the first game we played. Mar had a tight handle and was good at using it to fake as if he were going to shoot while maintaining his dribble. His quickness and handles were good too. I didn't really have many scoring moves off the dribble but my handle was solid enough that, combined with my athleticism, I could get the shots I wanted versus Mar. He seemed to be a gym rat like me and we went to the gym often during that first week, playing full court one-on-one games and some 5x5 pickup games. It wasn't long before I had to yell at Mar during a game for not getting me the ball enough. It didn't rattle him though (he earned my respect in that moment for not letting it effect his emotions on the court -- much more than I could say about many players I played with or against in college) and we played well together taking turns scoring.

44 @DreAllDay ***

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I had two early classes starting at 8:00 a.m.. After my first class I walked over to the Smith building for my second class and there was a huge group of about 50 students around the TV that was above the doors. I went into my lecture hall and didn't even bother looking to see what they were watching. While sitting waiting for class to begin another student came in and started speaking to the person seated next to me. I heard him mention a crash and the Twin Towers but I thought nothing of it; I mean, we were still in class and there had been no announcements made about any emergency. My psychology professor came in and taught the class without mentioning anything either.

By the end of class there was still a large group around the TVs. I got to my room and my roommate was watching my TV, tuned to the news of what was happening. I grabbed my car keys and drove to Logan Valley Mall -- Jay-Z's Blueprint and Fabolous' debut album Ghetto Fabolous were both being released that day. I got my CDs and stopped at the local dollar store and went back into Cedar Hall.

By around 11 o'clock the campus had cancelled classes for the rest of the day and scheduled a candlelight vigil for anyone that wished to attend later that evening. All the basketball players met up in the gym for pickup ball and Macklin came around to ask if everyone and their families were OK. We didn't have any players from NYC but we had one from Washington, DC who said, "Man, we Black. When we see trouble we go the other way!" Mar and I sat in a common area of Cedar hall that night watching TV; all I remember is him mockingly making fun of the name of the supposed perpetrator of the whole 9/11 situation.

“The fuck kinda name is Bin Laden??”

***

About three weeks into the semester Macklin held the basketball general interest meeting in the gym. Being that we were a D3 program this meeting was required to be held, along with tryouts that were open to all students on campus. Macklin had made it clear to me during my visit that being on time was a big thing to him. Stan, the E&S alum I'd met on he first day in the cafe, strolled into the gym about three minutes late to the general interest meeting and was immediately rebuked and kicked out by Macklin before he even got to the bleachers. One of the returning players, whom I'd met playing pickup named Eric walked in about ten

45 @DreAllDay minutes later and Macklin told him to get out too, but was reminded that Eric had had class and was coming from there (which was excused).

Macklin had two assistant coaches, Rob and Eugene. Rob was an older White guy from Altoona, probably in his early fifties. Rob ran his own shirt printing business in town, which paid off handsomely for the basketball program as we had a lot of gear, including T-shirts, hoodies, and sweatsuits. Coach Rob seemed to be the perfect subordinate personality to Macklin's dominant style.

Gene, the other assistant coach, was a former player of Macklin's (and of coach Mo at Abington before that). Gene was only a couple years older than me as he knew some of the players I'd played with during my one year at Abington. He had just finished his career at Altoona and was joining Macklin's staff. Gene had been the best player on Altoona's squad during his years there and had the respect of all the returning guys -- a perfect person to have as an assistant coach. I remember Gene playing pickup with us a few times early in the semester and him being matched up with TJ, who was our 6'7" center and a muscular athlete. Gene (who was about 6'4" and 230 pounds, not athletic but very strong) threw a couple elbow-forearms into TJ and scored easy layups on him all the while talking shit to him. I could see that Gene was a competitor and was the most mentally dominant of any of the players on campus from the previous season. In transition, I tossed a trailing Gene a pass in pickup one day and he dunked it cleanly -- I mentioned that to him and he said, "Yeah man... Niggas try’na say I lost my game. "

After the general interest meeting, Gene gathered us all up and told us it was time that we started getting ready for practice which was a month away. Later he took me and Mar into the weight room and gave us a routine to follow for the next couple of weeks, mostly lower-body stuff. That Sunday evening Gene called my room, catching me after I'd spent the entire afternoon playing pickup ball. Gene said he was getting everyone in the gym that was going to be on the team or was trying to be, to play full court pickup games right then. I went in and played and that was the first time I got a sense of who the basketball team would be. I had played with almost everyone there at one time or another to that point in the semester but this was the first time everyone was together. What made it fun was that you could see everyone looking to establish themselves in the pecking order; a situation I loved. That was the best pickup ball we played all year.

There were many players who could play in the program my sophomore year at Altoona. The most interesting part of bringing so many players together is seeing who takes the lead as far as looking to dominate and who kinda falls in line and plays to fit in, at first at least. The returning players, of course, were comfortable and looking to establish who they were and that the spot that they each had

46 @DreAllDay occupied the previous year was taken. I, having been at the end of a bench just two years prior and now a recruit to a college team, approached preseason pickup ball at Altoona the same way I’d approached things at Abington: looking to impress and dominate. I took every opportunity to score, post up, shoot, go into isolation, grab rebounds and go coast to coast. After a month of pickup ball I don't know if there was a clear "best player" amongst us all, but I was the most versatile player there. I was ready for official practice to begin.

Now, we all know that pickup basketball is a lot different from official school basketball, especially in college where the coaching staff and system are usually the biggest stars of the program. After my All-star open gym performances, the system and coaching became the stars -- especially in my world, because both were kicking my ass after a week of practice.

My bad habit of not giving full effort in practice had followed me from Abington. My freshman year, I was so far ahead of my teammates athletically, my lackadaisical effort could pass for acceptable. At Altoona I was still the best athlete but not by as big a margin. Furthermore, the overall skill level was higher here. At Abington, no player on that team had any one skill that I couldn't equal or come within 10% of. I had a couple teammates at Abington that were better ball handlers, better shooters, better passers. I was either close enough to matching that skill or so much better in other areas (or both) that even though my performance during the season was never great, I never really respected any of my Abington teammates as good basketball players.

At Altoona there were players whose passing and decision making was way better than mine. Our point guards were quicker -- pressuring them defensively was a bad move for me -- and ran the offense a lot better than me. Our big men had better post moves than I had. So, while my "skill margin" to any player's best attribute at Abington was a mere 10%, at Altoona it was about 25%. Don't mistake it though -- I still knew there was no one there better than me in overall game.

Macklin knew it too, which made what was happening early in the season even more frustrating.

The "work hard for all of practice, every practice" requirement of Macklin's regime was overwhelming me. I was in good enough shape to play basketball all day, run a mile and lift weights after, then play basketball again, all on a meal of pizza and soda. The difference between the pickup games and this was that in pickup games I controlled my effort level: I played hard because I wanted to, and I could dial back my effort whenever I chose to. In practice with the team, there was an effort level requirement, and I was failing to consistently reach it. When Macklin

47 @DreAllDay started to put in offensive and defensive sets and called out who the first team would be, I wasn't in that group. I got into a mental slump about that and, with the amount of talent on the team outside of myself, I was sinking in depth-chart quicksand. I wasn't so much better than everyone else there that the coaches needed to even bother with me. They wanted me in the rotation but they didn’t need me in the rotation, if I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to do. The team had won 11 games the previous season and with Macklin's recruiting class we were rumored to be a contender, at least according to coach Rob.

I ran into Macklin in the cafe one day after practice and he tried to level with me. He knew I'd been slumping about not being in the starting unit. He asked me if I understood that the offense he ran (motion, with lots of off-ball cutting) was designed for an athlete like myself to exploit my abilities -- I said I did. He said something about working hard every day in practice -- I don't remember what, go figure -- and we parted ways. About a week before the season began I saw Macklin in his office and he gave me a quick pep talk about earning my wings as a player: “You're the closest thing I've seen to a total-package player, he said. You have all the tools but its not gonna just come to you. You cannot just turn it on and off. You have to earn it. Are you ready to earn it? Are you going to earn it?”

That was the last time Macklin tried leveling with me about my effort level all season.

Another thing from my summer visit to Altoona that happened exactly as Macklin said it would: Midnight Madness was bananas.

For those who don't know, Midnight Madness is an event that originated on college campuses to build fan excitement and signal the start of practice for the upcoming season; NCAA rules stipulated that practice could not begin before October 15 (I've heard these rules have been somewhat relaxed since my college days) so Midnight Madness would be held the night of the fourteenth in the basketball arena, with the team taking the floor at the stroke of midnight. The event is held for the fans to stir up anticipation, featuring dunk contests, some form of fan interactions, and other fun stuff to make it a good time for all other than just watching basketball. I'd guess that most coaches would want their teams to have some sort of structure or routines before going before the masses so Midnight Madness doesn't always happen on the fifteenth; ours did not.

Macklin told us to get there around 11pm since we were being introduced at exactly midnight. I got there early and Adler was completely packed in a way I'd never seen it before, and I never saw it packed like that again. There were several performances as we had a dance team, a step team, and a cheerleading

48 @DreAllDay squad. The women's team was also involved. Before we were to come out for introductions Macklin and Rob took us into the back equipment room and we all got new Nike Shox sneakers to play in. There were parties going on after the event; that was my first night partying in college. Midnight Madness definitely lived up to Macklin's billing.

We hosted a scrimmage against a branch campus team (a couple of our players had played for that branch before coming to Altoona) and I barely played. The few minutes I did play I don't remember, which means I did nothing of consequence. In a matter of a month since practice had begun, I'd gone from dominating pickup games to the end of the bench, sitting amongst with players who would've been lucky to make the roster at Abington.

We began the season playing in a tournament at Juniata College, a local school that was also D3 but not in our conference. I didn't get into the game until late in the second half, and I did one thing in that game that I still remember.

Our defensive philosophy was to protect the baseline and send a driver to the middle of the floor instead of letting them navigate the baseline. Naturally I jump out on a guard from Methodist College -- guy couldn't have been more than six feet tall -- and gave up the baseline draw. Guy drives and throws down he highlight of the weekend: a two-foot, one hand tomahawk dunk on our 6'7" center that had the crowd going bonkers. That was the only memorable thing I did in the two-game weekend tournament (in which we got stomped twice).

We went on to play a few more non-conference games in which my playing time was sporadic -- anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes of floor time. I would score well for my limited run, and grab a few boards. My trouble areas were running the plays properly and turnovers. I definitely had more turnovers than assists my sophomore year; maybe twice as many. I had no trouble creating a shot for myself when I decided to, so if I got the ball the play always ended in either a shot attempt or a turnover.

As for the team, we lost, and lost some more. Some losses were close -- 10 points or less, but none that came down to the final possession -- and we got ran out of a few gyms, even in our own conference.

My first low point was at a holiday tournament we played in Grove City, PA right after Christmas. We lost the first game to the hosts by about ten points. I didn't play much and Macklin had called me out of the second-half layup line to implore me to put a bit more effort into cheering for my teammates from the bench. I was somewhat surprised that he had noticed, though he could have simply been tipped off by Gene or coach Rob. In a perverse type of way, though, I wanted him

49 @DreAllDay to notice: I was completely uninterested in being a towel-waver. I'd rather not even be on the team -- at least then I could practice more on my own and play pickup or intramural basketball. In those settings at least, I knew I'd be playing all game.

We were in a barn burner in the second game, in which I had not played all game until a starter fouled out with less than a minute to go. Macklin hastily put me in the game during a timeout and I was inbounding the ball: turnover on the pass. I'd been sitting all game and wasn't accustomed to being ready in an instant like most off-the-bench specialists are. Moreover my confidence in my game was totally shot, having gone from feeling I was (arguably) the best player on campus to riding the bench while guys I'd killed in preseason pickup runs were playing a lot.

Our opponent had the lead and we had the ball; again Macklin called timeout and drew up a play. He pointed to me during he huddle: "don't you take the ball out!" He wasn't really yelling but he was talking over crowd noise in the last minute of a tight game -- you know what it's like.

So we run the play and I don't handle the inbounds pass. Things happen, and I end up with the ball. I didn't have a shot opportunity so I looked to make a pass.

Turnover.

We lost that game by three points. I had not been a factor at all in either game except for the plays I'd messed up. Penn State Altoona was 0-9 to that point in the season.

I went back home after the tournament since the spring semester didn't begin until a week later and the dorms were closed until then, and tried to get my mind right to come back strong for the rest of the season. One problem was that it was winter in Philadelphia and I didn't have indoor gym access. I could try to play at Finley's gym but there was only one full court and it was the only gym in the neighborhood -- always in use for some team's practice, or being used by many kids at once all trying to play. So for the most part I didn't touch a ball for the rest of the break.

I got back to campus a few days before the semester started as we had some practice days. I was the first one back in the gym for our first January practice (the gym was freezing since the heat had been off all break) but things just didn't feel right physically. I had no explosion and no bounce at all. My knees ached and I explained mid-practice how I felt to Macklin, who said he had noticed. I sat out the rest of practice and saw the trainer a day or two later. She didn't do

50 @DreAllDay anything special apart from listening to me explain my symptoms and diagnose that I had tendinitis. I had done some research of my own and was agreement. We had a stretch of 5 games in 8 days coming up; I told Macklin later that day at practice that I'd need 10 days of rest.

If I were a starter on the team playing heavy minutes (I ended up playing just over 15 minutes per game my sophomore year), I would've found a way to keep playing. Maybe sit out some or part of practices, but I'd be ready for games. It was more of a being "hurt" than being "injured." A player can choose whether to play hurt (soreness, bruises, minor tweaks); playing injured (broken bones, torn muscles) can ruin a career. Since I wasn't playing I figured I would let myself get back to 100% before I returned. I also wanted to see if I was the problem: would the team start winning with me not in uniform?

The team went 0-5 during my injury period, losing by as little as 10 and by as much as 35 and bringing our record to 0-14. At this point I started to feel my relationship with Macklin changing. He had stuck to his guns as a coach, forcing me to earn the playing time that I still hadn't earned. Maybe he was on to my way of thinking during my injury respite, and he wanted the team to win without me to show that maybe I was a problem for the team, in a figurative type of way. I had not done much on the court that year but if the team went 0-for-5 while I sat out I would have a bit of a leg to stand on if I were to approach Macklin about an increase of playing time. I was never an outwardly disruptive member of the team, but I brought nothing to the table if I wasn't playing and my energy certainly wasn't helping the team in any way. Teams are put together the way they are for a reason.

There were players on our team that year that had not played much the previous year and didn't play much the year I got there, and they were content with that. They knew they were not as good as the guys that played and were happy to practice hard every day, cheer from the bench every game, and just be a part of the program. Every team needs players like this because there is only one ball and only so many minutes to go around. An All-star team is entertaining and works well for a game or two, but would not work for an entire season due to one simple fact: every player on that squad believes he should be playing the entire game and/or getting many touches because that's exactly what happens on every team he plays on -- that's how he becomes and All-star. There are gonna be many dissatisfied individuals if every player on your roster is expecting to play a major role. That's why coaches recruit players who (they) know won't play much. Somebody has to wave the towels and go hard in practice. I couldn't speak for the benchwarmers on our team but I was no goddamn towel waver.

51 @DreAllDay I returned for our road game at Lake Erie College. Macklin and I never spoke about my little theory or about the time I took to return to playing but I could feel that he wasn’t too happy with me by this point in the season. In the pre-game layup line I wanted to test my knee out so I decided to go up and stuff the ball in the basket -- a dunk without touching the rim -- which requires you to get several inches above the basket. Trouble was I'd never tried that before. What I ended up doing was slamming the ball in, snapping the rim hard and loud. Not a big deal -- everyone knew I could dunk -- except that dunking in pre-game warmups was against the rules in NCAA basketball (at the time, at least), punishable by a technical foul assessed to the offending team.

Here's the funny part of it: The referees for the game were standing at half court calmly waiting for the game to start, and saw (and heard) my dunk. I knew immediately I'd done something I shouldn't have and I'm sure it showed on my face, but the refs were completely oblivious to it. I made eye contact with them and they just smiled meekly at me, neither moving nor speaking. Lake Erie's coaches were sitting there on the bench in front of our layup line and none of them said anything either.

One of our junior guards was the only person to react when the dunk happened -- "what are you DOING??!!" he yelled out. He sheepishly went over to Macklin on our bench and we snitched on ourselves -- Macklin reminded the refs of the rule. A ref finally blew his whistle and awarded Lake Erie two free throws and the ball to start the game.

Now, I admit, I shouldn't have dunked the ball -- I wasn't planning to, but I had done it -- but the reaction of my teammate and subsequent self-reporting by our coach made me curious as to if that would have happened had someone else done it. But I'll take the blame for the two points and (potential) loss of possession, since Lake Erie was awarded the ball to start the game as a result of the technical foul.

No good deed goes unpunished: I, healthy and back in uniform, did not get into that game. Only time that happened to me in college. We won the game by two points, our first win of the season. Our team stormed the court in raucous celebration when the final horn sounded. I pretended to be ecstatic about it but I was very unhappy for two reasons. The first is obvious -- I got benched for the whole damn game. It was a close game, the kind in which the bum players don't expect to play. Everyone gets a chance during a blowout, no matter which side of it you're on. In the close games, only the players the coach trusts to pull out a win will play. I know there were other factors in play -- the underlying tension between Macklin and myself, the technical foul layup line dunk -- but I was not good at being a cheerleader.

52 @DreAllDay The second reason is one that annoys me any time I see it in sports, at any level: a terrible team starts a season with a long losing streak and finally wins a game. Then they celebrate like they just won the title or made it to the championship game or series. I absolutely hate seeing that and felt even worse being a part of it (or at least pretending to). I remember a recent Miami Dolphins NFL team started a season with something like 12 consecutive losses (an NFL season is 16 games), and finally won a game at home. I believe they won on a touchdown in sudden death overtime. Their entire bench emptied and create a huge celebration pile in the end zone while the home crowd went ballistic.

OK, so you won't be going 0-for-the-season. This is a reason to celebrate? Back in the locker room, both coach Rob and Macklin let out individual yelps of relief that were applauded and cheered on by my teammates. I was even more annoyed as we exited the locker room and our women's team showered each of us with loud cheers as we exited. I had to pretend to be excited about this. I should note that I haven't been skilled at acting since scoring the role of Brutus in Julius Caesar in third grade. After the game somewhere between stopping for our post game meal and hitting the road I found myself near Macklin and said, "Coach, we finally got one."

His response made clear what I had suspected.

"Yeah, they did a good job of pulling out a win."

Wow. They.

I was already mentally checked out of this season, even though I had no plans on what to do for the future. Quit basketball? Transfer? Hope to mend fences with Macklin for next season? I admittedly wasn't much into long term thinking at this point in my life but I was incredibly frustrated with everything going on with my basketball career at this point.

Macklin left the gym before the end of one of our practices one day; practices always ended with us shooting free throws before leaving. This particular day, for no real reason, I decided to try banking in my free throw attempts off the backboard. On our way to a road game two days later Macklin called me over to the coaches table at the restaurant we'd stopped at for the pre-game meal.

He said he'd heard I'd been shooting my free throws off the backboard in practice the other day, and asked me if this was true. I confirmed the story (to this day I don't know why neither assistant -- Gene or Rob -- didn't just address this with me while I was doing it if it would turn out to be an issue. Who knows, it could've

53 @DreAllDay gotten back to Macklin through one of them or even a player, the way our team was structured at this point. This should give you an idea of the cohesiveness of our team in 2001-02). He then asked me if shooting free throws off the backboard was something I'd do in a game, which of course I didn't. I didn't see I as a big deal and I don't think, in a vacuum, it was to him either. But this wasn't no damn vacuum.

Macklin pauses a moment to think, then said, "After tonight's game, I want you to come to my office tomorrow and turn in your uniform."

I started to get up to leave the table and Macklin spoke again.

"Wait a minute. I want you to turn in your uniform ... unless you can tell me that you'll shoot your practice free throws the way you shoot them in games."

I agreed to Macklin's alternative proposition and left the table. We were getting our teeth kicked in that game and I got some extended run, scoring my season high 11 points (we lost by 21).

One (the only?) benefit of the circumstances I was facing on the basketball team was that I completely shut myself off socially at school and just did school work. I rarely partied or even talked to many people as the season dragged on. My inability to compartmentalize cost me many potential friends my sophomore year of college. I did, however, make Dean's list academically both semesters.

We went on to lose 4 consecutive games after the Lake Erie victory. After one terrible road loss, Macklin noted that we would be having practice when we got off the bus in Altoona. We all gathered in the gym (still in our street clothing) and Macklin gave a confusing speech.

He drew up a weird diagram with representations of all the players and the coaches in groups. Then he said, "Somebody's gotta go. Anybody wanna quit? Should I quit?"

Macklin's tone wasn't at all conciliatory; I think he was just as confused about the performance of his team as his speech sounded. He said a few more things but nothing memorable and nothing was resolved. The problem with Penn State Altoona’s program in 2001-02 was that we just were not that good of a basketball team. We had 2-3 productive players who would have contributed positively on any team in our conference. We had 1-2 guys that were solid -- won't hurt you at all, but not really a factor. The kind of players we'd now call "replacement level" or "placeholders." Three or 4 players were up and down -- make a great play, then make a terrible play. Have a solid game, then have a terrible game. I was in

54 @DreAllDay this group. The reasons for me: lack of focus. Not being comfortable in live games due to my lack of experience. Terrible practice habits. My mental check- out of caring about the fate of the team. Not really liking some of my teammates.

The worst idea Macklin had all season was still to be revealed.

The next time we had practice the coaches handed out a questionnaire to the players. Our instructions were to fill it out anonymously and get it back to the head coach before the next day's practice.

The questions:

1. Who are the top five players on the team? 2. Who should be the starting five? 3. Anything you'd like to add? Say it here:

If you need to be told that I put myself as the first answer for both #s 1 and 2, I don't know why you are reading this.

For #3, I’ll paraphrase my answer:

"What you've been trying is not working. The players playing the bulk of the minutes have had plenty opportunity -- they have failed. If you are still trying to win games I suggest you try playing different players."

That isn't word-for-word but it is damn close. I walked into Macklin's office and handed my questionnaire right to him, and just so there was no mystery, I wrote my full name at the top.

The main issue by that point in the season was that there were clear factions within the team. The last thing we needed was a platform for people to speak their minds anonymously. We could've had a team meeting where those questions were asked in front of everyone. But that may not have worked as we didn't have any outspoken players on this team; I doubt anyone there would even question the starting five in front of a teammate or coach. There weren't any players on that team that would stand up and call another guy out in front of everyone else.

All winning teams -- sports or not -- have at least one of those. I was probably the most outspoken guy on the roster but I was quite far away from having grounds to speak up -- if there were a such thing as skill-to-production ratio I would've set a school record for ineptitude in 2002. This team could have used a guy like Gene, who was producing every game and wouldn't hesitate to call anyone out in

55 @DreAllDay front of everyone. After one rather frustrating (for him) loss at home Gene came into the locker room before Rob and Macklin and blew his stack, yelling at us all in a way that I could tell that our play was weighing on him as if he was still playing on the team. He capped it off in a way that no one on our current roster could ever have:

"And I’ll knock anyone in here the FUCK OUT who got somethin’ to say!"

Macklin never said anything about his survey but it was clear he'd decided on a few changes. I knew my comments from the questionnaire would not go completely ignored. One day in practice as the first unit worked on a play Macklin told the defense to go at 70% speed, and decided my 70% was a little bit too hard on the first team small forward. He threw a snide remark at me in front of everyone:

"Look, making him look bad won't get you more playing time, okay? You should've been doing that in the preseason."

Later, Macklin started giving more practice reps to our end-of-bench guys and they started getting in games too. Everyone at our home crowds cheered for them and the team did too. Seeing Macklin make playing time changes energized me a bit and I started working harder in practice to the point that Macklin orally applauded my effort a couple times. My increased playing time helped bring my minutes per game average up at the tail end of the season.

The alignment of the AMCC conference awarded every team a spot in the conference tournament, and a trip to Frostburg, Maryland for a first round matchup with the third-ranked team in the conference (who had beaten us by 35 & 49 points that season; the top two teams received first round byes).

We gathered, as always, in the locker room before the game against Frostburg State for Macklin to go over the game plan and the match-ups of who guards whom to begin the game. Out of the blue, Macklin had me in the starting lineup for the first time all season. I was surprised, then excited: the biggest game of our season, I could stand out here. Show that all that time on he bench was a mistake and that I could've been outperforming all the players ahead of me all year if I had just been getting more time.

I went into the game at Frostburg with a nothing to lose mentality. I scored a couple of baskets early and we were down only one point at the ten-minute mark of the first half.

Then Frostburg got serious and blew us out, winning by a final score of 99-63.

56 @DreAllDay It had clearly been my best game of the year considering the stakes. I ended up with ten points in the game and felt great on so many levels, most importantly Macklin starting me in that game meant he at least knew I was there, and my solid play that game meant his last impression of me had to be a positive one. So, I thought, if he and I ended up together again my junior year there was hope for me.

My energy and zeal for the game all started to rush back into me no sooner than we got on that bus in Frostburg to ride back to Altoona. While most players on a team are sad to see a season end, I was ecstatic. My future was rife with possibilities and all I was thinking about was how I would schedule my on-court and weight room training with my class schedule. Immediately I felt like the best player on campus again.

We had no seniors on our team that year so everyone, technically, might have come back. There were a couple guys that were transferring to PSU's main campus to compete their degrees and wouldn't be back (the players Macklin had recruited were recruited with the understanding that they could complete their studies at the Altoona campus). I wasn't friends with everyone by season's end but I didn't hate any players and none were enemies, so if all the players remaining ended up coming back I was all right with that. Of course, Macklin was doing his recruiting, but I really didn't give a damn about who was gonna be on the team. I knew that all I had to do was be there and be ready to go and there wasn't a player around that I was even remotely worried about.

At our end of season meeting Macklin made it clear that all of us should take note of the weight room's location and make good use of it before next season. NCAA D3 programs were not allowed to mandate offseason workouts so that was the most that Macklin could do as far as our training once the season ended. Macklin had called me over during practice one day after I had picked myself up from falling in a scrum for a rebound under the basket. He told me it was time I started knocking some people down instead of being the one that got knocked down. So my weight room work wasn’t quite finished. I was already a regular there, though, so it was no thing for me.

I was just happy for the season to be over -- now I could dedicate that time to my individual development, an area I knew I could do better than anyone else.

I hit the weight room hard, using every machine in there and copying any exercises I hadn’t seen before from others I saw lifting. At one point I was lifting weights every day before a friend of mine advised me to take some time for muscle recovery.

57 @DreAllDay Macklin did, however, organize a three-on-three semi-league amongst returning players and a couple guys on campus that figured to be on the team the following year. I was teamed with our junior point guard Kenny and Mark, a 6'4" power forward who was a weight room regular -- Mark was ripped but still athletic- shaped and probably looked great on the beach. He had just arrived in Altoona during spring semester and was one of the new players who I knew would be on next season’s club. I told Macklin a few days before the first games that my team was going to win it. And we did. On the final play of the championship game I remember having the ball and Kenny coming over to get it from me by way of a handoff and me waving him off. I took the shot and made it, sealing our win and me telling Macklin, "I told you."

“I never said you wouldn’t.”

I went back to playing pickup every day as if I had to prove myself all over. As expected, most of the basketball team disappeared after the season and Macklin's little three-on-three event. I didn't care. I played with and against anyone in the gym and had the respect of all the non-team basketball players at Altoona because they saw that I didn't consider myself too big to not only play with them, but play hard, argue over calls, and treat the games like they mattered.

Macklin called a surprise meeting in March that none of us had seen coming. We gathered in the back of the gym, in the equipment closet so we could have privacy.

Macklin informed us that the head athletic staff (Athletic Director, et al. at Altoona had managed (decided?) to change the head coaching position at Altoona into a full time position. While they could have easily just offered the position for Macklin to accept or decline -- he would, in that case, have to decide between his full-time position at Altoona and coaching -- the athletic staff had decided to open up the position, pulling the rug out from under Macklin.

Macklin then filled us in a bit on why this was happening the way it was. Altoona had yet to seriously compete with the top programs in the AMCC, all of which were run by full time coaches. Macklin had been fighting with one had tied behind his back for all these years. I recalled two conference road games in which the host was playing in a brand new gym. Macklin explained how much better fundraising efforts could be executed when the coach is running the program full time, as well as recruiting (better recruits leads to more wins which lead to more money generated by the program; which leads to new uniforms, track suits, sneakers, hoodies, summer trips abroad to play games, and so on). College

58 @DreAllDay sports programs run on money, and as a part time coach he barely had time to raise any. Hell, it didn't even cost money to attend our games (for students, that is; outsiders had to dig in their pockets and pay $2).

You had to respect at the way Macklin had built the program even to this point. Thanks to coach Rob we had much gear that season. My freshman year at Abington we all received one sweatsuit and a pair of Iverson "Question" sneakers -- we each had to pay $100 for the stuff. Macklin was doing the same thing that Mo was doing at Abington; his day job just happened to be in the same place as his coaching job. I'd guess that since Macklin's day job was to be a recruiter for minority students he could tie some of his basketball recruiting into it; still, you could look at the players he'd brought in and where we came from -- Philly, Pittsburgh, D.C., New Jersey -- he was doing a hell of a job making Altoona into an actual program and not just a basketball team. On the strength of that alone he deserved a chance to say yes or no to the job.

Macklin's further explanation, of why he wasn't being given right of first refusal, was my first real life experience with the dynamics of power and the conflicts that are decided by power.

The shot callers of the athletic department -- Athletic Director Fredina Ingold, her assistant Debbie Wasko, Sports Information Director Brent Baird -- and Macklin had not been on good terms for a while and, he explained, Fredina & company had been looking for a way to get Macklin out of there. Macklin could see what was coming and seemed to know that his days as head coach at Altoona were over. Since the job was now an open position Macklin could still apply for it and go for an interview. He said he would apply for the job but also made very clear to all of us that chances he would be hired were slim to none. And he left it at that.

Macklin showed good foresight in letting us in on the news first. About a week later Fredina called the team to another meeting and told us what Macklin already had: the coaching job was now full time and open for applicants. We asked all the obvious questions -- why not just hire the coach we already have, etc. -- and Fredina deftly stepped around our questions. Fredina was a 50+ year- old White woman who I could tell had never dealt with anyone that looked like me on any real level.

So that was that. I guess I could've been happy on the one hand -- the coach that had nailed me to the bench was probably gone -- but I'd felt I still had a chance with Macklin and the man had recruited me so I knew he wanted me. A new coach probably would have no idea who the hell I was; if a new coach asked someone to fill him in on the returning players on the team my name may not

59 @DreAllDay have even been mentioned, based on how I'd played. Either way I knew I was destined to be great the next year, because my whole March-August would be working on my game and nothing more (I’d decided to take summer classes in Altoona in the summer of 2002 so I'd be around campus with nothing more to do anyway).

The school year ended and I started summer session in Altoona. Macklin hooked me up with a guy who was putting his own team in a local summer league at Mansion Park in Altoona. One day in the weight room Fredina happened to walk in when she saw me on the bench press. I asked her about the coaching search and she said they had over 100 applicants. I asked if they had focused on anyone. She said Macklin was still a possibility. I shared the conversation with Coach Rob when I saw him at Mansion Park and he plainly rebuked it: "It's not gonna be Kenny and she knows its not gonna be Kenny." He seemed resigned to the reality of it all too and that was the last I talked to anyone about the situation until the day we had a new coach.

***

About two days earlier I had read on the Penn State Altoona website that former NBA player Armon Gilliam had been named the new coach at Altoona. There was a press conference (Gilliam's name recognition probably made it all a bit bigger than it would've been) to introduce Gilliam and I went over to the gym after a summer class to introduce myself to the new man in charge.

Armon Gilliam was a native of the Pittsburgh area and had played collegiately at UNLV, becoming the #2 pick in the 1987 NBA draft behind only David Robinson (and ahead of Scottie Pippen, Kenny Smith, and Reggie Miller). Armon (nicknamed "The Hammer") played 13 years in the league with several teams; he played for the Philadelphia 76ers when Charles Barkley was there; Charles' first book "Outrageous" took shots at Gilliam, referring to him as "Charmin" Gilliam for his softness. I remember telling one of my uncles about Gilliam being my new coach and he said, “Yeah I remember him. He played for the Sixers back when Charles was doing all the work!”. Since retiring from the NBA Gilliam had done some assistant coaching and had beat out those 100+ applicants for the Altoona head coaching job.

Our SID Brent Baird walked out of the gym first and saw me, Gilliam followed behind him and introduced us. I shook Gilliam's hand and the guy looked through me like I wasn't even there. I asked him something about next year's team and he was quite evasive, clearly not committing to the idea that he and I would even have a second conversation in life. The only thing of substance Gilliam said to me was that he was looking to get in touch with TJ, our center from the

60 @DreAllDay previous year, who had missed most of the season due to injury and academic problems.

That conversation jarred me awake. The effects of my not playing my sophomore year had kicked in during that 60 seconds. Gilliam had mentioned one of our returning players by name, which meant he had some knowledge of the roster. The look in his eyes and tone of language clearly showed that I was absolutely nobody to Gilliam. My family's financial situation and my lack of leverage in transferring all but guaranteed that Altoona was the last stop for me in college. I was either making the team here or I'd be in the audience for two years watching the players who had taken my spot.

I spent the rest of the summer with that Gilliam conversation on my mind. I was already spending all summer working on my game, and this new mental motivation was what I needed. Even the most cynical parts of me knew that there was not a way there would be 12 players on the Altoona campus better than me, and if there were, I would gladly sit front row at every game. I have to admit I was miffed by the way Gilliam had dismissed me when we met but I was ready for the challenge and favored my position: Gilliam didn't know anyone from our team so he was looking at all of us with fresh eyes as opposed to any possible Macklin preconceptions. If I had to choose, I would have rather faced all the players on campus in front of someone who didn't know anyone and see what the results would be. I knew my game was up to that challenge.

61 @DreAllDay Junior Year

I finished up my summer session and was home for only about two weeks before going back to Altoona for fall semester. We get to school in August and it was a feeding frenzy in open gym: everyone looked like they thought they could make the basketball team. All the returning players were walking around as if their spot was secure amongst all the new wolves -- those students who thought they had a chance now -- who smelled blood with a new coach around, but I knew different. My initial conversation with him told me that Gilliam didn't give a damn about who was on the team before and that made sense -- after all, if the old players were that good, he wouldn't be there as the new coach. So everyone really did have a chance.

Macklin, in his hurt over the coaching job situation (as he later told me), decided that he wanted no part of helping Gilliam's transition: he gave away all the game film (these were VHS tapes) he had of the team to any of his players who asked for it, leaving no copies for Gilliam to review in analyzing the available players on campus.

We had the basketball team general interest meeting and it was attended by about twice as many people than Macklin's meeting the year before. This was about two and a half weeks into school and I had already made my presence felt in pickup games as one of the best around and seeing the big crowd at the meeting excited me. Gilliam made it clear that no one had a spot on the team and we would all need to try out.

I stopped into Gilliam's office one day after the meeting and asked him what he was looking for during tryouts for his team. TJ -- the big man Gilliam had asked me about when we met -- was gone, and Gilliam had another name in mind. He told me that Kenny, our senior point guard that had been the starter the previous season, would be his point guard. He said everything else was up for grabs. From there I knew that there was nothing else for Gilliam and me to discuss until he saw me play.

From the day of the general interest meeting, open gym was packed daily for pickup games. My closest friend from the team was my man B, a 6'5" center from Pittsburgh that wasn't athletic -- somewhere between 220-240 pounds; not a dunker and not a weight room guy -- but had a solid body and a jumper off the catch or off one or two bounces. B was one of those players who could just play, even if, aside from being 6’5”, he didn’t look the part. B had been recruited by Macklin the same year as me but had sat out the previous year when compliance

62 @DreAllDay said he had to at the last possible minute. B had disappeared during most of the school year as far as basketball was concerned but he resurfaced after the season for Macklin's three on three event. We started hanging out a bit as the spring semester ended and linked up again in the fall.

I had a running joke going with B. As I said, there were many players in the gym for pickup games, especially after the general interest meeting. One particular guy -- this chubby White guy with glasses, about 6'3" -- seemed to be targeting B in pickup to match up against to prove himself. This guy -- let's call him "Ken" -- was not much of a player (a 6'3" center that couldn't run or jump; I'm not sure Ken could touch the rim) but he was having some success against B's lackadaisical pickup game efforts and me, being a pickup game Hall of Famer on campus (dominating pickup games was my specialty), needled B about this matchup.

I told B that Ken was sizing B up for a marquee matchup during tryouts and that B had better start kicking Ken's ass now to set the tone for when it mattered. B, though, didn't see things the way I saw them and told me there was nothing to worry about. Open gym was my domain, he said. He would be ready to do his thing for real once tryouts happened, and he would properly dispose of Ken. "Watch when we have tryouts, Dre," he would say repeatedly. I had no doubt in my mind that B could and would destroy Ken when he had to, but it was still fun because it was real -- Ken really was trying to prove himself by matching up with B every chance he got; this was no coincidence. It was really funny to watch.

There were maybe one or two players I could see from pickup that might have been able to crash the returning players party that year. One of them was Mark, my teammate with Kenny from the three on three Macklin had organized. Mark wasn't much taller than me but he played as a 4-5; we needed as many "big" position players as possible and Mark looked like a lock for he roster. Amongst perimeter players, there were so many new guys around but none of them were standing out until one day during pickup.

Mar, the first person I'd met on campus the year before, was on my team for one pickup game where we had a couple of freshmen playing with us. One freshman was having a particularly good game, scoring a bunch of points for us one game and Mar became the kid's #1 fan during the game.

The freshman player was about Mar's size -- about 6'1", give or take, with adequate quickness, solid ball handling and a reliable pull-up shot. A White kid. After scoring on a move that had the pickup game crowd ohhing and ahhing, Mar exclaimed,

63 @DreAllDay "Yo, give him the ball! What's your name?"

I was still hanging back on the defensive end so I didn't hear the freshman respond, but Mar did.

"GIVE ETHAN THE BALL!"

So his name was Ethan.

Tryouts finally came; I had class that ran into the first half of the first day so I came in to watch the first practice.

As I'd suspected, a couple of my teammates from the previous year were taking it easy out there and paying for it. Mark, the ripped big guy who I was sure would've made it even with Macklin still in charge, was dominating his matchup with Eric, who had been out best player (top scorer & rebounder, First Team All- Conference) the year before. Mark was fast and athletic while Eric was bulky and slow; Mark leaked out on defense for breakaway dunks. Gilliam yelled out something about people needing to hustle to get back on defense. I'm sure Gilliam noticed Mark's "cherry picking" but didn't mention it; he was very sold on Mark by now for whatever reason. Mark, I admit, was a guy who passed the "Layup Line Test": does he look like he can play, does he look good shooting layups? Eric could play, but you had to see him play to know that. With Mark, you just assumed.

Meanwhile, Ken was getting the matchup he wanted against B, and B was delivering on his promise, cooking Ken. Later, Gilliam matched up B versus Mark and B got the better of that matchup too; B hit a pull-up jumper over Mark at one point and turned around to look at the assembled crowd, including me, with a "yeah, I'm destroying this guy" face. In another matchup, Ethan, the on-fire freshman from that pickup game, was killing Mar in their point guard matchup while Mar was playing kinda like it didn't matter. Mar had helped boost this kid's confidence and was now being eaten alive by it. Gilliam wasn't saying anything but he was watching intently. The only other play I remember from watching the first day was Eric shooting a hook shot off the side of the backboard and jogging back on defense as Mark scored again.

The second day of practice was held at a gym on the outskirts of Altoona called The Summit. The Summit was a beautiful gym, but I was kinda mad that I wouldn't have the audience that B had had for my own feature. I was more than ready to put on a show. If I remember correctly Gilliam had only invited select players back after the first day; with me there now. Gilliam decided to begin practice with a one-on-one drill, with players of similar position playing against

64 @DreAllDay each other in the half court. I found myself matched up with this freshman who was like the watered-down version of myself named RJ: 6'3", skinny, really long arms, athletic. I was just a lot more athletic, stronger, and a better all around player. And I was out for blood. RJ was a player Gilliam had recruited to come play for him at Altoona that year; I think RJ was the only player Gilliam had brought with him. I destroyed RJ in our little game as Gilliam watched; I may be making something out of nothing here but after I'd abused RJ a little too much in front of the coach, Gilliam abruptly ended that drill and we moved on to something else.

B had class this time so he missed the practice at The Summit. We got into full court play and I did what I'd been doing all semester in pickup: playing to my athletic strengths, turning the game into a track meet and dominating. I'd dunked twice in a row when I heard our senior point guard Kenny, the one that Gilliam had told me was to be the starter at PG, hating from the sideline:

"Stop the ball! Oh my God, he is not that good!"

As I ran back down the court I saw Gilliam staring at me as if he'd seen a ghost. After our two conversations in which he'd blown me of like some clown, he was finally getting to see me play and I was the best player in the gym that night. I'd made the team with the new coach.

A few days later in practice, with everyone there now, Gilliam went on a pre- practice tirade for seemingly no reason. I came to find out later that the Macklin- Gilliam feud was gaining steam, with even the local newspapers picking up the story. Might have had something to do with the given-away VHS game film, but who knows.

Gilliam started yelling something about hustling and effort then hit us with this bombshell:

"You know why Eric isn't going to be on this team? Because he isn't working hard in practice! He's loafing around like his spot is guaranteed! Well, it's not!"

Eric wasn't present at the time due to class. Gilliam's announcement and tirade was the first Macklin-related domino to fall; the cutting of Mar soon followed.

Besides not giving Macklin a chance to coach the program as a full-timer, the athletic staff made another change: eliminating Midnight Madness and replacing it with a bland wine and cheese event called "Meet The Team Night." If you have ever attended or watched a Midnight Madness event you know how much such an event would be anticipated by fans and especially by the players. Kenny

65 @DreAllDay Macklin understood this -- he had made a point of mentioning during my initial visit that he had started the event in Altoona. That first year, though, there were rumblings in Adler that Midnight Madness was getting out of hand: students being intoxicated and bringing alcohol onto campus was the biggest issue, or so I’d heard. The previous years' event had been the last straw I guess; combine that with the firing of the guy who had started it and the timing was perfect.

As we sat in the audience and watched the fucking golf team get introduced to the crowd, Gilliam was back in his office, for some reason calling a couple guys that were on the team in to see him one by one. One player who was a returned got called in and came back to the gym five minutes later with a look of shock on his face.

"He cut me!"

Gilliam had cut a guy named Steve Portland from the team five minutes before the official basketball team introduction. I know Steve was better than some of the players who Gilliam would eventually keep, and had played about 20 minutes per game -- 5 more than me -- for Macklin. Steve was a solid player and a good shooter who would not blow you away with anything but was a solid rotation guy for the level we were playing at. Unlike the rest of the players who would get cut, though, Steve Portland would involve himself with the basketball team in other ways later on.

Meet The Team Night was complete bullshit. No dance or step teams, no dimmed lights, no music. It was no longer even a basketball team event -- ALL the sports teams on campus got introduced. The whole event was, as Ben Wallace would say, a complete sham and a mockery; a shamockery. Gilliam grabbed the mic at the end and threw a subliminal shot at Macklin.

"Things are gonna be different around here: We're gonna win some games this year."

That drew some oohs from the audience and that’s about it for Meet The Team Night.

***

We got back to practicing and Gilliam had hired Josh Baker as his sole assistant coach. There was another guy named Sam Pierce (a local player in his late 20s) that helped out in practice occasionally but he stopped coming around before the games even started. Josh was born and raised in Altoona and had played at Altoona under Macklin for four years; his senior year coincided with my freshman

66 @DreAllDay year at Abington. Josh was around campus often my sophomore year so we knew of each other. Josh's girlfriend also played for our women's team. I use the terms "assistant" and "helped" very loosely: neither Sam nor Josh had a voice on the staff as Gilliam had the first and final say on everything, opinions of the people he'd hired be damned. I sat in the second row of our shuttle bus on the way to the Summit one day and heard Gilliam questioning Josh's driving route to the facility.

Gilliam installed some offensive plays and defensive sets and everything was normal as we settled into a couple weeks of practicing before the first real game, at the Juniata College tournament again.

The way Adler gym was designed, one could go upstairs and look out over the basketball court through huge glass windows on the second level of the building. During my sophomore year I don't remember ever seeing anyone up there watching us practice even though we practiced every day. This year, though, I looked up one day and noticed a special guest taking in practice: Kenny Macklin.

Macklin was alone, just watching, and I noticed Gilliam looking up and noticing him when he saw all of us looking up.

The next day, and every day after that, Gilliam had the curtains closed on those upstairs windows.

About a week before our first game, big news hit campus: a new website had been released and it was causing buzz all over Penn State Altoona.

The website was called FireArmonGilliam.com (though that wasn't the domain name -- FireArmonGilliam was hosted on a site called Yahoo! GeoCities, a free hosting site that was popular in the late 90s-early 2000s where anyone could create and publish a cheap homepage). It was what you'd expect of a site by that name -- trashing Gilliam and his personnel moves, praying for the downfall of the basketball program.

The site was run by a cartoon-drawn individual with a paper bag over his head named the "Masked Webmaster." FireArmonGilliam had a page dedicated to all the returning players who had been cut by Gilliam (Gilliam had only kept three people: Me, senior point guard Kenny and one sophomore) with one telltale detail: each cut player's name and photo was accompanied by their statistics from the previous season, followed by the author's opinion on that player being cut (Masked Webmaster's final assessment of me on the 'Current Roster/Gilliam Lovers' page: "Let's see if he plays as hard this season as he does when there are no refs in the gym"). Why was the inclusion of stats important, you may be

67 @DreAllDay asking? Because this was 2002: Altoona's website did not have archived results at this point; all you could see from 2001 was nothing more than the schedule, results and team photos -- no box scores and no stats whatsoever.

At the end of our season with Macklin, the coach had given each player a complete composite stat sheet, with all team and individual statistics from the season we had just played. The players and coaches from that team were the only people with that information. Could someone have given their stat sheet away? Yes. Could someone have threw the stat sheet in the trash, to be picked up by someone else? Yes, again. We went 4-22 my sophomore year -- no one cared about any player stats from that team except us, the players. And by November of 2002... Those stats could've only been provided by a player who played for Macklin the previous season.

Macklin's office in the Smith Building was in a big room that had about five offices in it, all with their own separate doors that led into one big space and a lobby for anyone waiting to be seen. I was still cool with Macklin, so I walked into the big office and everyone was reading FireArmonGilliam.com that morning. A female friend of mine had a work study job as the receptionist in the big office; she was hitting the refresh button constantly because the GeoCities site was cheap: if more than 10 people went to the site at the same time the eleventh person wouldn't be able to get into the site. So there were at least ten people on FireArmonGilliam, constantly, for that entire day.

Macklin seemed amused by the site but wasn’t saying much else about it.

I knew enough about the players I'd played with for a season to figure out who could have put his site together (or at least been the voice behind it). By deductive reasoning, the conclusion was simple.

The person behind the site had to be a player looking to come back to the team that year and not transferring to State College to finish their degree. That eliminates 3 players.

The person behind the site had to be computer and web-savvy enough to create the FireArmonGilliam site, and knowledgable enough of the Internet in 2002 to even know that it could be done. That eliminated 7 players.

The person making the site had to be someone who got cut, and Gilliam was cutting every player in face-to-face meetings. So who, of my previous year teammates, would get cut in a one-on-one meeting by Gilliam, then go and make a site trashing the man and other players while hiding their name and face from

68 @DreAllDay behind a paper bag? Even without all the other eliminations there was only one person I played with my sophomore year that fit the description.

Steve Portland.

Altoona being a small campus, things leaked out fast: Portland's roommate was possibly the one doing the actual writing, so if anyone asked Portland if he had made the site (I asked him when I saw him in Macklin’s office once) he could say no and technically be telling the truth.

It should be noted that Steve, after being cut, contacted the NCAA and accused Gilliam of using ineligible players in practice -- who does this? -- but the accusations were checked out and found to be untrue. Steve became a coach after finishing college; Google “Steve Portland Grambling” and read the articles, if you dare.

Armon Gilliam being a 13-year NBA veteran, many in the local news thought Gilliam was using the Altoona job as a temporary stepping stone to getting the head job of the Division 1 team in State College. Cutting Steve Portland may have been a hindrance to this plan since Portland's mother was Rene Portland, the head coach of Penn State's nationally ranked D1 women's program. Rene coached at PSU for 27 years (resigning in 2007 amidst rumors that she was anti- lesbian, along with a lawsuit levied against Rene for forcing a player off of her team for her perceived sexual orientation) and was the second-most powerful coach, behind Joe Paterno, in the entire PSU system. So maybe getting to Happy Valley wasn't part of Gilliam's plan. Maybe Rene Portland didn't matter. Maybe she would understand the cutting of her son a year after he played 20 minutes per game as a freshman. Who knows.

FireArmonGilliam had a message board and students ran wild with it, posting under assumed names and the trashing of players -- both in support of the new team and against it -- made for some fun reading. The three players Gilliam had kept didn’t get much attention on the site.

The site was the talk of campus for about a week and then attention turned to the actual season, which, as I mentioned before, began at the Juniata tournament again. I stopped in Macklin's office and asked him how he felt the team would do this upcoming season.

"Word is, you guys can be pressed."

I couldn't help but to imagine Macklin watching our practices from that upstairs window and seeing all those freshman guards we had -- none of which would've

69 @DreAllDay been playing (or even on the team) had Macklin remained coach -- and tipping off his friends coaching at our opponents' schools on how to play us.

Usually teams that host these 4-team tournaments open up by playing the perceived weakest team in the draw so they can open up with the best possible chance of winning in front of their fans. Naturally, Juniata scheduled us as their opening night opponent.

The energy in the building was very high that Friday night as we got off the bus in Juniata, PA. We walked in the gym as the first game was in the first half and saw a handful of the returning players Gilliam had cut sitting in the stands together.

This wasn't a big deal as our point guard Kenny's best friends had all been cut. Furthermore, once the final roster was set, it seemed that Gilliam was starting to regret his decision to keep Kenny as his PG. Gilliam constantly yelled at Kenny in practice about his whiny attitude (Gilliam was a guy who was best dealt with in a very direct manner and never did anything subliminally; Kenny was a master passive-aggressor that wilted under Gilliam's daily heat) and Kenny, despite being our best option by a long mile at point guard, didn't seem to be very excited about playing his senior year minus his friends. Personally, I had friends on the team but I didn't need them. All I cared about was the win (in a figurative sense) and redeeming my prior season's performance.

The game began with the following starting lineup:

Point Guard: Kenny (senior) Shooting Guard: LeRon (sophomore) Small Forward: Me (junior) Power Forward: Pat (freshman from Philly, who was coincidentally best friends with Sean, a teammate of mine from Abington) Center: B. Battles

Despite having two returning guards in the back court Macklin was right: we could be pressed. Gilliam's press-breaking play had me, our most athletic player and finisher, just past the half court line where we would create a two-on-one advantage once or if I got the ball. Pat was on the back line to catch the ball and finish once the press was broken if I didn't finish myself. Problem was Juniata knew whom to attack: the doubled our strongest ball handler (Kenny) and forced the ball out of his hands; we turned the ball over three straight times before it finally got over the half court line. I got the ball and within two dribbles was at the rim to finish with a left hand layup for our first points of the season.

70 @DreAllDay On the back line, all Pat had to do was catch the ball and make layups. Twice in a row we got the ball to Pat and twice he blew the layup. Less then one minute of game play later Gilliam sent in four subs -- all freshman -- with B the only starter remaining on the floor. I had touched the ball all of one time and did not get back in the game in the first half.

We went into halftime down by more than 20 points. Gilliam had completely panicked. Not even five minutes into the season, he had abandoned his game plan and put his not-ready freshman on the floor -- the perfect built-in excuse for losing. Gilliam's halftime speech was all anger and yelling -- "If I were playing on this team I'd have knocked some of you guys out already!" -- no strategy was discussed. As we warmed up for the second half Gilliam had one of our team managers inform Kenny that he would not be playing in the second half. I can't see any other reason for Gilliam doing this other than he was making the Kenny situation personal. I didn't start the second half either but he didn’t send any messengers my way. We got blown out by 33 points that night with our freshman playing most of the minutes; Gilliam had pleaded “no contest” 40 minutes into his new job.

We played in the tournament's consolation game the next day; Gilliam changed the starting lineup. I was out, Kenny was out and Pat was out; freshman replaced all three of us. Rob, my old assistant coach under Macklin, attended the game and sat five rows behind our bench. Seeing our lineup, Rob made a comment:

"Dre's not starting, and Kenny's not starting." It was loud enough for everyone to hear, including Gilliam.

Gilliam must have decided that Pat was not part of his plans, as Pat barely played another minute in the next few games before quitting the team. Pat and B were our only two big guys (well, remember Ken? He did make the team but saw very little floor action) so guess who Gilliam decided would be the other big man on the team? That's right. After backing up B at center in our second game (another loss, by 30 this time) I became the starting power forward. This was the beginning of the coming conflict between Armon Gilliam and myself.

Kenny ended up not getting into the game at all in the second contest (with his family from Jersey in town to see him play, no less) and he quit the team. Now we had no point guards and Gilliam started using his "we're playing freshman" excuse when media members asked him about his team's performance.

For those unfamiliar with the game, the center position is the same position that Shaquille O'Neal or Dwight Howard plays. The power forward is traditionally the

71 @DreAllDay second biggest guy on the floor -- think someone between 6'8" and 6'10" -- and I'm 6'4", same height as Dwyane Wade. I’m a guard, but with our lack of size during my time at Altoona I was cool with playing the '3' or small forward position (LeBron James). Gilliam had me splitting time between the 4 and 5 positions. Looking back, everything could've gone a lot smoother if Gilliam had just had a conversation with me:

"Dre, I know you want to play on the perimeter, but we don't have any other options at the 4 or the 5 (big positions) right now. The best way you can help this team as it is currently composed is to play the 4 for us and use your athleticism as best you can. I know you're playing out of position but you're skilled enough to still be productive."

Maybe that imaginary talk is wishful thinking on my part but it would've gotten the job done as it would've both appealed to my ego and shown that Gilliam trusted anyone involved with the team besides himself and his own judgement. I was still a starter playing heavy minutes, though, and we all know that playing is better than not playing.

In practice the next week, Gilliam tried to drill a post move into me -- a one- dribble baby hook shot -- but we never ran plays to simply feed the post. I was athletic but not that strong in the lower body; I wasn't holding off a power forward for a post entry pass. What I needed was to step out and face up on the bigger guy defending me and use speed & quickness to score, but Gilliam didn't care to listen to anything other than his own voice. I was our second-best scoring option after B and the way I played required space since I was neither a post player nor a spot-up shooter. We didn't have much of anything on offense that could be considered an advantage to facilitate that space, and Gilliam wasn’t big on fast break play.

So I started doing in practice what I had done so successfully in all those pickup games: grabbing a rebound on defense, dribbling coast-to-coast and finishing on my own. In practice this was working well since the players in practice were the same players I'd been killing in pickup, on top of the fact that I was the best athlete on the team by far -- once I got into moving at full speed I couldn't be stopped. I called this strategy the "LeBron James" move. I had perfected the "LeBron" over the last 9 months since my sophomore season had ended. My handle was good but not tight yet; I still turned the ball over too much while trying the LeBron. Gilliam, remember, had played power forward in the NBA and Gilliam had a clear picture of how a power forward should play. Gilliam would say nothing when the LeBron resulted in a basket but he hated when I dribbled right past our guards waiting for outlet passes, and, like any coach, he hated the turnovers.

72 @DreAllDay We played Juniata again for our home opener -- another 20 point loss -- and Gilliam was changing lineups every half of basketball. B was the only player not being yanked in and out of the playing rotation and he was producing, averaging over 20 points and double figure rebounds while playing center.

Right after Thanksgiving we played in a two day tournament in Pittsburgh hosted by Carnegie Mellon college; they chose us as their opening round opponent and beat us by 25. I did get my first highlight of the season in that game though.

Our press breaking ineptitude must have been a national story because it appeared that every team we faced knew about it. I was still hanging on the backside of the press break play and in the Carnegie Mellon game we were not any better at getting the ball over the timeline, turnover after turnover. Finally on one first half play our freshman guard Landon lofted a pass over the press to me when I was behind the entire defense. The ball seemed to hang in the air forever as the Carnegie Mellon defender sprinted to catch up but he was too slow: I caught the ball, and with one dribble went up and dunked it with two hands -- that sprinting defender caught up just enough to jump and foul me as I dunked for the and-1. I ended up with 16 points and 9 rebounds that game, in what would go down as my best performance under Gilliam's regime.

In the second game of the tournament Gilliam went on the first of many player- bashing tirades that will go down in history.

We were getting our asses kicked again in this game with turnovers and under a barrage of transition baskets -- three pointers and layups -- by the opposition. Approaching halftime a player on the other team (wearing two large knee braces) hit two threes in a row (between our turnovers), with the second coming just before the buzzer (with me challenging the shot).

This is why Gilliam was not a good coach: When things went wrong Gilliam focused on a player who was to blame for the transgression and attacked. Thus the thing that went wrong was never fixed. What we needed was to have him figure out a way to beat the press that every team was using against us. Maybe at halftime we could make some adjustments, but Gilliam had other ideas. Armon was an equal-opportunity basher of players, and on this day, he decided to spend the entire halftime break attacking me.

"Dre, what are you DOING out there?!?! You're giving up threes... That guy's got TWO BROKEN KNEES and he's hitting threes on you!!!"

73 @DreAllDay The locker room was dead silent. We were down by twenty points at this juncture and Gilliam did not speak a word of strategy. I have to admit, this was the (unintentional) funniest thing Gilliam had said all season, until it was trumped by what he said next.

"I mean, look at you, Dre. You've been failing your whole career..."

I don't remember anything else he said and it doesn't matter. This quote summed up Armon Gilliam's coaching strategy.

I am not the type of player or person to be adversely affected by a person getting emotional and yelling at me -- Brown at E&S and Mo at Abington had both yelled at me plenty -- but the tearing-down coaching strategy works only but so many times. Yelling is useful on players who have thick skin, which I have. Our jettisoned point guard Kenny didn't have thick skin; players like him get coached in other ways. Macklin (and most other coaches that get hired on merit and not their names) understood that, Gilliam did not.

When Gilliam yelled at a player he always managed to go beyond criticizing the player's performance or whatever they had just done wrong, always bringing up something that stood to ostracize the player from the group in some way. I don't think Gilliam did this by design, he just had no idea of what else to do. He had rode into Altoona with sound and fury behind his NBA pedigree, the Macklin controversy and subsequent career-killings; now he didn't know how to turn it off. Strategically, a coach tears down a player so he can build the player back up -- Gilliam chose to skip the ‘building back up’ step; his only tool was a verbal bulldozer. This is funny now to talk about; I wasn't laughing then but Gilliam's lack of a master plan as a coach was obvious to me before halftime of our first game and I took nothing he said seriously. None of us was laughing back then, though my old teammates from the Gilliam era can go on for hours with Gilliam tear- down stories from just during and after games. Just a few examples (when I write my full story there will be more, hopefully with first-person accounts):

Lambasting a player's defensive technique: "What is that? Are you fencing?"

Questioning a player who was having a very bad game: "Are you point shaving?"

Arguing with a mixed-race player during practice: "Go home to your WHITE mother!"

Yes, he really said that.

74 @DreAllDay We continued losing games handily -- though I did get another highlight, dunking on some big guy at Pitt-Greensburg -- and finished the fall semester with a home game against Penn State Behrend (also known as Penn State Erie), perpetually one of the top teams in our league and the only other Penn State branch in the AMCC. I remember Macklin badly wanting to get the Altoona program on the same level or above where Behrend -- located in Erie, PA -- was on.

Behrend was a veteran team that knew how to attack us defensively: pounding the ball inside. Their best players were post guys and they used simple cross screens to create baskets or fouls on us down low. Late in the game Gilliam pulled me because of a mistake he claimed I'd made in defensive rotation. I didn't think I had made a mistake but it was no big deal in the overall picture of the game; they just had more firepower than we did. Gilliam didn't call a single play for me the entire game; as I was overmatched battling their bigs and getting into foul trouble, I had no recourse on the offensive end of the floor.

B had a great game, scoring over 30 points and no one else made it to double figures. Behrend beat us by 20 and Gilliam resorted to his go-to tactics after the game, not really discussing how we could be better as a team but singling out players and going hard at them. Gilliam ended his talk by targeting me about the missed rotation he'd accused me of during the game.

I'd had enough of Gilliam's ways by that point; the combination of playing power forward and not getting any offensive touches except for when we either broke the press (not much) or I broke the offense and did my own thing (often) and Gilliam's antagonistic "coaching" tactics was making me feel like I was wasting my time even being there. I was not about to quit -- quit and do what, exactly? -- but I wasn't going to sit idly by while the first 8 games repeated themselves for the second half of the 02-03 season. It was time to shake things up, for better or for worse.

Gilliam brought up my missed rotation, then did the 'extra step' thing he always did. He began a sentence talking about how the rest of the team was playing great defense until I had messed it all up and that this was happening a lot every game (the ostracizing tactic Gilliam used every time he criticized a player). Then I spoke.

"What are you talking about? Look at the plays you call! I'm out here playing fuckin’ center!"

Gilliam tried to restart his criticism of me but I shouted him down in a 30 second outburst. The look on Armon Gilliam's face at this moment was priceless: he was genuinely shocked to have a player yelling back and criticizing him. B grabbed

75 @DreAllDay me and pulled me back towards the bathroom stalls; the rest of the team (one sophomore and 9 freshman, remember) sat in stunned silence. Gilliam was literally speechless at this moment.

The entire locker room was completely silent for about 60 seconds (an eternity). Finally Gilliam called us together to "bring it in" (you know -- "one, two, three, TEAM!"). I was there in the huddle by Gilliam didn't say anything about it. He told us what date to be back on campus for practice as we didn't have any holiday break games. "Be there, or be square." (Yeah). That was the end of the fall semester.

****

We got back to Altoona for practice in January and the first thing I notice is three new players in practice. One of them was a White dude I had never seen before; another was a Black guy, a guard that had been on campus early in the fall but had disappeared until that day; the other White guy I had seen a lot: he played pickup with us sometimes but I guess he'd decided against trying out for the team, but now he was in practice. Pussy.

We start practicing and Gilliam had me moved to the second unit (i.e., not starting anymore). I figured there would be some fallout from my locker room outburst; I thought he might kick me off team. Moving me to the second team? No problem. I knew I was better than the two new guys and I'd just prove it in practice.

Along with the two new guys participating in practice there was another new face in the gym. He was my size almost exactly: a Black guy about 6'4", long arms and legs with a slender, athletic build. Unlike the other three he was in street clothes: sweat pants and a spring jacket that was way too light for January in the Allegheny Mountains. We made eye contact but didn't speak; I was bent on embarrassing the new guys and making an example of them for this guy on the sideline, whoever he was and whatever reason he was there watching. I liked having visitors to practice -- it broke up the mundane daily routine and motivated me to put on a show for an onlooker that was getting a first impression.

Practice began and we eventually get to playing full court 5 on 5 (one great thing about Gilliam: we went "live" -- meaning full court playing -- during almost every practice. At Abington with Mo, we almost never went live in practice; Macklin had the most structured and planned out sessions. Macklin often had entire practices planned out in writing, down to the minute, which featured full court drills and such). I grabbed a defensive rebound and started racing down court with the ball. Gilliam, I guess now with his new players and my locker room tirade, had no

76 @DreAllDay patience for my LeBron technique anymore. He blew his whistle in the middle of the play and told me, clearly, that the LeBron was no longer tolerated around these here parts.

"Aight man, play ball," I said.

"No! You know what guys, bring it in."

We all met in the middle of the floor where Gilliam had stopped my personal fast break.

"You know, over the break I was with Bobby Knight (Bobby Knight is the legendary college basketball coach mostly know for his bright red sweater and work at University of Indiana; Knight coached Isiah Thomas and successfully recruited Larry Bird before Bird got homesick and left IU weeks into his freshman year). And in Bobby Knight's office there's a sign that says, 'This is not Burger King: You cannot have it your way.' Dre, you cannot have it your way. And with that said, thank you for your time today!"

He gestured towards the double exit doors of the basketball court. I stalked out of the gym, making long eye contact with my doppelgänger sitting on the sideline on my way out. I never walked back into that gym as a member of Penn State Altoona's basketball program again.

***

I walked into B's apartment singing Frank Sinatra's "I Did It My Way" that night. B wanted to know if I was coming back to practice the next day and I told him I was not. I'd been playing the same way all season and Gilliam had only that day decided to put his foot down. To me, his new players freed him up to do what he really wanted to do: finally cleanse the program of Macklin players (LeRon, the only other holdover, had quit in December even though he was starting and Gilliam seemed to like his game). Now I was gone; the entire basketball team roster -- which had featured no seniors the previous season -- had been turned over.

That 6'4" Black guy had been invited to B's crib that night, too; Gilliam was recruiting the guy and had introduced him to B. He came through a few minutes later and I learned his name was Wes; from North Carolina and he had decided to enroll at Altoona and play ball. I guess Gilliam had Wes pegged as my replacement; it would probably puzzle him that his captain (B), the stepchild he'd just gotten rid of (me), and the player he was recruiting (Wes) were hanging

77 @DreAllDay together. The three of us, along with Tone (the guard that had resurfaced in practice that day) bonded over games of Madden football and Papa John’s pizza that night.

My dismissal from practice had not been a banishment from the team; I could have come back to practice the next day. I decided not to. It looked to me like I was on my way to being buried deep on the bench until I rotted and walked away anyway (a la Kenny). B told me that the freshman had asked him the next day if I was coming back and B had told them, "No, he ain't coming back -- you saw what happened. Would YOU come back?" I'd decided to walk away from the situation in strength and would just be a student from the rest of the spring semester; I would see what opportunities I could manufacture over the summer.

Wes stated practicing with the team the day after I was kicked out of the gym -- go figure -- and B told me Wes was a good player: crossovers, dunks, etc. All I wanted in that moment was to play against Wes but it didn't look like that would happen any time soon.

B had a girlfriend at the time, so Wes and me, both single, hung out a few times and got to know each other. We had some similar interests and then Wes found out that he wouldn't be able to play that semester due to some issues transferring his credits. I told Wes to just come to open gym and play pickup with me; we'd kill all the competition together and go against each other when we wanted a challenge.

(For those who don't know: basketball team members didn't play pickup ball in open gym during the season, only before and after the season. So Wes and I would be facing players who either got cut from the team or never tried out).

We played against each other a few times early on and then decided it would be better to team up since that way we would both stay on the floor. We set an Adler record in open gym that will likely never be broken: 72 consecutive pickup game victories. At the water fountain, a Macklin player who had been cut asked us after one shellacking, "Do you guys ever lose?"

Even though we were similar in stature and body type our games could not have been more different: while I was all about running and jumping and physically overwhelming the competition with my athleticism, Wes had more of a classic guard game: a wet outside shot and the best crossover move I had seen to that point in life. The differences between us allowed us to mesh well together; though I still used my LeBron move whenever I wanted to, I could also play off the ball and score off of Wes’ passes. The less talented players in open gym could maybe team up to stop one really good player, but not two playing in sync. On

78 @DreAllDay top of that we were both competitive as hell and liked the feeling of knowing that everyone coming to open gym was either there to watch us or gunning to beat us.

About a month into the semester I had had enough: I told Wes that he had to teach me that crossover move he was killing everyone with. The techniques explained and demonstrated in my most-viewed YouTube video -- explaining the technique of the crossover move -- come from that one afternoon in my Wehnwood apartment in Altoona.

The Daily Collegian, the student newspaper at the main campus, did a story on Gilliam and his new job. Quoting the story:

“...Baldwin is an athletic-slasher-type who’ll shoot from the outside. He wants the ball and believes he can carry a struggling team. And he is just the type of player that Gilliam thinks is ruining basketball. “You watch the NBA now and these Allen-Iverson-types taking 30 or 40 shots a game and making 35 percent,” he says. “There’s no team basketball. It’s all about scoring and being flashy and rubbing it in a guy’s face.” Baldwin says he did his best to fit into Gilliam’s system. Without much talent to work with, Gilliam instituted a simple game plan: quick passes and high percentage shots from down low, an offense based on the famed UCLA system. In Baldwin he saw a player who could use his athleticism to get into position for those easy shots. “He wanted me to play out of position,” Baldwin says. “I said, OK, that’s what you do for the team. Our big guy [Mark] wasn’t eligible yet so the team needed me down there.” Problem is, Baldwin never got the chance to play his game, even when [Mark] joined the team in January. “After [winter] break, he still wouldn’t let me play my game,” Baldwin says. “He told me I’d play his way or not play at all, and then he dismissed me.”

While Wes and I were running open gym the actual basketball team started playing again, losing their next 10 games (though there were some close calls) to fall to 0-18. FireArmonGilliam.com was eating it all up.

Mark, the muscle-bound big man, finally was cleared to play in spring semester and started out great with a double-double -- double figures of both points and rebounds -- in a home game. Mark had somehow gained a huge amount of

79 @DreAllDay Gilliam's trust before he ever played a game: Gilliam had stripped B of his captaincy and made Mark team captain for his first game for reasons none of us understood. His play only got worse as Gilliam's pointed criticisms, relayed to me by B in hilarious stories, seemed to be wearing Mark down. In one home game that Altoona was losing by about 10 points late, Mark got a breakaway and the crowd bubbled in anticipation of his dunk. Mark could dunk rather easily; he went up easily and I could tell that for Mark it was one of those dunks where you just want to make sure you make it.

Of course, Mark missed it. All you heard was a loud "Awwww!" from the crowd as half the stands emptied out with two minutes left in the game.

The team finally won its first game on my twenty-first birthday -- February 3, 2003, at home against Mount Aloysius, a provisional NCAA D3 team (meaning their program was in transition into being an actual NCAA program; in the meantime they played a schedule of schools that were already on that level). FireArmonGilliam was sure to make important note of the level of team they had beaten for their first win. A few weeks later FireArmonGilliam.com fired itself; leaving just one blank page with the message, "Nothing else to say, the record speaks for itself!"

The team went on to lose the final six games of the regular season. They shocked everyone by winning a first round AMCC tournament game on the road before falling to Pitt-Bradford to finish 2-25 on the season.

After the season ended I needed to face reality: I was staring a lost senior season in the face, with no real résumé to sell myself to a coach at another school. I had called the coaches at Carnegie Mellon and Pitt-Greensburg -- my two best games that year, also the two games I had highlight dunks in, both on the road -- and asked for the game film; neither had it (Players: Get your game film!). So I was stuck at Altoona; not that I was anywhere close to breaching the topic of transfer with my parents since I had no real prospects. My only idea was to transfer to the main campus in State College and try walking on; even without being on the team I would find plenty of things to do and people to meet in Happy Valley. My mom shut that down since I would need an extra year of school with the extra requirements of PSU's Smeal College of Business (I was a business major at Altoona with a focus in management and marketing) and the associated costs of housing in State College. So back to Altoona I'd go; maybe I'd try getting back on the team?

I had planned to play in a pro-am in Philly that summer (a pro-am is a league for professionals and amateurs -- NBA/overseas players mixed with college players and the best street ballers -- to compete. Current well-known pro-ams are the

80 @DreAllDay Drew League in LA, Barry Farms in DC, Rucker in NYC). I didn't know anyone playing in the DelVal pro-am at Drexel University and I didn't know any coaches either. My plan was simple: I'd already called and spoke to the director of the league and introduced myself before I was even home for the summer. He told me I could show up when the league began and he would see about getting me on a team. That was enough for me; maybe I'd show out and impress the coach at some college out there and change my future. But my car broke down and got left in Altoona, canceling my pro-am plans.

In July, B called me from Pittsburgh and told me there was a three-on-three tournament taking place in Ambridge, a suburb of Pittsburgh. Since Wes was taking summer classes in Altoona and my car had broken down at the end of spring semester, I took a 6-hour Greyhound ride to Altoona.

B drove up to Altoona for a couple days before the tournament with a dude named Warren who would be our fourth player. Wes was spending the summer taking classes in Altoona like I had the year before.

We went to Ambridge and ran into Kenny ( to keep things in order, we'll call this Kenny by his later revealed rap name: K-Knock), who had been up to Altoona during spring semester as a Gilliam recruit and played pickup with Wes and me. K-Knock was from Pittsburgh and knew B. We played K-Knock's team in our first tournament game and beat them. We went on to win the entire tournament without losing a game. My game was not at its peak during that summer, away from the always-accessible gyms on campus and the fact that I didn’t spend much time at Finely that summer. My handle and shot were not very reliable in Ambridge but my physical abilities -- rebounding, defense -- were on-point; I played as our defensive stopper while B and Wes carried the load on offense.

81 @DreAllDay Senior Year

We all got back to Altoona in August of 2003 and I had no idea where my life would be 12 months later. I hadn't had any good basketball competition for several months. Fortunately there would be plenty of fresh opportunity for me to release my pent-up basketball aggression.

Early in the school year, one of the first open gym nights of the semester, everyone was in Adler playing. B and I were on the same team one game that I ended with a baseline drive and layup. At least I thought I did.

Some chubby freshman interrupted our walk-off to the water fountain, claiming he had called out-of-bounds on me (the sideways courts we played pickup on meant that the wall was out of bounds on the baselines). We -- I, mostly -- called bullshit on his call (on game point, no less?) which led to an argument between all of our team and all of their team, with a focus on me versus the freshman who had called this call.

Regardless of the validity of his out-of-bounds call (of which there was none; every basketball player knows the unwritten rules regarding calling weak-ass calls on the final point of a game that you stand to lose), this was more a question of clout. Here I was, a respected senior player from the hoops program, and here is this fat freshman, who wouldn't even dream of trying out for any basketball teams, trying to swing a game with a call? We couldn't allow that to happen off of general principle alone. My teammates were saying we should shoot for it. Just like rookies have to pay their dues in almost any profession, freshman don't win call arguments over seniors until they've earned the right. That was far from the case here. We weren't shooting for shit. The game was over in our favor, and I wouldn't allow any other outcome.

The argument was going nowhere when I let the freshman know that his voice carried no weight in Adler. "Who the fuck are you, man?" We got closer to one another when people got in between to separate us. I reached over the bodies between us and snatched the kid's headband off his head, then threw it at him.

I knew what that action would result in. It did.

The freshman -- let's call him "Dre's Rival" -- rushed me and we wrestled each other to the floor. No punches were thrown or landed. I told Dre's Rival that he was banned from Adler and not to come back to the gym. He heeded my advice; we didn't see his face again until he formed a crew with some other freshman

82 @DreAllDay from his dorm and they always rolled in together. Dre's Rival's real name is to this day unknown -- he answered, for the rest of the year, to "Dre's Rival."

Sometime in September a sorority on campus held a fundraising three on three tournament in Adler. B, Wes and I showed up expecting to win it -- we had never lost a three on three tournament together -- and through a strong challenge by a group of Black guys in campus that played pickup ball against us daily (they showed up 8-deep with their own cheering section), we won it. The sorority girls holding the tournament looked absolutely bewildered when the championship game started to get rowdy, with all the cussing and aggression in the gym. Nothing extracurricular happened; we collected our money and bounced.

Gilliam had recruited many players to Altoona that year; almost too many players. There were three players who played my wing position new to campus and when I approached Gilliam about possibly rejoining the program the look in his eyes was the look of a man holding all the high cards, which is exactly what Gilliam was in fall of 2003. He said I could come back to the team, but only with the knowledge that he had recruited many players who had playing time priority over me.

I had about two days to decide what to do before practice started. Playing, even under the coach who had thrown me out of the gym a year earlier, had its perks. Everybody knows the basketball team on such a small campus. I had friends on the team. I loved playing basketball. Who knows: I might have worked myself back into Gilliam's good graces and got solid playing time, in turn have a great season as a springboard to the pros. Wishful thinking, at best, but only possible if I played on the team.

On the other hand, what if I didn't play on the team? I could use the year to develop my game on my own and not waste time sitting on Gilliam's bench or being stuck playing the 4 position. I'd get my game reps in pickup and the intramural basketball league on campus in the spring (any player who played even one game for the basketball team was ineligible for intramurals). I'd have the team players to face once the season ended in February.

On face value alone the 'not playing' option did not look great. By my senior year I had to have my eye on the big picture, which went way past Penn State Altoona: my destiny was a career as a basketball player. Reading this, you might think I could play in the team to at least get in Armon's good graces and possible parlay that into an overseas opportunity (at this point I wanted to play in the NBA just like any other basketball player, but the reality was that playing overseas would have to be the first step).

83 @DreAllDay Gilliam had played in the pros, yes. But he played in the NBA his entire career, and was not a fringe player in the league that would have ever had to even think about playing abroad, which means he didn't know anyone that dealt with overseas players -- he didn't need to know them. He hadn't been coaching long enough to have built up any contacts that way; he hadn't sent any players to the pros as a coach either. He was firmly employed by NBA teams his entire time playing. So if I were an NBA prospect, playing on the team, even at the end of the bench, would've been an easy decision. Gilliam couldn't hurt my chances, nor help me get overseas. So my mindset was, fuck Gilliam. It wasn't personal, just business. I -- completely healthy, grades in good shape -- voluntarily chose to not play college basketball as a senior.

***

The team was improved, registering their first win by the eighth game of the season, and there were fewer blowouts with several close losses.

I still supported my friends on the team, sitting front row at all the home games and I even drove to the Mount Aloysius road game in nearby Cresson which Altoona lost on a buzzer-beating tip-in. The team eventually lost in the AMCC tournament's first round again.

During the season my class schedule featured a break during lunch hours that I often used to slip into Adler and get workouts during. There happened to be some faculty that played full court during this time; I found my own court and ignored those old guys until I heard someone call my name from their court one day.

It was Armon Gilliam, playing pickup with the faculty members.

With Gilliam in the game, it felt like a legitimate challenge for me, along with the fact that he was imploring me to dominate the game by using my athletic ability on the faculty guys. Gilliam even hopped into a couple of full court student games at on other days and encouraged me the same way. So it was obvious he knew game and skills when he saw it. Why it didn’t work out for him to acknowledge this while I was on the actual basketball team, I’ll never really know.

Otherwise, I spent the year playing in open gym in Adler on many nights, often manufacturing challenges for myself.

I got into it while sitting the sidelines with some smallish freshman from New York (we called this guy "Chris Whitney," after a fringe NBA player who the kid favored I looked and stature) that, I suppose, felt I was testable since I'd stayed away

84 @DreAllDay from the basketball team that year. Wes was there, listening to our competitive banter. Trash talking ensued and ended with the following challenge from me: Chris could pick a teammate from amongst anyone currently in the gym, and I'd play them, two-against-one, for $20. Chris -- who was maybe 5-7 and 165 pounds -- chose a six-foot Asian guy who was also nameless to us. After jumping out to an early lead, Chris and the Asian lost their twenty bucks, which bought me, Wes and B a dinner of 50 buffalo wings at the Altoona Hooters.

I remember playing pickup one afternoon about a week before intramurals began with Wes and B on the sidelines hoping to see something good. I titled that particular pickup game "The Preview" and dunked on some nobody dude to the crowd's delight.

I called that game The Preview because I was gonna play intramurals the same way I'd done pickup and the same way that had gotten me off Gilliam's basketball team: using my speed and athleticism to overwhelm the opposition until they could take no more.

You may have thought intramural basketball would be a walk in the park for any player who had been on the actual basketball team, but it wasn't: everyone wants to get their lifetime basketball highlight against you, whether it be scoring on you, stopping you from getting a dunk, or stealing the ball one time. It's the collective goal of the entire opposing team. B had played intramurals my sophomore year when he was forced to sit Macklin's final season; with Gene and Mark as teammates, they lost in the finals. Wes had played intramurals in between our pickup game winning streak with Eric and Kenny as teammates; they lost (with Eric throwing chairs and a trashcan onto the court over a disputed call and subsequent ejection). I hired Wes as my de facto "coach" and went to work putting together my team.

Kojo was my "glue guy", the consummate teammate that did a little bit of everything but wasn’t very good at anything. Kojo could bring the ball up and initiate our offense, guard another team's scorer, and make a few shots every game. If we were the Miami Heat, Kojo was Shane Battier.

Adam was a 6-foot ball of energy that was fast and could jump. Adam played out of control much of the time and was kind of useless in half court sets but against intramural-level competition he could get to the rim at will out of transition plays. Adam was my Dwyane Wade, scoring when I wasn’t.

Lance was an older guy and not very skilled, but Lance was happy to be on my team and understood that he might not play a lot or get many shots. He was cool with that. Every team needs a couple of those players. Lance was our Juwan

85 @DreAllDay Howard. In the first scene of my first ever YouTube video, I jump over a guy sitting in a chair and dunk the ball. Lance is the guy in the chair (incidentally, that's B you briefly see jumping up from the stands after the dunk).

I, of course, was LBJ, with my patented go-to move of the same name. I had the athletic advantage, but my offensive rebounding was the real killer as I could get the majority of my points by just hanging near the lane while my teammates tried to score. In our opening game I scored 32 points (half the basketball team came and watched, keeping a statistical tally), about half from offensive boards. My favorite dunk back then was to lob the ball off of the backboard to myself and dunk it, a la Tracy McGrady. I got a steal early in the second half and everyone knew what was coming.

That is, until I tossed the ball up, slipped on a wet spot and fell flat on my face. The crowd howled with laughter as I peeled myself off the hardwood.

I'd redeem myself later that game when I tossed the ball over a defender's head and off-glass, ran around him, and got my dunk. I heard B -- from the stacked baseline bleachers -- say, "Game over!" as I jogged back down court. Wes would later say it was the highest he'd ever seen me jump.

Overall, intramural basketball was boring with not much competition. There was one regular season game, though, that had some energy. There was a team of White boys that featured a player who for some reason thought provoking me was a good strategy.

His name was Myers. I don't remember what he said but the look in his eyes said he was gaging how serious I'd take him (6'1", chubby but somewhat quick for his size, no power, loved shooting pull-up three pointers). Myers had a friend/ sidekick on the team that liked to refer to himself as "Big Hess" (6'2.5", no discernible athletic ability). Myers and Hess were our "Spongebob" and "Dora the Explorer." We didn’t take them seriously and they didn’t really take themselves seriously; they saw the game against my team as a way to have some fun while the attention was on us.

The game began with their team in a box-and-one (meaning, four of their players played zone defense while one person guarded a single player on our team [me]; the defense is designed to slow down the player facing the man-to-man defense as that player has to deal with the one guy following him everywhere plus the rest of his zoning teammates), Myers guarding me. I didn't waste time before parking myself near the basket on offense, scoring almost all of my points in the paint off of offensive rebounds. We won easily -- Adam being our top scorer as he ran and jumped circles around their 4-man zone -- and that was that. I guess Myers

86 @DreAllDay thought he was onto something, though, since this was the only game all season in which I wasn't my teams top scorer. We would meet again.

There was another character on campus that Wes and I met one night outside of the gym after some early season pickup ball. Kid was a freshman from NYC, about 6 feet and not athletic, but he had a story:

Unprovoked and unquestioned, he started telling us how he used to have a 40 inch vertical jump measurement before an ACL injury had robbed him of his bounce.

His story was ridiculous for many reasons; he went on to lie about his scoring average in high school (disproved when we googled the stat sheets) later in the year. Since this was 2003 and he was claiming to jump the height he said, we coined this character "40 Cent."

I introduce 40 because he had his own team in intramurals too; they made it to the semifinals of the league. 40's team faced a team led by LeRon, the (now) junior that had been recruited as a freshman by Macklin, then had quit Gilliam's team without provocation.

It was late in the game and 40's team was clinging to a slight lead with the ball. 40 came down the floor dribbling on the left wing right in front of where Wes and I were sitting (the "real game" bleachers were pulled out for the intramural Final Four). With a nasty crossover-jumper combo (for three!), 40 sent his team into the finals. LeRon? I never saw or heard of him playing ball again.

In the other semifinal, who should my team face but good ol' Hess and Myers again. Myers tried a bit of his weak trash talk again before tip-off but this game was different: having seen so many basketball team players lose in intramurals over the years, I knew I had to bring it all game instead of easing into it as I'd done in regular season games. Furthermore this was the playoffs: lose and you're done. I knew that these intramural players could graduate college happy knowing they beat that guy from the basketball team in a game that one time, no matter how insignificant the occasion. That's why I hated losing pickup games. I was in an aggressive mood before the game and didn't indulge Myers; I was looking to score 50 points on Myers & Hess then another 50 on 40 Cent the next night (get it -- 50 on 40 Cent? Oh well. Read on). Myers' team had around 20 fans in the stands to root them on, only adding fuel to my fire.

The game began and I brought the energy, using my go-to LeBron move to score the first few baskets and shit-talking to Myers and Hess after every basket. Not

87 @DreAllDay the funny, jocular shit they preferred -- I was verbally attacking just as I was physically, planning to beat them into submission on both fronts.

As the ball was falling through the net after scoring on consecutive coast-to-coast drives I talked some more shit to Myers; think something in the "you-clown-ass- muthafucker" neighborhood. He knew it wasn't fun and games talking now. He could hear in my voice and see in my eyes that I was out to embarrass them in front of their friends that night. Moreover, he knew there was nothing he or his teammates could do but bend over and take it.

With no other recourse, Myers temporarily -- very temporarily -- lost his mind. After my verbal assault in the wake of my last bucket, I was running back on defense and close to crossing half court when a basketball hit me square in the back of my head.

The crowd: "Oooooohhhhhhh!"'

I snapped around quickly and Myers was standing near the baseline, under the basket I’d just scored on. I ran towards him and he took a step backwards, calling his toss of the ball 'an accident.' Like I said, temporary loss of his mind.

Both benches emptied to prevent any altercation. The woman running intramurals, who had earlier in the season kicked and entire team out of the league for getting into fights in two separate games, did not have any idea what to do with this situation. It was still the first half and she resolved to have both me and Myers sit out the rest of the half to 'cool off.' I protested -- the ball was thrown at me and I never even got to the perpetrator before the whole thing was broken up -- but she was under high stress and obviously not ready to think on her feet at the moment, so I let her ruling stand. We ended up handily winning what finished as an otherwise uneventful semifinal game. Myers apologized after the game and we didn't see the guy again that semester.

In the championship game 40's bum ass didn't even guard me; they played a 2-3 zone and the game was close all the way through as I was pressing hard and the results were missed shots. There were no refs for this final game; so many referee disputes throughout the season made the intramural director to decide to let us get angry at each other instead of some innocent work study student. Having a call-your-own-fouls rule for the championship game was a very bad idea but I doubt the director could have found two volunteers for that game, especially since one of the two in-game fights the expelled team had been in was against 40's club.

88 @DreAllDay The game went back and forth all the way to the final minute with my team leading by two points. 40 sealed his fate as a player unworthy of respect when he shot a three pointer at the buzzer, and when it missed, announced that he had called foul. If he makes all three of these free throws his team wins the title on that bullshit.

40 made the first two and missed the third; we beat them in overtime. I ended up with 35 points in the championship game, breaking the Basketball Team Intramural Curse.

***

With all of our seasons out of the way, we got back to the pickup game grind but found the run in Adler to be quite weak late in the spring semester. So we -- B, Wes and I -- took our show on the road.

Wes had some friends at St. Francis University, a D1 school in Loretto, PA, about 30 minutes from Altoona. St. Francis had some real players there; besides Wes (whose crossover move was deadly in any gym) we were completely overmatched physically by those guys the first couple of games. B couldn't be asked to guard a 6'10" 260 pound guy alone (they had about three of those; B found a niche with his midrange jumper, though), and I, thinking that being athletic was my calling card, found out what athletic really meant when St. Francis' 6'7" wing forward (that barely even played in their season’s games, as a matter of fact) cleanly swallowed one of my fast break dunk attempts. I had neglected my jumpshot throughout college because my differentiating skill at both Abington and Altoona was that I was far and above the best athlete around. I would not have been, at St. Francis. It was then that I realized that I needed to bring focus again to my ball handling (inspired by seeing Wes cross guys all over the gym for two years) and shooting. Late that summer after graduation Wes and I returned to Loretto for an epic day of two-on-two games that ended with one of their players punting the ball into the stands out of frustration.

We went to Mt. Aloysius once (in Cresson, no far from St. Francis). Their campus had maybe 2,000 students. The Mount's cafe, dorms and gym were all depression-inducingly dead. We played pickup and no one even walked into the gym the entire time apart from the players playing (our five and their five, with maybe five onlookers from their program). We didn't make that mistake again -- we told then they could come and play in our gym.

I had started making treks up to main campus in State College during my sophomore year and made the 45-minute drive a normal part of my college routine over the years, so by 2004 I knew a good amount of people up there. A

89 @DreAllDay girl I knew told me that there was a gym there called the Intramural Building -- IM building for short -- right across the street from Beaver Football Stadium where students played basketball all day every day (that "Caucasians Pickup @ PSU" video took place in State College's IM building). While some days at Altoona left us looking for stuff to do, I later found out through my exploration of State College that the main campus had an embarrassment of resources. There were two other buildings that had at least 3 full courts in each that didn't even get used much because everyone congregated in the IM building; one of them was the gym I later used for the popular "Borat voices" over-the-fan dunk vid.

It became our tradition to drive up to main campus every Friday, usually around 1pm, to play pickup. The three of us all knew people in State College trough various networks so we challenged ourselves to make a way into the commons after each Friday afternoon of games. What were the commons, you ask? To students at main campus, the commons were dining halls that featured all-you- can-eat buffet line food for which entry was a flat fee. To the three if us the commons were fuckin’ heaven. In Altoona we had one weak, small-ass cafe (with no buffet); State College had at least 4 dining halls each four times the size of Port-Sky cafe in Altoona. Those afternoons and evenings in the buffet-style dining halls of main campus could have gone on forever and I would've been happy: basketball, friends, endless food that we didn't pay for (our connects in SC took care of us) and plenty of females to choose from; what more could you ask for?

Let me talk about the actual games at the IM building. Most of the time we were facing regular students from the school; but the fact that main campus was home to over 40,000 students -- more than tenfold the number in Altoona -- meant that the average open gym player in SC was better than the average in Altoona. As we became regulars at the IM, word started to spread about the basketball team players from Altoona (we often wore our Altoona practice jerseys when we played). I came to see that there were many students at main campus that had played ball in high school but chose not to pursue it in college; at Altoona anyone had a puncher's chance of making it the way Gilliam was randomly grabbing people and giving them uniforms (which reminds of a 6'9" dude from Philly named Will that showed up in Altoona during my last semester. Will had absolutely no idea of how to play basketball; B told me of how Will came to practice his first day and didn't know what to do when Gilliam told Will to get into a defensive stance. Will didn't last long on the team and never suited up for a game, though he started to play pickup ball daily as the semester went on). The best part of the games at IM was that there was always a crowd gathered by the time we got on the court and especially after we'd won our first game. Any ball player knows that having a big crowd generates energy. People started to ask us

90 @DreAllDay about Altoona's team and were surprised to hear about how bad our record was considering the three representatives coming to State College every Friday.

Eventually word about us got back to the players on the D1 teams at main campus, men's and women's. We didn't beat the men's team every time -- B, at 6'5", was our center while they had 6'7" small forwards -- but we represented ourselves strongly and earned their respect. One day we took a loss to a team of regular students and Penn State's nationally ranked women's team had next. We had to wait through two games to get back on the court and the women won both; drawing a large crowd for our matchup with them.

We had my man Tone with us this day; Tone was from South Philly and had much streetball influence in his game: a lot of dribbling and a tendency to try to do too much when he got into individual battles during games. This game, Tone felt shown up by one of the women's players and he went into one-on-one mode. This wasn't just any woman he was trying to get his highlights on: this was Tanisha Wright, one of the stars of the team (just shy of 2,000 career points) who was known especially for her tough defense.

Tanisha stifled Tone on defense then used a sweet spin seal-off move to score on Tone at the other end, riling up the IM building audience (in Tone's defense it should be noted that Tanisha was the twelfth pick of the 2005 WNBA draft and still plays for the Seattle Storm). Despite Tanisha's efforts we still disposed of the women's team that day; in a later meeting with them in another Friday Tanisha dropped a gem of a comment while paying me a slight compliment that all players should learn.

I was needling Tanisha a bit about the way we'd beaten them the first time we met in the IM and Tanisha replied that she had a couple of Big Ten championship rings that I could not match. She was right, I replied, but she hadn't gone through me for those rings.

"See, that's the thing about you Dre: you can dish it out, and you can take it."

She was more than correct.

With us not around on Friday afternoons the pickup ball in Adler became nonexistent. Altoona players got wind of what we were doing and showed up in State College a couple times but couldn't match our success on the court or the respect we had earned coming up there all those weeks. Armon Gilliam even started encouraging the other players on the his to go up to the IM for pickup games.

91 @DreAllDay One weekend we played in a three-on-three tournament held on those outdoor courts on campus that I hadn’t touched since arriving my sophomore year. I told you that B, Wes and I were undefeated as a group, but B was out of town on this weekend and we picked up TJ, the biggest guy on campus during my time there that could actually play. You would think replacing B -- who, at 6’5”, played center anyway -- with a 6’7” guy would be an upgrade.

It wasn’t.

TJ was really out of shape and wasn’t able to make much use of his size; it was used against us in the end. We made it through to the finals of the tournament (in between we all were treated to a Kenny-Wes point guard matchup that I had wanted to see for a while; let’s just say that Kenny was the quickest player I’d seen at Altoona until Wes got there and Wes was fully aware that this was a point-to-prove matchup) and faced three players from Gilliam’s basketball team. We were bigger in all three positions, so they smartly set up around the three- point line and just jacked up threes every possession. Since we were playing ones and twos for scoring, their strategy caught up to us and they won.

You ever see those cartoons where an angry character is walking away with a cloud of black smoke over their head? That was us (me & Wes) after losing that tournament. That was the last time TJ shared a court with us.

Some Latin fraternity held a five-on-five tournament in Adler late in the spring semester. I think the word “ratchet” is the best way to describe the scene in there that day. None of the frat members had ever been in the gym playing, so why they chose basketball as their event of choice I’ll never know. But basketball it was, so of course we were there. B was present this time, but it being full court we needed two other players. None of my intramural guys were around so we picked up Tom (a 6’3” big man from the basketball team; Tom and Ken were basically the same person) and RATH, a friend of another team member who was playing with someone else that day (RATH? Running After The Hoes ... a whole other story for another book). The weather was breaking in central PA and it was really nice out on this Saturday; there were not many people around to play or to watch. But we had our three. I should mention that this tournament was the no-refs-so-call-your-own-fouls variety. Combine that with it being late in the school year and the warm weather, it was the perfect recipe for some reckless shit to go down.

It took only two victories to make the finals of this one-and-done event and we sleepwalked through the opening rounds, beating a team of Gilliam guys (three of whom were the team that had beat us in the recent outdoor tournament) on a tie-breaking, buzzer-beating half-court three from B in the semis. In the finals we

92 @DreAllDay faced a team composed of two basketball team players (Jay and Sheed) and three regular students who were friends of theirs. Remember Dre’s Rival? He was one of them. The other was a friend of his and the third was a kid named Nick. Nick, according to what B told me, was supposed to be on the basketball team that season and arrived at Altoona knowing no one, the same as we all had. So like any basketball recruit, he showed up in Adler and again, according to accounts, complained to Gilliam about some confidence-robbing shit talk directed at him in early semester pickup games from some upperclassmen (which could only have come from one of two people; I’ll allow you to guess who). Nick had quit the basketball team after one or two scrimmages but was a nightly regular in pickup all year.

Jay and Sheed (both junior-year Gilliam recruits) were two players who could play; they didn’t accompany us much simply because you can’t win with a team of five players who all want the ball (we tried once, and it failed miserably). It was clear from the beginning of the game that it was personal for their entire team; the game was very physical with many play stoppages for arguments over calls and brief skirmishes.

Jay (6-foot guard) matched up with Wes and Sheed (6’5” wing shooter) with B. The equation for us was simple: The Jay-Wes and Sheed-B matchups just needed to cancel out, with me left to run wild on one of the other three, who we rightly assumed would double me, leaving RATH or Tom free to take open shots -- this would be where we won the game. Simple.

Except for one thing: RATH and Tom were both scared to death.

I said that this game was physical (Coach Kenny Macklin, for some reason, was in the stands for this game, on a Saturday afternoon) and the verbal back-and- forth was constant. All the talk, though, was basketball-tough: We woof and yell and point and flex like we wanna fight but it’s all within the competitive arena of the game. All experienced players, especially those from playground-ball backgrounds, understand this. RATH and Tom were the only two players in that game that were not and did not. I am not sure if either of them even took a shot in the championship contest.

I don’t blame them for our loss though. Our sense of urgency was lacking until the final two or three minutes. I hit back-to-back threes, at which point our opponents started to call foul on every play and iced the game with free throws. The call-your-own-fouls rule was the real culprit, making the whole tournament a big pickup game. Not one that we planned to lose, though.

***

93 @DreAllDay Late in the school year I went into Adler to work out and Gilliam was in there with Tyler Smith, a former player from the main campus team that had been playing in the D-League and internationally in many places. Now this was the type of player Gilliam could relate to and teach: Tyler was about 6’9” and a power forward just like Gilliam; Armon was teaching Tyler some new skills and drills. Gilliam set Tyler and I to play some one-on-one against each other; as we played Gilliam encouraged me to attack Tyler with my advantages.

“No jumpers, Dre. Use your quickness! Attack him, you're quicker than him!”

Gilliam was good for me in that way -- he knew how to set up a player to be at his best. Our team’s personnel disallowed him to encourage me that way when I was on the team though.

Late in the school year B, Wes and I turned out attention to the future, and how we could begin professional basketball careers. B, who ended up making the AMCC First Team again, was getting a lot of exposure camp invites as his stats (20 points, 10 rebounds, 2 blocks) were quite impressive. Wes had led the AMCC in assists and he knew the most about playing overseas between the three of us. In North Carolina where he was from (I'd spent spring break at his family's house that year) there were a ton of college and pro players. Unlike me or B, Wes had friends playing at other colleges as well as playing overseas. I knew where I was going -- somewhere where they'd pay me to play ball -- but I hadn't the damnedest idea how to get there or where to go or who would help me. After some trial and error, I figured things out.

**********

94 @DreAllDay Epilogue & Notes

Well, that's it -- my basketball life from my start at age 14 through my college years. The experiences you have read is only what I felt necessary to give context to the basketball story as it happened and that includes any people mentioned; if I were to get into my away-from-the-court life this book would be ten times longer (and it will be, when I write my complete life story. That is a long way away. It's coming, but don't hold your breath).

As for the prominent characters in the story:

I began a professional basketball career in 2005 that is still going with many ups and downs, though the ups more than make up for all the downs. You can read about my experiences on my website (links are at the end).

I ran into Brandon from Masterman (the inspiration for the title of this book) at a random party in State College during my junior year of college. It was dark inside but he recognized me; we went into a wild embrace while the girl I'd been dancing with stood there looking at us like we were crazy. Last I heard from Brandon he was helping some kids in Philly learn the game.

I ran into coach Mo from Abington in the summer of 2006 when I'd come back from playing in Mexico. It was July and I was working out in the gym at Abington and Mo happened by. Noting my physique, "I wish you were this size when I had you," was he first thing he said. He gave me his business card and told me to be in touch if I needed anything.

Kenny Macklin was getting an operation done a couple years ago in Pennsylvania and his nurse was a friend of mine. She made the connection when Macklin spoke of coaching basketball at Altoona. We spoke on the phone, I remember, right after the Tiger Woods scandal broke.

Armon Gilliam lasted three years as head coach at Altoona before being fired and he never coached again, unless you want to count his stint as "player/coach" for an ABA team in Pittsburgh when Gilliam was over 40 years old (and "killing," according to firsthand accounts from B, who attended a game). Gilliam died while playing pickup ball in a Pittsburgh area LA Fitness in 2011.

B is still my dude, though he no longer plays daily -- if you watch my one-on-one videos on YouTube you've seen B many times. Wes played overseas for a minute and coaches now. If I had to play in a three on three tournament with my

95 @DreAllDay life in the balance (with the caveat that we had some weeks to get in game shape, of course), these men would be the first two I'd call. I cannot give a better endorsement of two players than that. Not just because of skills, but because I know they would "ride out" against anyone, anywhere (and we have).

Everyone mentioned by name in this book will have a standing invitation to respond or correct my accounts, in writing, which I will publish, in full, with any response of my own, on DreBaldwin.com or DreAllDay.com.

***

Thanks for reading this book. It's my first effort as an author and so far, writing is a ton easier than the daily challenge of staying prepared to play professional- level basketball (though I'm not trading one for the other; I can seamlessly do both at the moment). One thing I've learned is that books that share an experience -- what you have lived -- are a lot easier to write than books that cover ideas simply because a book like the one you've just read comes with easy-to-follow instructions: recall what happened and write it down.

I would be remiss to not thank my parents for getting my sister and me started on reading books at such a young age. We always had a ton of books at our fingertips in our home, and my mother, an educator herself, made sure her children were always more prepared than the school’s curriculum required. The "Preparation" tattooed on my left arm is a principle instilled in me from that and watching my mom and dad wake up, while it was still dark, to go to work every day, rain, snow, heat or cold be damned: they had children to raise.

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Dre Baldwin brought basketball training & motivational video to the Internet, leveraging that foresight into brand names and a growing bu siness empire. During his 9 years as a professional basketball player, Dre began publishin g workout and motivational messages to YouTube in 2006. Now with over 4,500 videos online covering discipline, confidence, sports and business, Dre has been viewed over 35,000,000 times by 100,000+ subscribers. Dre, or "DreAllDay" as his fans know him, brings his "Work On Your Game" brand and philosophy to his marketing, branding, and professional speakin g businesses. Dre has authored five books, including "The Mirror Of Motiva tion".

Read More By Dre Baldwin: The Mental Handbook The Mirror Of Motivation The Super You The Overseas Basketball Blueprint

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