Jun 23 2008
A little namedropping
With the NBA draft coming up, I thought I’d take the opportunity to do a little namedropping. One of the things that I have found while playing division one basketball is that no matter where a guy is from, his high school or A.A.U. team would have beaten everybody elses high school/A.A.U. team like a drum. When you get an elite group of basketball players together (how long until someone bashes Furman…the clock starts now) for road trips, pregame meals, summer school, etc. basketball stories are told time and time again. I’ve realized that only a few people can hold a candle to the list of players I’ve played with or competed against. One that comes to mind is my teammate Noah States. He went to Hargrave Military Academy with 10 other D1 Players including: Jordan Crawford , Jeremy Jacob , Eric Wallace to name a few that went to BCS schools.
In high school, one of our biggest rivals in our region (probably shouldnt call it a rival because we never came closer than 10 points) was Wheeler High School. My junior year in high school, they got a big boost from a transfer by the name of J.J. Hickson. I’m not going to get into details of the transfer but you would probably be not too far from the truth if you said that Wheeler coughUniversitycough has a bigger recruiting budget than a D2 school does. On that subject I should probably keep my mouth shut considering Milton’s (my high school) roster has some new faces on it (I’ve been assured that they all are legitimate move ins).
Anyways, JJ Hickson and I guarded each other which led to some mismatches considering he is a 6-9 post and i’m a 6-7 wing. We played them at our place my senior year and I ended up dropping 33 points tying my career high and 11 rebounds - 2 more points and 2 more rebounds than J.J..(Apparently you can watch highlights here… http://hsgeorgia.scout.com/a.z?s=37&p=8&c=1&nid=2931045 with a scout.com account).
What I am about to show you is never before released footage. Here is how it went down… So I’m guarding J.J. Hickson a week or 2 before the McDonalds All American teams are to be announced and rumor is that there is a Mickey-Ds scout in attendance. J.J. takes a power dribble and lays one in. I try to take a charge (read as: I fall down like an idiot) and J.J. decides to take that opportunity to stand over me and yell, “STAY DOWN F*** BOY”. I decide to get up and push 2 Wheeler players out of my way to chase J.J. to halfcourt to make a point. I’m not exactly proud of this video and looking back I should have definitely been given a technical at the least.
