March 31, 2025 • 51 mins
Rickey Rivers' basketball journey weaves through the hallways of Erasmus Hall High School to pioneering youth basketball tournaments that transformed NYC's basketball culture. This candid conversation reveals the making of a Brooklyn basketball legend whose impact extends far beyond the scoreboard.
At the heart of Rivers' story is the powerful influence of coach Gil Reynolds, whose tough-love approach included unforgettable moments like slapping players across the face during timeouts and demanding "elbows high" basketball. These formative experiences shaped not only Rivers' game—where he averaged 30 points his senior year—but his understanding of discipline and excellence that would define his later work.
Rivers shares the remarkable sacrifices he made as a young father while pursuing college basketball, commuting hours daily from Brooklyn to New Rochelle for Iona College while raising two children with his wife. Despite the challenges, Rivers transformed these experiences into fuel for his true calling: creating opportunities for young athletes through FunSport tournaments.
The conversation travels through the evolution of Rivers' programs from middle school tournaments at Madison Square Garden to high school showcases featuring future NBA stars like Kemba Walker. His innovative approach—giving players personalized posters that many still treasure decades later—shows how small gestures can leave lasting impressions on young lives.
Today, as a financial literacy teacher and high school coach, Rivers continues his impact while celebrating his greatest achievement: raising two successful daughters while maintaining a 33-year marriage. His story reminds us that basketball excellence isn't just measured in points scored, but in lives touched and communities strengthened.
Ready to debate basketball legends or life lessons? Grab your copy of the Your Opinion Doesn't Matter game at www.yodm.com and see if you can match wits with your family and friends just like Rivers does with his accomplished daughters.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome.
Welcome to the your OpinionDoesn't Matter podcast.
I am the host, Mr Lamont, andI'm here with a good friend of
mine.
Yes, indeed, Mr Ricky Rivers.
Thumbs up.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Thank you, man, Thank you for having me Champ.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
How are you doing, man?
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm good man.
It's a good Sunday, goodweather outside, Birthday is
just a week away, so I'm gettingexcited for all of those things
, man.
And today is like the PSALCatholic event that I'm looking
forward to go see, and some guyskids I know that I've watched
and developed and seen, so I'mlooking forward to that.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Right, right, right.
You're hoping the PSAL team canwin.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yo, I don't want to be on record for that, but I'm
cheering for them kind ofbecause there's some kids in the
Catholic school that I'm goodwith too, but there's more kids
on that public school rosterthat I'm comfortable with.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Right, right, right, right.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I just want to see the young men go out and play at
their best ability today, Rightright, right, Like a dollar and
a dream.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
You know what I mean.
Just hope for whoever win.
Win.
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
No, doubt, no doubt, man.
But I am going to say I got aJeff, I want to see those cats
do well.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Right, right, right, right.
I've seen a couple, actuallythe coach I think it's the head
coach.
He used to play for boys andgirls.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yep.
He played for boys and girlsand them.
Him and Selden both played atWest Virginia.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, Selden.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Oh, he played at West Virginia with Selden.
He played at West Virginia, yep, so they may have been a few
years apart, but they both theycome back and develop that
program the way they've done.
I've watched them kind of likedo it from the ground up and
been there in front seat, so Igot a different connection to
that program.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Nice, nice, nice nice .
Let's get into our history, man.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Oh, yeah, yeah, let's do that, let's get into our
history.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
You know how long were we when we met.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
So you know what I don't know exactly exactly the
year, but I know it's been along time it's like from the
kind of like the beginningstages of me running this
program.
I've started fun sport back in1999 officially, but I think I
started doing the programs backin 98 and I've seen a lot of
faces, so a date but I know it'sbeen a while, I know it was way
before the grades, I know thatright, right, right, right now
I'm saying when we met?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yes, we met in high school, oh, yes, in E-Hall.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I think he was talking about playing the
program yes in high school,Correct, yeah we're going to get
into when your teams in theprogram used to beat up on my
teams, but we talk about when wemet.
Yeah, I, we was juniors.
Well, yeah, you graduated.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I graduated in 1990.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah, we both graduated in 1990.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I was in the class of 1990 at Erasmus, which is the
toughest class in the city right, right, right.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Who else was there?
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So you know, the better team that we had was when
we we were the year before that, which was 89.
We had guys, we were.
We made the playoffs that year.
Uh, the year that I came out,so I had brent donation, that
was on a team with me.
Uh, desmond ira gibbs clive,all those guys, those, those was
(02:51):
my god, what about fish?
fish was the year before thatman fish, fish didn't play as
much you know fish.
Jokingly, he said I always jokewhen he's a run around for sgo.
Remember fish was for presidentof student government right
right right, fish was muchslimmer.
Man Fish was a goldfish at thattime.
Now you're a big boy, nowyou're a big whale.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And what Paul Cruz.
He was this window shopper,paul.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Cruz was my guy man.
He'd come up there with thedogs and everything man.
He had about four pit bulls.
They was all the same height.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Right right, right right, right, dope, dope.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
But those is my guys, man Paul Cruz, the granddaddy
Shout him out.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yes, facts, facts Shout out to the Cruz brothers,
my guys man.
They've been ducking to comealong the show man They've been
ducking.
Oh man, that guy it wasprobably Norris man and Norris
be the Marky, Marky, Marky.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Marky's the head honcho for them.
Yeah, Marky, my fault.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
So let's talk about how we met right.
We met at a basketball programcalled Vanguard.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yes, okay, that is true, yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
And our coach was Gil Reynolds man.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah, gil, just a story of how I met Gil.
Gil was very, very, I want tosay, very impactful to my life
man, mr Bunyan, who was ourcoach at Erasmus during a time
where I wasn't playing that muchbecause I was doing things I
probably shouldn't have.
He said, well, you need to godown to this program and try out
.
He sent me down to A PhilipRandolph to try out for Vanguard
(04:17):
and I went down there and Gilwas just like a coach that I
hadn't seen before.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Oh, my God.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
How he put the thing together, his intensity,
everything that he did fromthings that he was talking about
during it.
And there was other players outthere and I think that was
probably one of my first, Iwould say, serious tryouts going
to go play for another teamRight, I only played for my
school team and some local teamsto that point.
But I just always liked how heheld it down.
He was a general, he was asergeant and he kind of like
(04:45):
seen something in me that Iain't seen in myself at that
tryout for the first time, man.
So I had a connection with Giland Gil as we talk, you know
that Gil was very much a part ofwho I became today.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Right, right, right Gil, he's a special guy, man.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Special guy.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Special guy man.
I mean, I remember thepractices that we used to have,
man, he would make you not likeyour friends kid.
Because, like forget about it,you're not supposed to be
getting hit with a screen.
He's like put them elbows out.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Put those elbows out, go with the elbows high.
Yeah, elbows high, elbows high.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yo, he was no joke man.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
There was no joke.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
I remember a time Let me see if you remember.
I know you got plenty ofstories.
I remember a time we wasplaying in Gaucho's Rumble
Classic.
We was down.
This was our junior year, bothwas our junior year and we was
down at half by like 12 or 15.
So we go into the locker room.
So the locker room was shapedlike a U.
(05:44):
So we all go into the lockerroom.
So the locker room is shapedlike a U.
So we all go into the U right,and it's probably like 10 of us
or something like that.
And assistant coach came infirst.
What was his name?
Tony Noel.
Tony Noel, how he doing.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Tony's doing good man .
He works down in New Jerseyright now, so I think he's
living in New Jersey right now.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Okay, cool, cool.
When you speak to him, tell himI said he probably remember me.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I wasn't like that on that squad.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
So we sitting in the halftime down by 12, and Tony
comes in.
He's just talking to us likeyeah, y'all, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah.
Five minutes later, gil come in, he closed the door behind him
and he said what the fuck y'alldoing, what y'all doing, what
y'all doing.
And then he said in my he'sjust he's blocking the door.
(06:31):
He says I'll turn this lightoff and I'll fuck all of y'all
up.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
You remember?
I probably don't remember that,but I'm not surprised though,
because there's so many of thosestories, he had said.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
He says I'll surprised though, because
there's so many of those storiesyou know.
He had said he says I'll fuckyou up and you get your father
I'll fuck him up too.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I said whoa shucks man.
And are you okay?
I ain't gonna lie, I don'tthink I know my father couldn't
beat him.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
For sure I think he's kicking a majority of us.
At that time, fathers asked meto have to jump him you know
what I mean?
Yeah, but he was.
He was a good.
He was a good guy.
What kind of stories that youremember?
I heard a story with you.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Uh, so it's so many, so gil, kind of like, took me
under his wing right.
So the one story that alwayslights up with me is because you
said we playing in the goldenhoops, we playing at the gauchos
gym, uh, we're playing against.
I forgot the the aim high,we're playing against aim high.
It was a close, close game.
James Brickhouse, I remember,was on the other side, close
(07:26):
game, tight game down thestretch right and Chris Sky is
maybe I shouldn't have said hisname, but he, I guess he must
have missed a rebound orsomething like that.
Something happened that Chrisdid and that wasn't like.
Chris was a big strong guy.
He didn't do something right Onour team, the likes of the kids,
yes, so he comes sit down andwe sit down on the bench right
(07:49):
there at Gaucho's Gym on thecorner.
Chris is in the middle.
I know I'm right next to Chrisand I forget who's next to him.
Gil turns his back.
He has his back to us as we'resitting down on a timeout and
then turns around and gets onhis knee and takes his two
fingers and slaps chris rightacross the face.
(08:09):
Oh shit, slaps chris with histwo fingers right across the
face, right next to me, and Iremember moving over like you
didn't want that yo.
He said and flinched.
He said flinch.
He did it with his right hand.
He said flinch, flinch, if youwant to.
The left is coming right acrossyour jaw, the left is coming
right across your jaw.
And chris was a strong, youknow, muscular guy and we like
(08:31):
holy snaps, like this guy justhit chris across the face, type
joint.
They say flinch and he saidyou're playing soft and you
gotta toughen up.
You gotta toughen up, don't goout there playing soft.
And then I understood themessage.
But the delivery at the firstwas like whoa.
And then we went in and wonthat game.
We went in there and won thatgame, which is tough, but that's
(08:51):
my Gil moment, along with himhitting Kenneth Percival with an
elbow and busting his wholemouth up.
He had to go get stitches onWoodhaven Boulevard.
So there's a lot of them.
But I also have good momentswhere Gil used to work out.
When I used to play at Erasmusand I averaged like 30 points in
my senior year, gil was theresponsible for that.
I used to go to every practice.
(09:13):
After every practice I used toleave Erasmus and go over to
Jackie Robinson program inBed-Stuy and shoot with him,
drill with him and train withhim and.
I remember that one game, thatkind of a good part of the game,
was that he, we had that bigmatchup against Prospect Heights
and it was Donald Tayloragainst Ricky Rivers.
In that matchup and Donald wasaveraging a lot of points and so
was I, and we put on the show.
(09:35):
That time he kind of likeprepared me for how to work
against that game and Donald had47 but I had 42 in a boxing one
.
So those guys, those guysProspect Heights, remember, they
guys play box and one of memost of the time and I had 40.
And I remember coming back tohim after that game, I had to
come back to the gym even afterthat game and go through drills
(09:55):
and go through shooting.
Even after that I was like yo,I can't get the day off.
I just was, nah, we were stillwork and he was, but I could see
that he was real proud of how Iperformed that day Girl.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
He's special man and he's like you know, he's caring,
he cares, he cares, he lovehard and he's going to hit you.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
If you got to know him that well?
Yes, he was definitely a caringguy.
Yeah, if he was one of his guys, he's going to treat you right,
treat you right.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yeah, I was one of the pets.
Yeah, yo, I remember thatbasketball camp we went to.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Which one?
Because you took me to one ofCanisius up in Buffalo.
That was where I slept.
I don't remember which one didyou go to?
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I think it was Anthony Mason's.
I think it was in Virginia, Idon't remember.
Okay, you're probably going toremember this.
This is probably the only gymyou ever played basketball with
carpet on the floor.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah well, how many gyms floor.
Yeah well, how many gyms.
You did that a lot, so I, weplayed it half.
There's a couple of boys andgirls club downtown brooklyn
that I came back to used to havecarpet on the floor oh there's
a salvation army in brownsvillethat used to have carpet on the
floor.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I never understood carpet on the floor for
basketball but I remember acouple of those gyms yeah, I
remember that's the camp that wewent to.
I'm for sure I remember you wasthere.
That's the only time I everplayed with carpet, the first
and last time.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
First and last time yeah, carpeting gym is different
, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I mean there ain't no , ain't no slot diving on the
floor, oh, no way carpet burnsor the carpet I didn't
understand it though I mean seethe science in it really like I
mean, maybe get your dribblingbetter, maybe I don't know I.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
I didn't.
I don't understand it, but Iknow I remember g taking me,
which was very helpful to mycareer.
He took me by himself up toBuffalo, cold as heck in the
middle of the summer, and to aCanisius camp and that was my
first exposure to Division Icolleges and Division I coaches,
I would say, and they was atthat point, this was like I was
in high school, it was like yo,you really have potential to
(11:40):
play Division I basketball andthey was interested in me,
canisius.
I didn't get an offer from them, but they did show me by them
giving me that feedback, it toldme that I was on the right path
.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, gave you the push.
Gave you the push.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah, it told me I was on the right path that was
in between my junior and senioryear.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Nice, nice, nice, nice.
So did you ever go toLaurenburg?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I never went to Lauren Burke.
A lot of stories come out ofLauren Burke prep.
Gil used to share those storieswith me.
I used to share stories withfamily and friends because he
coached my cousin, Juice AnthonyJoseph out there too.
So he would tell me stories.
But I never made the journeydown to Lauren Burke.
When I got connected with Gilit was on the back end of his
years and he was pretty muchhere in the city.
(12:23):
So that was him.
He was coaching longberg.
Yeah, gail used to coachlongberg.
He coached a lot of playersdown there, man.
He took a lot of players downto longburn prep.
I don't know if the resourceswas that great, but he was
definitely down there.
He's telling me a whole lot ofstories, along with other
players right, I was down there.
So it was a lot of people thatgot a beginning.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I got and you know, got started down there in
laurenburg right, right, right,right, and you know um me seeing
you, me seeing you evolve intothe great, great basketball
player that you became, and umyou took your, you took your
skills on the road, um where didyou wind up going after high
school?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
so gil's kind of set this up.
This is what gil was veryhelpful to me.
After my high school career in1990 I played.
That was the best class, uh, inthe city.
I believe my recruiting wasn'tthat big.
I mean erasmus coaches that Iwas in the first year of victor
butler uh, they didn't help meas much so but uh, I remember
this like yesterday.
(13:17):
Uh, gill told me about laurenum sorry, lamar, colorado.
It was a junior college out inColorado.
He brought the coach.
They flew the coach all the wayin to watch me play three on
three and do workouts in KellyPark, and so the coach came all
the way.
There was a guy from Gill thatwas already.
I knew nothing about Colorado orLamar, I knew nothing about it
(13:41):
All.
I remember telling this guywho's my guy right now, actually
Coach Hoshava, just one of thebetter coaches that I ever
played for.
Honestly, I want to give himhis flowers.
All I didn't know him, all Itold him.
I said, hey, I never knownothing about Colorado and if
I'm going to go, I need somebodyto go with me, and my friend
was Kaheen Draper at the timethat played that automotive and
(14:01):
I was like we both need to go.
He's my roommate because Idon't know what I'm going into,
but I'll go into it with him.
So I signed the letter ofintent on some old car right
there at Kelly Park, right,didn't even.
You know?
I have no, none of my family,no mom, no father there.
I just trusted Coach GilReynolds to kind of like send me
(14:22):
on this journey and signed theletter of intent and went out to
Colorado and kind of like,that's where my whole game
evolved and took off.
Man, if I had tapes of meplaying in Colorado, I think
it's better than any film that Ihad.
From the other.
I had some amazing games outthere in Colorado in front of
college coaches and showed a lotof potential in in front of
(14:44):
Division One coaches.
And then after that I had ababy and so I came close to home
.
I decided I was going to leaveColorado, which had a lot of
opportunity for me, and I wentto FIT for a year.
So I went to FIT for a year,led them to like number 15 in
the nation, became All-Americanin JUCO, became an All-American
in JUCO and then had an optionand this is where the transition
(15:05):
happened between Gil and MrCouch, who runs the Dykeman
organization.
Once I came out I startedplaying college ball.
I started to play with Mr Couchand Mr Couch, kind of like took
over with my recruiting andeverything and he said, hey,
look, since you want to stayhere in New York because I had a
(15:26):
kid, he said the only optionthat I have for you is either
going to be St John's or Iona.
I was like.
Well, iona had some interest inme out of high school.
I had some familiarity withthem and St John's had just
signed Felipe.
He was like we'll take you.
But you know it's like I wasgoing back up Felipe and as a
junior going into college Ididn't want't do that.
So the head coach used toalways of Iona, who was Jerry
Welch at the time, used toalways come to all my games and
call me just about at least twoor three times a week.
(15:48):
He would call me to check on.
I liked that Jerry Welch wasdoing because he was always
checking on my family, my wife.
He was checking on my kid.
He knew I was a recent fatherand he was always connecting me
with that.
So I went to Iona.
I had to sit out a year beforeI could play because I didn't
graduate from FIT, so I sat outa year.
That sit-out year was verydifficult for me because I had a
(16:10):
second kid during the time thatI sat out.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So I had two daughters at the time.
So, rather than really workingout and training most of my time
because I couldn't practicewith the team I was just
parenting.
I was playing ball every nowand then, but I was parenting.
So when we finally came to bein my turn, and I was the
starter and I was the toprecruit going in, I wasn't fully
prepared for it because I wassuccessful in every level with
(16:35):
Juco.
I wasn't as fully prepared insome of those games as I should
have been.
Timing was off, things was off,so I started the first 18 games
, and then they started to pushme to the bench because I wasn't
producing like I should.
Okay, but to know that, though,is the other part of the caveat.
To tell the story is thatpeople don't understand that I
commuted by train from sunsetpark, brooklyn, all the way to
(16:56):
new rochelle every day, so whenwe had 6 30 7 o'clock am, I was
on the train, I was on a 4 30 ammetro north and then walking a
mile from the metro north downto Iona, down to the.
So a lot of the times I wasjust exhausted, right.
I was exhausted with the commute, doing homework because I did
my homework on the trains andthen getting home to a
(17:18):
two-year-old and a newborn andthen having a wife too.
That you know.
I mean that you got, if youknow how, all of that.
So my, my college experience,just to be documented right now.
I never complained about it,never really talked about it,
but my college experience wasdifferent from everybody else on
my team.
They didn't have to.
You know, after a game we playa 730 game on TV and we packing
(17:41):
it up at 10 o'clock and I got toget to a Metro North.
They going to cross the streetto the dorms.
I'm getting on the Metro Northand getting on the Ford train to
get and get arriving home like1am, only to get it turned right
back around to get the class by8.30 and 9am.
So sometimes I was able to stayup there because it was too much
a struggle, but not his wifelike yo.
Come home I got two kids, ohwow.
(18:03):
So that's something thateverybody don't know about my
experience, because you knowwhat Now people will Google damn
, you only averaged like eightpoints, bro.
You got to understand mystruggle, how I was getting to
those eight points.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Right, right, right, right, you had a bigger
responsibility.
Yeah, bigger responsibility,man.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
How to just get there and get it done.
But hey, but hey, I wouldn'ttake nothing back man it built
character.
It built some things of me thatI needed as an adult.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Right, right, right.
That's good to hear, man, goodto hear.
I didn't know that story.
You know what I mean.
I know people out there wouldlove to hear that yeah because
it might motivate somebody elsewho's listening.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
A young kid might need that.
I try to share it with somekids who I coach now, and but
that's the reason why I coachnow is I think there's layers to
my story that I could kind oflike push on to young people.
That's perseverance and allthat other stuff.
It's like ain't no excuses inthis game and if you really want
it, you got to go.
You don't make no excuses ifyou really want it.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
That's a fact.
That's a fact.
So then, during them times,right on the come up, what
tournaments was you in beforehigh school?
Speaker 2 (19:05):
I didn't really play in many local street tournaments
as much.
In Brooklyn I played in highenergy as a young kid.
I remember playing there inWingate.
I played in some little smallstuff but most of the stuff that
I always played in I wasworking out or playing in some
real structured stuff.
I started to play with Gil.
Gil would take me to someplaces.
He had me playing in some localstuff.
I remember high energy a lotbecause that was one of the
tournaments that Gil alwaysplayed in.
(19:26):
Tony Noel would play in the sixfoot and under in the same park.
So we always got stuff playingin there, played at St Peter
Clavis.
So there's some experiences.
Oh so you played at Clavis.
Yeah, I played at St PeterClavis some time with.
Gil, played a lot in Queens.
When you talk about the KennyAnderson's, Kenny Smith's, jason
(19:48):
Williams, we used to work hard,work out heavy at Lost
Battalion Hall.
Those workouts at LostBattalion Hall it would be Gil
and his developmental guys thatincluded me.
There's like blue collar guys.
And then you have Vincent Smith, which is Kenny Smith's brother
, on the other side of the courttraining with all the stars.
He had Kenny Anderson overthere, he had Jason Gilliam over
(20:10):
there, he had the SteveFrazier's, the Abdul Fox yeah,
all of these guys that were D1players.
They all became major D1players too.
You know, Kenny Anderson is easystory.
So you would be on this sideand then later after the
workouts they would just mergethem, we would just hoop and
play.
So this was all the.
I got an opportunity to be inthat position through Gil to
(20:31):
play against those guys andbuild relationships to like,
like my guy, rich Ashmead, everytime I go to Phoenix he still
pop out and we connect typejoint and it's all that we met
through those workouts and thosetraining sessions and
everything, and so I still gotsome good relationships with
those guys to today and I thankGil for those experiences
because it helped me level up towhere I needed to be at.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
And you know one thing about Gil we never
practiced full court, nah,Everything was right, you're
right.
Never practiced full court.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Everything was half court.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Everything.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Never.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Only time we saw a full court is game time.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yep man, like because I got a lot of those workouts.
If I didn't play for GilReynolds I would not be a
Division I player.
I would have never playedDivision.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
I basketball.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I would have been lost in this process and I know
how easy it is and it's easiernow for a young kid to get lost
in the process.
But now you got social media,you can kind of like push
yourself a little bit more.
But at that time there was nosocial media if tom kashowski or
somebody didn't evaluate youand write about you.
It was tough and I remembergoing to a workout at 275 that
(21:36):
had a lot of players in it andtom kashowski was there giving
everybody a great and a rating,and gil put me in position to be
in that workout and I did mything at that point, you know.
I mean Tom Kachowski rated me afour minus, I remember, and
that four minus to me was like,oh, I'm on, I'm on, I'm on route
, because I seen some otherplayers who got that four minus
(21:57):
and I was like, oh, he's gettingrecruited by division one, so
if he's a four minus, then I'm.
I just need to be getting infront of the right people, that
with the right opportunity toget me there right, right, right
right.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
So we lost contact for a little bit and then I
resurfaced with my non-profitand in 2007 and so by then I was
just tutoring, so forth and soon.
And then by 2010 I said I had agroup of kids.
I say, yeah, man.
I said, yo, I want to get themin a tournament.
I heard I'm speaking todifferent people said, yo, I
want to get them in a tournament.
I was speaking to differentpeople.
They said, yo, why don't youput them in Rick's tournament?
(22:28):
Rick, rick, rick, who's Rick?
Rick Rivers?
I said Rick Rivers went toeHall.
I mean, that's the only RickRivers there is.
basically they said yeah, that'smy guy.
I said yo, let me get hisnumber, blah, blah, blah, let me
get his information.
And then, all of a sudden, Iwind up bringing my kids to your
tournament.
(22:48):
I forgot the location.
I brought my kids to two,several locations.
Which one you had?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Sunset Park Uh-huh, sunset Park.
I had Boys.
I've been around with thisthing.
At the highest peak it wasprobably at Thomas Jefferson
High School, sunset Park.
I had said park.
Uh, I had things going theretoo, uh brc, brc, was it okay
was a stop.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
So I'm not sure which stop that, you, that you, oh,
so I get you.
You had a lot of you had a lotof stops.
One thing I know one thing Iknow is that my kids was the
guinea pigs, because what it is,that was more or less teaching
kids who didn't really have that.
Who's not making the majorteams.
That's developing kids.
You know, I'm giving themsomething to look forward to.
Let's go to this tournamentover there and get shellacked
over there or go over here andget a little bit of you know,
but I didn't know how strongyour tournament was.
(23:31):
I'm like dang, your tournament.
I remember a time I had broughtthe team there and your team
came, a team that we weresupposed to play was late, and
you said yo team came, a teamthat we supposed to play was was
late, and you say, yo, youcould take the w or you could
wait, okay.
So and I asked the kids, but Iknew already that these kids
already got um smacked aroundlike probably the last, the last
(23:54):
tournament, the last game thatwe was at.
So I said you know what theysaid yo, let's play, all right,
and and and at that time themkids was just coming back from
Vegas tournament.
Soon, as they're next to youknow, they're like 10 minutes
late.
They're running in the park.
(24:14):
I remember once they did thelayup line, their point guard
dribbled the ball off the groundand he'd give himself an alley
and dunked it with two hands.
Boom, I said, oh shoot, y'allgoing to get cooked.
And, mind you, no player on myteam could dunk and their point
guard was dunking.
So imagine what the rest ofthem was doing, and it was an
experience that these kids, ofcourse they, lost.
But to tell me, how did youwind up going that direction of
(24:35):
into tournaments and becoming acoach?
I mean, I know you love thegame, but what made you
transition there?
Speaker 2 (24:40):
So background I started Fun Sport with just
unlimited stuff, right.
So I used to do my collegejoint in the pro league in 2004
I believe it's 2004 I felt likeI needed to get younger.
Uh, we created this junior prosmiddle school thing and I had
access to nice uniforms.
I was going to roll out thesedope uniforms to these kids for
(25:02):
a weekend event and I was ableto, through my guy, kamani Young
, kind of get team next, whichwas the number one eighth grade
team in the country at that time.
I got them locked in.
I got a few other teams lockedin Brooklyn, usa who was big at
the time Gauchos.
So I had a nice opening for amiddle school thing.
Now, middle school basketballin 2004 wasn't popular like that
(25:25):
.
It was not popular.
I was basically going to takeoff and I think I just had this
vision.
It was like, hey, you know what?
Everything around in New YorkCity basketball is either
unlimited or ISA.
Isa was the biggest ticket intown, I said.
But before they get to ISA,these kids got to be doing
something.
And I honed in on middle schoolbasketball a lot of times.
You people like the team.
Next, they had to traveloutside of the city to really
(25:47):
get those type of events.
So I created something calledfun sport, junior pros and I was
going to kind of like have aconcept where we check report
cards and we did everything toprepare middle school kids for
the high school process, and itjumped off kind of well man.
So next, that's what kind ofreally springboarded the joint.
I was already had relationshipswith nike, so I already had, uh
, you know, some eyeballs on myprograms already because of the
(26:11):
things I was doing on the proside of it.
And then the middle schoolthing just jumped right off.
My first thing for that weekendI think it was a thanksgiving
tournament jumped off real easy,real quick and then we started
to piggyback off it.
I just grew the program I satdown with.
If you know, tippy at the timeI brought tippy in.
It was like tippy, these are thethings I like, what you do, I
here's, I need I need to bechecking balances and I want to
(26:32):
just grow this thing because Ithink we could do something
special here with middle schoolkids.
And then I started havingchampionship games.
The first one was at the garden.
I had the championship game atthe garden, nice, and then, once
I had it the second time, thenI have shoe companies get
involved in it.
Uh, it just just.
It just started to becomebigger and bigger and you kept
on adding pieces to it.
(26:52):
So I had like a pre-season.
I had so many teams that wantedto get in it.
I would have a pre-seasontournament to evaluate the teams
, to decide which 36 or 32 teamsI was going to take into the
main tournament to play at theGarden or, as later became the
Barclays.
I had teams come from Canada tokind of like come in and play.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, you was doing it.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
So I had teams that was coming from all over.
So at one point people werewriting about that I held the
biggest middle school tournamenton the East Coast, right, right
.
So that's how the youth stuffstarted and from that, because
everybody couldn't play in that,I started to create other
little things for kids to be apart of if they couldn't be a
(27:33):
part of the bigger event typething.
So next thing, you know, I wasrunning like maybe six, seven,
eight tournaments at one timeand sometimes in a year.
So I did a lot of stuff overthe course of the year because I
was just, I mean in a year.
So I did a lot of stuff overthe course of the year because I
was just, I mean in a year.
Over the course of me justdoing this stuff.
I've done a lot of events, alot of things, and sometimes I
look back on those jointsbecause, like man, I wasn't even
(27:56):
thinking about it at the time.
You in it.
You just go Next thing.
You know there's another onethat you're preparing for and
you don't even reflect, like dad.
You know what that was.
That was dope right.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Social media wasn't buzzing, but I was probably the
only one with a website, thoughright, right right right so you,
you could basically say thatyou was like the first one who
bought middle school, likebasketball to new york.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I don't know that for sure to really make a statement
, but I think on a big scale Iwas to probably the biggest to
do it.
Now they have other programsthat are definitely doing well.
When you look at what may hoopsis doing conrad mccray's joint
I mean conrad mccray was only inthe summertime but they had.
They had a nice buzz going towith their tournament, but just
middle school basketball at thispeak I still don't believe
(28:39):
there's too many programs thatcompete with what we did.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
And so when did you start high school?
When did you?
You do the?
Speaker 2 (28:45):
high school.
So the high school stuffstarted after the middle school.
I really didn't want to competein the high school space
because I thought ISA had thelock on it.
But once I started getting atJeff I started running programs
at Jeff and my middle schoolstuff started bubbling so much
that the middle school kids fromthat experience wanted to see
me continue.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Graduate and grow with graduate.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
So I kind of like started to create this high
school thing because I said Ihad all the top middle school
kids.
There was no way I couldn'thave all the time because I had
the programs I had therelationships with.
So we started in the highschool space, which was which
was came very competitive atsome time between me and isa.
There was a time that I couldthink back on and I love pete,
that's my guy but there was onepoint where he was having his
(29:28):
playoffs and I was having myplayoffs and there was people
that was leaving both gyms tokind of like bounce back
whatever I, I remember that Ihad zach randolph with the may
bet, with the, with the bentleyin the front of jeff waiting.
We waited like an hour or so fora game because out of respect
for Pete, he had something going.
We waited an hour or so in thegym for his game to finish and
(29:49):
just a whole big crowd leftthere came to Jeff.
So I like when we were doingthe high school stuff, it was
big.
I mean we had Kimba, irv, truck, all of them on one team at one
point.
That created a nice buzz forthe high school thing.
So you had like threeAll-Americans, four
All-Americans on one team and sopeople would come out and see
that the place would be packed,had some good energy man, and
(30:19):
you know, the one thing that'scool that I say is that what's
my guy, russ Smith, if youremember him playing in high
school, russ Smith used to getbuckets at McGloy and somebody
asked him not long ago duringCOVID I think it was tiny he
said, yeah, of all the thingsthat you had, you done played at
San Antonio, you done played atLouisville what is the best
experience that you've had inbasketball?
They asked Russ Smith that Nowthis Russ Smith done played with
the pros.
He done played with Rick Pitino.
He done played all over.
(30:40):
He said yo, the best experienceI ever had in basketball.
And he paused on it and he saidyo, I remember playing in fun
sport and they put gave me aposter after I had 63 points and
I had that poster on my wallfor for the longest type joy so
when I heard that during covid,which was not long ago, and I
and that type of reflection, itkind of like, took me back to
(31:00):
like damn, we were really doingsome impactful stuff right,
giving people posters ofthemselves to hang in their wall
.
And some grown folks to the daythat tell me they still got
their poster in their room.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Nice, nice, nice.
I remember I used to haveposters of Patrick Ewing.
You remember I used to have thelife size of the posters I had
the life size of Patrick Ewing.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
And I just took that concept and just because I had a
plug and I just said, yo, letme do that.
Oh, you did a similar, yeahSame hype type thing.
So I used to get a highlight.
I used to get a picture of youdoing something great in the
game and I used to come back thenext week with a big old poster
that you can hang in your room.
And people still have that.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Nice, nice.
Do you still do it on FunSport?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, I'm still doing it, Not as at the scale that I
was doing it years maybe.
I started coaching in like 2010or so.
I went to I was teaching at aschool in Liberation, liberation
and Coney Island.
They didn't really have abasketball program, so I decided
to create one for them and Icreated a tournament and
everything.
(31:54):
Eventually I got us in the PSALand at the third year we
competed and we won achampionship.
I led them to the citychampionship at PSAL, so we won
in 2014 and 2015.
I led them to that championship.
I led them to the citychampionship at PSL.
So we won in 2014 and 2015.
I led them to that championshipand after I won the
championship, I left.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
I left and somebody else took over after that, but I
closed out on a good note.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Nice, nice, nice, nice.
That's good to hear.
I've seen you on Facebookpictures with certain NBA
players.
Name some people that you'reproud to say that you met
through your travels whoparticipated in your program.
Name some people that you'reproud to say that you met
through your travels whoparticipated.
There's been so many.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
So, just like I remember when I ran fireball, I
remember Rafer Austin being thefirst NBA guy that played in our
thing to validate what we weredoing at Baruch College and I
know my man, Rob from Sean Bell,would be happy that I
acknowledge that and then fromthat it would just be so many
NBA players Once that gateopened and that fireball thing
(32:47):
that I used to do from May toJune right before the summer
season start, all the NBA guysat the end of their season a lot
of them would come down andplay, so most of the Knicks.
So Nate Robinson was like astaple at fireball.
He would come all the time.
I think he has the record forthe most points in one game
against Gun Hill and my man, BobMahoney.
My bad, I ain't going to plugyou like that, Bob.
(33:08):
So you got Nate.
You had Wilson Chandler theyused to be there.
Ron Artest used to be there.
Kimball Walker was the one whostarted with me in high school,
went to UConn, did well, becamea pro and came back as a pro.
Smush Parker is another onethat's been a part of that.
So it's been a lot of names.
Kyle anderson graduated in theprogram and I watched him as a
(33:29):
seventh grader.
Quincy duby uh, so there's alot of guys that I could just
think of.
I could run off that that'splayed in our program.
I'd like to see the ones thatplayed when they were in middle
school and high school and thenon the pro level and right, and
that's guys like kimball walkerthat I could think of right, I
saw a picture you you posted atthe all-star game oh yeah, yeah,
(33:49):
we were just at the all-stargame just past this.
Mean this, yeah, the one thatyeah, I was there so I was able
to really support my godson whoplayed at tuskegee, kasami
draper, who won the mvp in thattuskegee game uh, they played
against uh, I think it wasmorehouse.
So I was there to reallysupport him.
But you know, you're enjoyingyourself while you're out there
meeting and kind of like hangingout.
So I got an opportunity withhim to go to the All-Star game,
(34:12):
bump into some people that youknow at the same time and had
that experience.
So it was fun.
Down in the Bay Area I got tohang out with my big, with my
homie, the guy who I told youthat I was going to go to
college, with Kahe, the guy whoI told you that I was going to
go to college, with KareemDraper in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
You pulled some strings to get him in there.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Well, he may have pulled some strings to get me in
there either way.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
No is that the one that you said the only way you
would go to that school inColorado, if you bring your
friends.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
So I definitely wasn't going togo if he wasn't going to.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
I'm glad to hear your story, man.
And so currently, what are youdoing?
Now?
I know you're not really doingthe front sport or fireball, but
I heard you say a little bitlike you do, a little bit of
coaching.
Where are you right now withcoaching?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
So during the day I teach at a charter school in the
Bronx, at Highbridge in theBronx, at New Austin Next
Generation Charter.
I teach financial literacy andPE to high school students From
there.
I leave there and I go toCanarsie High School.
For the past four years I'vebeen coaching at Canarsie High
School and there's been growthin the program, I think since
I've been there.
My JV team that I'm a headcoach of we've been to the Final
(35:15):
Four in the city.
I came up a little bit short inone game against the Jada Swan
and we went to the playoffs justrecently this year and lost a
heartbreaker at the buzzer.
Uh, our varsity team that I'mthe assistant coach at we've
been growing.
The program has been growing.
This year we went to the citythe final four.
We lost on in the final minutesto a nice, to a very good bronx
(35:36):
eagle team.
So there's been some steadygrowth in the program and since
I've been in part of it andhopefully, like you know, we
continue to turn the corner.
So, yeah, coaching has been oneof those things that allowed me
to kind of like pass it on andpay it forward and then running
my programs at Tillery Parkduring the summertime.
Are you still over there?
I'm still in Tillery Park.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
I've been in.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Tillery Park.
Now, for I want to say 10, 12,10 or 12 years I've been in
Tillery Park.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Yeah, because I remember me bringing the kids
there.
I was at Tillery and we wasgetting beat up in both
tournaments.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
What other tournaments you have where you
was getting beat up in so.
I hold the keys there to TilleryPark right now.
So I look forward to doing thatevery summer, making it fun,
giving the kids a safe and apositive place to play, a nice
atmosphere to play in.
So, man, my thing is I just tryto pay it forward because
somebody, like, as we talkedabout these people say they've
(36:29):
done it for me.
They've allowed me to sit inthis seat and to talk about
myself and to talk about thethings that I've done has been
because of coaches.
Some of the coaches who the gailreynolds, the jim couches-
right kind of like believed andset the example for me man right
, right, right, right, right.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
It's a little fun.
Now I'm not gonna, you're notgonna say no names here, but
it's like the reason why Iwanted to, you know, do an
interview with you is becauseI'm like I was part of your
journey, right, and what it isis that it's not just basketball
, the basketball players, whatyou've done outside of the game.
I like what you did.
I'm like, wow, you transitionand you know people.
(37:04):
There's a lot of times peopletalk about basketball and debate
on who was good and all that.
No, we don't need to talk aboutwho was good.
What are you doing after thegame?
yeah yeah, well, how are youcontributing after the game?
But then one, there was aperson that I felt was.
I thought it was blasphemy thathe was heckling.
He was heckling you anytime youwrite something, I'm like yo.
I mean that's my guy too.
(37:24):
But man, we're gonna benameless.
We're gonna say nameless he'smy guy too, he's your guy too,
but I'm like he's.
And then he would say somethinglike gil reynolds, but I'm like
yo, I was there, he wasn'tthere.
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
So I had some kids yo mental illness at an old-time
high man you know what I'msaying like if you go to erasmus
right now, ricky river's nameis on a banner hanging with his
number retired.
So there's something that I didthat was impactful to make them
kind of like, pull me.
There's some other names andnumbers that they've joined, but
there's something that I didthat says, hey, you did
(37:56):
something that needs to beacknowledged.
That other person that'snameless.
You can't find none of thisstuff and nowhere in the history
of it.
And I'm not saying that thatguy who played with me wasn't
wasn't a decent player, right,but to attack what I did, it
just sounds kind of like to evencompare it it's just even like
(38:16):
no comparison.
It's very lopsided there's nocomparison to it.
I've been in a lot of roomsplayed with a lot of people
competed and I'm done.
I'm not even going backwards,I'm done.
So that comparison like come on, bro, like you, you don't.
When I see it, it's like, okay,why are you trying to nudge me?
You know why are you trying tonudge me?
Speaker 1 (38:36):
because you know that I was a good player, but you
know what what's funny is is youreplying to it.
That's what makes me laugh.
I'm like yo.
Why is he even?
Speaker 2 (38:45):
I'm like no, because it'd be too many people.
I guess it gets too many earsand people keep nudging me to
have a comment.
So when I see it, I was like,okay, I'm going to have fun.
First, it was for fun.
Right right, it was definitelya joke, it was definitely for
fun.
Oh, I think he's really serious.
Uh-huh, uh-huh, he's serious,he really got.
He really believes in what he'styping right now.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
So, yeah, I remember time I kept going, I was reading
the comments.
I was like yo going back andforth.
I just needed to speak that.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I was like nah, bro, like come on, man, ain't nobody
that didn't even see it.
You know what I mean.
Like that wasn't there duringthat time.
Maybe they came up later.
When I look at some of thepeople that was in that chat,
right right, but the people thatwas there, they know the rails.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
They know what they know.
They know what it was.
Yeah, man, that's good youain't got that many receipts.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
You got only receipts , yeah, and you got Photoshop,
photoshop, photoshop, all ofthose things that you could do.
But I know what's real RickyRivers averaged 30 points a game
in that senior year and he hasthe most points in one season
than many other people have had.
(39:57):
Not very few people have had atErasmus and that person can't
say that.
Nice, I mean, yeah, I mean hey,I always tell cats I concur you
gotta be nice when you'resupposed to be nice, cause some
people wait till like 40 andover, or they wait till 50 and
over to try to.
That's not when you're supposedto be nice.
Nobody's recruiting you, thenNobody's recruiting you, then
(40:19):
that's not when you're supposedto be nice.
When you're supposed to be niceat high school.
That's when you're supposed tobe nice.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Right, right right.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
If you wasn't that.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Then don't talk to me at 40, 50.
Yeah, you're trying out for thesenior center.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
I want to hear what you're doing at BRC.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
I want to hear that Right right right, right, right,
right right.
We both got love for him.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
but he's going to say he's real, be nice when you're
supposed to be nice, that's agood one.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Be nice when you're supposed to be nice.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
When you're supposed to be nice, yo Don't wait till
40 and over.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Yeah, man, when you're supposed to be nice, I
mean, or you live vicariouslythrough, and that's okay.
Father, figure what's going onwith your family so man, I like
to talk about my daughters.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
I think I have the best family structure that I can
have, right.
So, just knowing that, Istarted my journey young.
So when I was in FIT I had akid.
Actually, in Colorado I had myfirst daughter Her name is Shani
Rivers in 1991, born in January.
My wife and I got married whenI was 18, 19 years old and that
August of 91, we got married andthen in 1993, we have another
(41:27):
daughter while I'm in Iona atthat time at Andrea Rivers in
1993.
So my journey as being a parentcame alongside my journey of
playing basketball.
It was married together.
So there's been some rollercoasters with basketball but
there's been a steady incline, Iwould say, with me being a
parent and me being a father andbeing a husband at home, type
joint.
So my daughter's now the fruitof that is my daughter's now my
(41:50):
oldest one.
She's an executive.
She's a VP at Goldman Sachs.
She graduated with a chemicalbiological engineer degree,
which is not something that'seasy.
She went to NYU and got adegree and she's working as a VP
in Goldman Sachs.
My youngest, who came rightbehind her, is a lawyer.
Now she does antitrust law.
She graduated from Howard wentto American and she's now a
(42:15):
lawyer, so they both have verycompetitive in careers that I
like to say that as a dad, I'mresponsible for, and more than
I've been there since zero.
I wasn't an absentee father, Iwasn't a child support father.
I was, every night, every day,type of father, right, so that
so, seeing my daughters climb toget to that point, knowing the
(42:35):
sacrifices that I had to make interms of playing basketball,
knowing the sacrifices that Ihad to make in terms of playing
basketball Do I do it or do Inot?
I chose to, kind of like, staysolid and be a father rather
than try to go overseas and dosomething, because that's what
they ask you why you didn't gooverseas.
I could have played Division I,but that wasn't the choice that
I was going to make.
Just like why couldn't I havegone to another university that
recruited me?
When I was in Iona I gotinterest from Kentucky,
(42:56):
washington State, duquesne therewas a number of them that but
they were all outside of NewYork so I didn't even.
I took no interest from thosethings.
And Kentucky came in becausepeople would think that I'm
joking about this we played atOdessa at junior and I was like
first team all tournament and Ihad very good games against
South Plains and Odessa withRick Pitino and his crew
(43:18):
watching, because they wererecruiting Rodney Dent, so I had
a lot of interest from him tooas well.
They would constantly ask aboutme, but I chose to be a parent
and all those things.
Throughout the whole thing Ichose, I said no, I'm going to
stay south.
What people may not know is thatIona, when things were getting
so frustrated and I was goingthrough this challenge of being
a parent or as a player, we weregoing to Notre Dame the next
(43:39):
day.
We was going to go out on thefloor to Notre Dame and I called
the athletic director and saidI'm going to quit, I'm going to
stay home.
I remember my daughter was sickat the time.
It just felt like I should behome and I was frustrated about
how the coaches was using me inmy playing time as a senior.
So I chose to say, hey, youknow what, I'm going to stay
home.
(43:59):
And I really wanted to play theNotre Dame game because I had
two friends on the other sidethat we had circled the game to
play.
But I choose not to show upbecause I didn't like how the
coaches was handling me in thatsituation and I know I couldn't
change their mind, even thoughthe players had a meeting with
them to talk about me.
So parenting I've alwaysprioritized that I like my kids
(44:19):
to know because they don'talways understand some of the
decisions I make to be there forthem rather than chase this
basketball thing.
That's kind of like always beenbehind me or always been with
me.
But I always chose to kind oflike be a parent and I've always
told them the best holiday ofthe whole year is Father's Day.
So they know that.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
Right, right, right, right, and that's the level of
maturity that I give you.
Is that even to hear thesacrifices you made?
But one thing is like.
It's interesting is that youwas married at a young age.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Married at a young age, bro, I've been married.
That's that throwback.
I'm still there too.
I'm still in it.
I've been married going on 34years, now 33 and a half.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Nice, nice.
Three and a half nice, nice,that's rare.
That's rare, that's rare.
I'm a young father, I'm not ayoung father, a young husband at
that.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
So so just think, a young husband that's playing
division one basketball, youknow I mean.
So you back, I'm not an uglyguy you know what I'm saying I'm
playing division one basketball, so it's opportunities is there
and I'm and I'm doing my bestto deflect.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Right, right, right, all those opportunities, that's
there.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Especially in college , man.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
They're doing it so yeah, Good defense.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
But because of how I was set up it was somewhat
easier, because after games I'mgoing straight home.
I'm not even living on campus.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Right right.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
I don't even live on campus, so I'm a ghost really.
For the most part After gamesI'm gone.
You could only probably catchme at games or practices, right,
and so it wasn't that manyopportunities for me to kind of
like be exposed to too manydistractions unless you're on
the road.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Right, right, right, man, I commend you on who you
are and what you became and whatyou are continuing to thrive
for.
Man, what's your end game?
Speaker 2 (46:00):
So I don you in the drive forward, man, what's your
end game?
So I don't know.
Like I'm, I'm trying to thinkabout that now.
Like life, like basketball, hasbeen with me for like so many
years.
Now, right, I'm about to turn53 years old and I'm starting to
look at what the last chapterlooks like, so I I may kind of
go back into this executive role.
What I didn't share is, aftercollege I started to work at
morgan stanley and so I rose upat Morgan Stanley.
It was at Dean Witter Reynoldsand then became JP, then became
(46:22):
Morgan Dean Witter Reynolds.
Morgan came Morgan Stanleyafter a while and I was a
manager in that space and I wasthere the day of 9-11.
I worked in the Trace Center.
I worked in Two World TraceCenter.
That morning I was working inmy office, which is an interior
office, so I was in the buildingthe day that the plane hit the
tower.
I was there in the tower.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
I was two blocks away , bro.
I was two blocks away and myfather owns a photo shop.
He's the only black store inthat neighborhood in the lower
Manhattan, and I always walkedwith a disposable camera.
I took pictures coming out thetrain I see people looking up at
the first hit, the first one,the first building that got hit.
Yeah, I was.
(47:00):
It was facing me as soon as Igot out of the train.
I took pictures and that'sthat's crazy to hear that you
was connected.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
That too as well and this one as you say that,
because when I end up making myway out, everybody was going in
the stores to buy disposablecameras I remember that
everybody was trying to finddisposable cameras.
There was a newsstand, becausethey had these little newsstands
that used to be on ChurchAvenue over there, and they were
buying these disposable camerasto take pictures.
Right, right, so I rememberthat part, like it was yesterday
(47:26):
.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
Right right, right right.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
But coming out of that experience kind of made me
want to do more in my communityand less corporate work.
So my daughters-in-law alwaysasked me me, dad, do you want to
go back corporate?
I was like nah I don't uh, Iwant to kind of like be more
attached to my community and notbe restricted, but there is
some thoughts right now.
When you ask about the lastchapter, do I close it out back
(47:47):
in this corporate space becauseI got?
Speaker 1 (47:49):
I got some interest from a couple of spaces that I
that I might consider all right,nice, nice, nice man, it's good
to hear that you still you'renot trying to get in that
wheelchair, you know.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
I would keep moving, baby.
I like the vacation to keepmoving.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Right, right, right, right, right.
It's a pleasure, man, to haveyou on here, man, and to talk
your talk, Because, I'm happy tosay, I was a part of it, of
your journey, and then myjourney went this way, yours
went that way.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
You know what I'm way .
Yours went that way.
You know I'm saying but it's,you know, when I see you it's
always good man to see youalways smile.
You got the same smile fromhigh school.
Yeah, man, I'm always gonna tryto be happy man.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
Yeah, you gotta be happy man, I'm gonna try to be
humble too.
You gotta be humble and behappy, man, be happy.
And also, right now, I wouldlike to gift you a game.
This is called the your opiniondoesn't matter game, right,
it's named after the podcastyour opinion doesn't matter
Podcast, and it's the ultimatedebating game for family and
friends.
You can get that at wwwyodmcomand I'm gifting this to you, bro
(48:47):
.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Thank you, reverend, and I'm going to open this with
my family and we're going to tryto see how we can kind of like
debate, because there's someintelligence within our unit.
I want to see if I can come outa winner with these intelligent
young ladies that I have Go.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
I want to see if I can come out a winner with these
intelligent young ladies that Ihave Go over some of the cards.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Go over some of the cards for us.
Okay, Some of them is kind ofrisque.
Okay, all right, you don't wantto I'm going to filter.
Okay, I'm going to filter someof them, right, because I got a
15-year-old son.
I want him to kind of like ittoo much.
Yes, yes, I'm just trying toget him in the right lane, right
.
So.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
I'm trying to get him .
Speaker 2 (49:18):
You know teenagers these days a little bit
challenging.
He's a 15 year old and he'sit's the age gap between him and
my daughter.
This is pretty big.
You know what I mean.
So trying to just make surethat he he knows that he raised
on love.
Now that I've been goingthrough it with my daughters, at
what works and what don't work,yeah, and I'm trying to,
especially being in anenvironment with kids every day,
(49:40):
I know what works and whatdon't work.
Right, and sometimes they wantyou to do more of what don't
work.
Yeah, and I'm like, nah, bro,we not doing that, we not
walking across the grass, wegoing to stay on the path.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Right right, right right.
I hear you call him a a youngterrorist.
He was, he was.
He was bad all the way up tolike now he's a senior, he's,
he's okay, but before, in thebeginning, all right.
So, um, I think that, um, thethe game itself of of sports is
small man, but this is about theimpact you're doing after the
(50:14):
game.
Man, it's a pleasure that youcame on the show to tell people
you know you're not just a ionaplayer.
Yeah, you're a husband, um, agreat father, and you've been
places.
Man.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
People need to put some respect on my guy's name,
absolutely, man not only have Idone stuff in new york, I've
done events in dallas, I've doneevents in bermuda, I've done
events in atlanta, I've doneevents in DC, so I've spread
this brand of mine in differentmarkets and kind of like.
When I look back over 27 yearsit's like, damn, I've done a lot
(50:46):
, I've accomplished a lot, I'vemet a lot of people.
I've tried to always handle itin a humble, with some humility,
and also try to handle it withsome responsibility, knowing
that I got people that comebehind me, that I want to try to
mentor and do the same becauseI've grown a lot just by doing
tournaments.
I've learned a lot aboutmarketing.
I've learned a lot aboutbusiness.
I've learned a lot about otherareas that they didn't teach me
(51:08):
in school just by running thesetournaments.
So it's a responsibility thatgo with it when you bring your
communities together.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
So I value it and I say thank you to everybody who
supported me over 27 years manright, right, right, man, and um
, this is the your opiniondoesn't matter podcast, and we
are outie thank you, brother,thank you, bro, appreciate it.
Welcome.
Welcome to the your OpinionDoesn't Matter podcast.
I am the host, Mr Lamont, andI'm here with a good friend of
mine.
Yes, indeed, Mr Ricky Rivers.
Thumbs up.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Thank you, man, Thank you for having me Champ.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
How are you doing, man?
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm good man.
It's a good Sunday, goodweather outside, Birthday is
just a week away, so I'm gettingexcited for all of those things
, man.
And today is like the PSALCatholic event that I'm looking
forward to go see, and some guyskids I know that I've watched
and developed and seen, so I'mlooking forward to that.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Right, right, right.
You're hoping the PSAL team canwin.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yo, I don't want to be on record for that, but I'm
cheering for them kind ofbecause there's some kids in the
Catholic school that I'm goodwith too, but there's more kids
on that public school rosterthat I'm comfortable with.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Right, right, right, right.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I just want to see the young men go out and play at
their best ability today, Rightright, right, Like a dollar and
a dream.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
You know what I mean.
Just hope for whoever win.
Win.
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
No, doubt, no doubt, man.
But I am going to say I got aJeff, I want to see those cats
do well.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Right, right, right, right.
I've seen a couple, actuallythe coach I think it's the head
coach.
He used to play for boys andgirls.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yep.
He played for boys and girlsand them.
Him and Selden both played atWest Virginia.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, Selden.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Oh, he played at West Virginia with Selden.
He played at West Virginia, yep, so they may have been a few
years apart, but they both theycome back and develop that
program the way they've done.
I've watched them kind of likedo it from the ground up and
been there in front seat, so Igot a different connection to
that program.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Nice, nice, nice nice .
Let's get into our history, man.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Oh, yeah, yeah, let's do that, let's get into our
history.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
You know how long were we when we met.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
So you know what I don't know exactly exactly the
year, but I know it's been along time it's like from the
kind of like the beginningstages of me running this
program.
I've started fun sport back in1999 officially, but I think I
started doing the programs backin 98 and I've seen a lot of
faces, so a date but I know it'sbeen a while, I know it was way
before the grades, I know thatright, right, right, right now
I'm saying when we met?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yes, we met in high school, oh, yes, in E-Hall.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I think he was talking about playing the
program yes in high school,Correct, yeah we're going to get
into when your teams in theprogram used to beat up on my
teams, but we talk about when wemet.
Yeah, I, we was juniors.
Well, yeah, you graduated.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I graduated in 1990.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah, we both graduated in 1990.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I was in the class of 1990 at Erasmus, which is the
toughest class in the city right, right, right.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Who else was there?
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So you know, the better team that we had was when
we we were the year before that, which was 89.
We had guys, we were.
We made the playoffs that year.
Uh, the year that I came out,so I had brent donation, that
was on a team with me.
Uh, desmond ira gibbs clive,all those guys, those, those was
(02:51):
my god, what about fish?
fish was the year before thatman fish, fish didn't play as
much you know fish.
Jokingly, he said I always jokewhen he's a run around for sgo.
Remember fish was for presidentof student government right
right right, fish was muchslimmer.
Man Fish was a goldfish at thattime.
Now you're a big boy, nowyou're a big whale.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And what Paul Cruz.
He was this window shopper,paul.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Cruz was my guy man.
He'd come up there with thedogs and everything man.
He had about four pit bulls.
They was all the same height.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Right right, right right, right, dope, dope.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
But those is my guys, man Paul Cruz, the granddaddy
Shout him out.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yes, facts, facts Shout out to the Cruz brothers,
my guys man.
They've been ducking to comealong the show man They've been
ducking.
Oh man, that guy it wasprobably Norris man and Norris
be the Marky, Marky, Marky.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Marky's the head honcho for them.
Yeah, Marky, my fault.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
So let's talk about how we met right.
We met at a basketball programcalled Vanguard.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yes, okay, that is true, yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
And our coach was Gil Reynolds man.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah, gil, just a story of how I met Gil.
Gil was very, very, I want tosay, very impactful to my life
man, mr Bunyan, who was ourcoach at Erasmus during a time
where I wasn't playing that muchbecause I was doing things I
probably shouldn't have.
He said, well, you need to godown to this program and try out
.
He sent me down to A PhilipRandolph to try out for Vanguard
(04:17):
and I went down there and Gilwas just like a coach that I
hadn't seen before.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Oh, my God.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
How he put the thing together, his intensity,
everything that he did fromthings that he was talking about
during it.
And there was other players outthere and I think that was
probably one of my first, Iwould say, serious tryouts going
to go play for another teamRight, I only played for my
school team and some local teamsto that point.
But I just always liked how heheld it down.
He was a general, he was asergeant and he kind of like
(04:45):
seen something in me that Iain't seen in myself at that
tryout for the first time, man.
So I had a connection with Giland Gil as we talk, you know
that Gil was very much a part ofwho I became today.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Right, right, right Gil, he's a special guy, man.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Special guy.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Special guy man.
I mean, I remember thepractices that we used to have,
man, he would make you not likeyour friends kid.
Because, like forget about it,you're not supposed to be
getting hit with a screen.
He's like put them elbows out.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Put those elbows out, go with the elbows high.
Yeah, elbows high, elbows high.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yo, he was no joke man.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
There was no joke.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
I remember a time Let me see if you remember.
I know you got plenty ofstories.
I remember a time we wasplaying in Gaucho's Rumble
Classic.
We was down.
This was our junior year, bothwas our junior year and we was
down at half by like 12 or 15.
So we go into the locker room.
So the locker room was shapedlike a U.
(05:44):
So we all go into the lockerroom.
So the locker room is shapedlike a U.
So we all go into the U right,and it's probably like 10 of us
or something like that.
And assistant coach came infirst.
What was his name?
Tony Noel.
Tony Noel, how he doing.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Tony's doing good man .
He works down in New Jerseyright now, so I think he's
living in New Jersey right now.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Okay, cool, cool.
When you speak to him, tell himI said he probably remember me.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I wasn't like that on that squad.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
So we sitting in the halftime down by 12, and Tony
comes in.
He's just talking to us likeyeah, y'all, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah.
Five minutes later, gil come in, he closed the door behind him
and he said what the fuck y'alldoing, what y'all doing, what
y'all doing.
And then he said in my he'sjust he's blocking the door.
(06:31):
He says I'll turn this lightoff and I'll fuck all of y'all
up.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
You remember?
I probably don't remember that,but I'm not surprised though,
because there's so many of thosestories, he had said.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
He says I'll surprised though, because
there's so many of those storiesyou know.
He had said he says I'll fuckyou up and you get your father
I'll fuck him up too.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I said whoa shucks man.
And are you okay?
I ain't gonna lie, I don'tthink I know my father couldn't
beat him.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
For sure I think he's kicking a majority of us.
At that time, fathers asked meto have to jump him you know
what I mean?
Yeah, but he was.
He was a good.
He was a good guy.
What kind of stories that youremember?
I heard a story with you.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Uh, so it's so many, so gil, kind of like, took me
under his wing right.
So the one story that alwayslights up with me is because you
said we playing in the goldenhoops, we playing at the gauchos
gym, uh, we're playing against.
I forgot the the aim high,we're playing against aim high.
It was a close, close game.
James Brickhouse, I remember,was on the other side, close
(07:26):
game, tight game down thestretch right and Chris Sky is
maybe I shouldn't have said hisname, but he, I guess he must
have missed a rebound orsomething like that.
Something happened that Chrisdid and that wasn't like.
Chris was a big strong guy.
He didn't do something right Onour team, the likes of the kids,
yes, so he comes sit down andwe sit down on the bench right
(07:49):
there at Gaucho's Gym on thecorner.
Chris is in the middle.
I know I'm right next to Chrisand I forget who's next to him.
Gil turns his back.
He has his back to us as we'resitting down on a timeout and
then turns around and gets onhis knee and takes his two
fingers and slaps chris rightacross the face.
(08:09):
Oh shit, slaps chris with histwo fingers right across the
face, right next to me, and Iremember moving over like you
didn't want that yo.
He said and flinched.
He said flinch.
He did it with his right hand.
He said flinch, flinch, if youwant to.
The left is coming right acrossyour jaw, the left is coming
right across your jaw.
And chris was a strong, youknow, muscular guy and we like
(08:31):
holy snaps, like this guy justhit chris across the face, type
joint.
They say flinch and he saidyou're playing soft and you
gotta toughen up.
You gotta toughen up, don't goout there playing soft.
And then I understood themessage.
But the delivery at the firstwas like whoa.
And then we went in and wonthat game.
We went in there and won thatgame, which is tough, but that's
(08:51):
my Gil moment, along with himhitting Kenneth Percival with an
elbow and busting his wholemouth up.
He had to go get stitches onWoodhaven Boulevard.
So there's a lot of them.
But I also have good momentswhere Gil used to work out.
When I used to play at Erasmusand I averaged like 30 points in
my senior year, gil was theresponsible for that.
I used to go to every practice.
(09:13):
After every practice I used toleave Erasmus and go over to
Jackie Robinson program inBed-Stuy and shoot with him,
drill with him and train withhim and.
I remember that one game, thatkind of a good part of the game,
was that he, we had that bigmatchup against Prospect Heights
and it was Donald Tayloragainst Ricky Rivers.
In that matchup and Donald wasaveraging a lot of points and so
was I, and we put on the show.
(09:35):
That time he kind of likeprepared me for how to work
against that game and Donald had47 but I had 42 in a boxing one
.
So those guys, those guysProspect Heights, remember, they
guys play box and one of memost of the time and I had 40.
And I remember coming back tohim after that game, I had to
come back to the gym even afterthat game and go through drills
(09:55):
and go through shooting.
Even after that I was like yo,I can't get the day off.
I just was, nah, we were stillwork and he was, but I could see
that he was real proud of how Iperformed that day Girl.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
He's special man and he's like you know, he's caring,
he cares, he cares, he lovehard and he's going to hit you.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
If you got to know him that well?
Yes, he was definitely a caringguy.
Yeah, if he was one of his guys, he's going to treat you right,
treat you right.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yeah, I was one of the pets.
Yeah, yo, I remember thatbasketball camp we went to.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Which one?
Because you took me to one ofCanisius up in Buffalo.
That was where I slept.
I don't remember which one didyou go to?
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I think it was Anthony Mason's.
I think it was in Virginia, Idon't remember.
Okay, you're probably going toremember this.
This is probably the only gymyou ever played basketball with
carpet on the floor.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah well, how many gyms floor.
Yeah well, how many gyms.
You did that a lot, so I, weplayed it half.
There's a couple of boys andgirls club downtown brooklyn
that I came back to used to havecarpet on the floor oh there's
a salvation army in brownsvillethat used to have carpet on the
floor.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I never understood carpet on the floor for
basketball but I remember acouple of those gyms yeah, I
remember that's the camp that wewent to.
I'm for sure I remember you wasthere.
That's the only time I everplayed with carpet, the first
and last time.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
First and last time yeah, carpeting gym is different
, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I mean there ain't no , ain't no slot diving on the
floor, oh, no way carpet burnsor the carpet I didn't
understand it though I mean seethe science in it really like I
mean, maybe get your dribblingbetter, maybe I don't know I.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
I didn't.
I don't understand it, but Iknow I remember g taking me,
which was very helpful to mycareer.
He took me by himself up toBuffalo, cold as heck in the
middle of the summer, and to aCanisius camp and that was my
first exposure to Division Icolleges and Division I coaches,
I would say, and they was atthat point, this was like I was
in high school, it was like yo,you really have potential to
(11:40):
play Division I basketball andthey was interested in me,
canisius.
I didn't get an offer from them, but they did show me by them
giving me that feedback, it toldme that I was on the right path
.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, gave you the push.
Gave you the push.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah, it told me I was on the right path that was
in between my junior and senioryear.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Nice, nice, nice, nice.
So did you ever go toLaurenburg?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I never went to Lauren Burke.
A lot of stories come out ofLauren Burke prep.
Gil used to share those storieswith me.
I used to share stories withfamily and friends because he
coached my cousin, Juice AnthonyJoseph out there too.
So he would tell me stories.
But I never made the journeydown to Lauren Burke.
When I got connected with Gilit was on the back end of his
years and he was pretty muchhere in the city.
(12:23):
So that was him.
He was coaching longberg.
Yeah, gail used to coachlongberg.
He coached a lot of playersdown there, man.
He took a lot of players downto longburn prep.
I don't know if the resourceswas that great, but he was
definitely down there.
He's telling me a whole lot ofstories, along with other
players right, I was down there.
So it was a lot of people thatgot a beginning.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I got and you know, got started down there in
laurenburg right, right, right,right, and you know um me seeing
you, me seeing you evolve intothe great, great basketball
player that you became, and umyou took your, you took your
skills on the road, um where didyou wind up going after high
school?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
so gil's kind of set this up.
This is what gil was veryhelpful to me.
After my high school career in1990 I played.
That was the best class, uh, inthe city.
I believe my recruiting wasn'tthat big.
I mean erasmus coaches that Iwas in the first year of victor
butler uh, they didn't help meas much so but uh, I remember
this like yesterday.
(13:17):
Uh, gill told me about laurenum sorry, lamar, colorado.
It was a junior college out inColorado.
He brought the coach.
They flew the coach all the wayin to watch me play three on
three and do workouts in KellyPark, and so the coach came all
the way.
There was a guy from Gill thatwas already.
I knew nothing about Colorado orLamar, I knew nothing about it
(13:41):
All.
I remember telling this guywho's my guy right now, actually
Coach Hoshava, just one of thebetter coaches that I ever
played for.
Honestly, I want to give himhis flowers.
All I didn't know him, all Itold him.
I said, hey, I never knownothing about Colorado and if
I'm going to go, I need somebodyto go with me, and my friend
was Kaheen Draper at the timethat played that automotive and
(14:01):
I was like we both need to go.
He's my roommate because Idon't know what I'm going into,
but I'll go into it with him.
So I signed the letter ofintent on some old car right
there at Kelly Park, right,didn't even.
You know?
I have no, none of my family,no mom, no father there.
I just trusted Coach GilReynolds to kind of like send me
(14:22):
on this journey and signed theletter of intent and went out to
Colorado and kind of like,that's where my whole game
evolved and took off.
Man, if I had tapes of meplaying in Colorado, I think
it's better than any film that Ihad.
From the other.
I had some amazing games outthere in Colorado in front of
college coaches and showed a lotof potential in in front of
(14:44):
Division One coaches.
And then after that I had ababy and so I came close to home
.
I decided I was going to leaveColorado, which had a lot of
opportunity for me, and I wentto FIT for a year.
So I went to FIT for a year,led them to like number 15 in
the nation, became All-Americanin JUCO, became an All-American
in JUCO and then had an optionand this is where the transition
(15:05):
happened between Gil and MrCouch, who runs the Dykeman
organization.
Once I came out I startedplaying college ball.
I started to play with Mr Couchand Mr Couch, kind of like took
over with my recruiting andeverything and he said, hey,
look, since you want to stayhere in New York because I had a
(15:26):
kid, he said the only optionthat I have for you is either
going to be St John's or Iona.
I was like.
Well, iona had some interest inme out of high school.
I had some familiarity withthem and St John's had just
signed Felipe.
He was like we'll take you.
But you know it's like I wasgoing back up Felipe and as a
junior going into college Ididn't want't do that.
So the head coach used toalways of Iona, who was Jerry
Welch at the time, used toalways come to all my games and
call me just about at least twoor three times a week.
(15:48):
He would call me to check on.
I liked that Jerry Welch wasdoing because he was always
checking on my family, my wife.
He was checking on my kid.
He knew I was a recent fatherand he was always connecting me
with that.
So I went to Iona.
I had to sit out a year beforeI could play because I didn't
graduate from FIT, so I sat outa year.
That sit-out year was verydifficult for me because I had a
(16:10):
second kid during the time thatI sat out.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So I had two daughters at the time.
So, rather than really workingout and training most of my time
because I couldn't practicewith the team I was just
parenting.
I was playing ball every nowand then, but I was parenting.
So when we finally came to bein my turn, and I was the
starter and I was the toprecruit going in, I wasn't fully
prepared for it because I wassuccessful in every level with
(16:35):
Juco.
I wasn't as fully prepared insome of those games as I should
have been.
Timing was off, things was off,so I started the first 18 games
, and then they started to pushme to the bench because I wasn't
producing like I should.
Okay, but to know that, though,is the other part of the caveat.
To tell the story is thatpeople don't understand that I
commuted by train from sunsetpark, brooklyn, all the way to
(16:56):
new rochelle every day, so whenwe had 6 30 7 o'clock am, I was
on the train, I was on a 4 30 ammetro north and then walking a
mile from the metro north downto Iona, down to the.
So a lot of the times I wasjust exhausted, right.
I was exhausted with the commute, doing homework because I did
my homework on the trains andthen getting home to a
(17:18):
two-year-old and a newborn andthen having a wife too.
That you know.
I mean that you got, if youknow how, all of that.
So my, my college experience,just to be documented right now.
I never complained about it,never really talked about it,
but my college experience wasdifferent from everybody else on
my team.
They didn't have to.
You know, after a game we playa 730 game on TV and we packing
(17:41):
it up at 10 o'clock and I got toget to a Metro North.
They going to cross the streetto the dorms.
I'm getting on the Metro Northand getting on the Ford train to
get and get arriving home like1am, only to get it turned right
back around to get the class by8.30 and 9am.
So sometimes I was able to stayup there because it was too much
a struggle, but not his wifelike yo.
Come home I got two kids, ohwow.
(18:03):
So that's something thateverybody don't know about my
experience, because you knowwhat Now people will Google damn
, you only averaged like eightpoints, bro.
You got to understand mystruggle, how I was getting to
those eight points.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Right, right, right, right, you had a bigger
responsibility.
Yeah, bigger responsibility,man.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
How to just get there and get it done.
But hey, but hey, I wouldn'ttake nothing back man it built
character.
It built some things of me thatI needed as an adult.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Right, right, right.
That's good to hear, man, goodto hear.
I didn't know that story.
You know what I mean.
I know people out there wouldlove to hear that yeah because
it might motivate somebody elsewho's listening.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
A young kid might need that.
I try to share it with somekids who I coach now, and but
that's the reason why I coachnow is I think there's layers to
my story that I could kind oflike push on to young people.
That's perseverance and allthat other stuff.
It's like ain't no excuses inthis game and if you really want
it, you got to go.
You don't make no excuses ifyou really want it.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
That's a fact.
That's a fact.
So then, during them times,right on the come up, what
tournaments was you in beforehigh school?
Speaker 2 (19:05):
I didn't really play in many local street tournaments
as much.
In Brooklyn I played in highenergy as a young kid.
I remember playing there inWingate.
I played in some little smallstuff but most of the stuff that
I always played in I wasworking out or playing in some
real structured stuff.
I started to play with Gil.
Gil would take me to someplaces.
He had me playing in some localstuff.
I remember high energy a lotbecause that was one of the
tournaments that Gil alwaysplayed in.
(19:26):
Tony Noel would play in the sixfoot and under in the same park.
So we always got stuff playingin there, played at St Peter
Clavis.
So there's some experiences.
Oh so you played at Clavis.
Yeah, I played at St PeterClavis some time with.
Gil, played a lot in Queens.
When you talk about the KennyAnderson's, Kenny Smith's, jason
(19:48):
Williams, we used to work hard,work out heavy at Lost
Battalion Hall.
Those workouts at LostBattalion Hall it would be Gil
and his developmental guys thatincluded me.
There's like blue collar guys.
And then you have Vincent Smith, which is Kenny Smith's brother
, on the other side of the courttraining with all the stars.
He had Kenny Anderson overthere, he had Jason Gilliam over
(20:10):
there, he had the SteveFrazier's, the Abdul Fox yeah,
all of these guys that were D1players.
They all became major D1players too.
You know, Kenny Anderson is easystory.
So you would be on this sideand then later after the
workouts they would just mergethem, we would just hoop and
play.
So this was all the.
I got an opportunity to be inthat position through Gil to
(20:31):
play against those guys andbuild relationships to like,
like my guy, rich Ashmead, everytime I go to Phoenix he still
pop out and we connect typejoint and it's all that we met
through those workouts and thosetraining sessions and
everything, and so I still gotsome good relationships with
those guys to today and I thankGil for those experiences
because it helped me level up towhere I needed to be at.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
And you know one thing about Gil we never
practiced full court, nah,Everything was right, you're
right.
Never practiced full court.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Everything was half court.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Everything.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Never.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Only time we saw a full court is game time.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yep man, like because I got a lot of those workouts.
If I didn't play for GilReynolds I would not be a
Division I player.
I would have never playedDivision.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
I basketball.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I would have been lost in this process and I know
how easy it is and it's easiernow for a young kid to get lost
in the process.
But now you got social media,you can kind of like push
yourself a little bit more.
But at that time there was nosocial media if tom kashowski or
somebody didn't evaluate youand write about you.
It was tough and I remembergoing to a workout at 275 that
(21:36):
had a lot of players in it andtom kashowski was there giving
everybody a great and a rating,and gil put me in position to be
in that workout and I did mything at that point, you know.
I mean Tom Kachowski rated me afour minus, I remember, and
that four minus to me was like,oh, I'm on, I'm on, I'm on route
, because I seen some otherplayers who got that four minus
(21:57):
and I was like, oh, he's gettingrecruited by division one, so
if he's a four minus, then I'm.
I just need to be getting infront of the right people, that
with the right opportunity toget me there right, right, right
right.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
So we lost contact for a little bit and then I
resurfaced with my non-profitand in 2007 and so by then I was
just tutoring, so forth and soon.
And then by 2010 I said I had agroup of kids.
I say, yeah, man.
I said, yo, I want to get themin a tournament.
I heard I'm speaking todifferent people said, yo, I
want to get them in a tournament.
I was speaking to differentpeople.
They said, yo, why don't youput them in Rick's tournament?
(22:28):
Rick, rick, rick, who's Rick?
Rick Rivers?
I said Rick Rivers went toeHall.
I mean, that's the only RickRivers there is.
basically they said yeah, that'smy guy.
I said yo, let me get hisnumber, blah, blah, blah, let me
get his information.
And then, all of a sudden, Iwind up bringing my kids to your
tournament.
(22:48):
I forgot the location.
I brought my kids to two,several locations.
Which one you had?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Sunset Park Uh-huh, sunset Park.
I had Boys.
I've been around with thisthing.
At the highest peak it wasprobably at Thomas Jefferson
High School, sunset Park.
I had said park.
Uh, I had things going theretoo, uh brc, brc, was it okay
was a stop.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
So I'm not sure which stop that, you, that you, oh,
so I get you.
You had a lot of you had a lotof stops.
One thing I know one thing Iknow is that my kids was the
guinea pigs, because what it is,that was more or less teaching
kids who didn't really have that.
Who's not making the majorteams.
That's developing kids.
You know, I'm giving themsomething to look forward to.
Let's go to this tournamentover there and get shellacked
over there or go over here andget a little bit of you know,
but I didn't know how strongyour tournament was.
(23:31):
I'm like dang, your tournament.
I remember a time I had broughtthe team there and your team
came, a team that we weresupposed to play was late, and
you said yo team came, a teamthat we supposed to play was was
late, and you say, yo, youcould take the w or you could
wait, okay.
So and I asked the kids, but Iknew already that these kids
already got um smacked aroundlike probably the last, the last
(23:54):
tournament, the last game thatwe was at.
So I said you know what theysaid yo, let's play, all right,
and and and at that time themkids was just coming back from
Vegas tournament.
Soon, as they're next to youknow, they're like 10 minutes
late.
They're running in the park.
(24:14):
I remember once they did thelayup line, their point guard
dribbled the ball off the groundand he'd give himself an alley
and dunked it with two hands.
Boom, I said, oh shoot, y'allgoing to get cooked.
And, mind you, no player on myteam could dunk and their point
guard was dunking.
So imagine what the rest ofthem was doing, and it was an
experience that these kids, ofcourse they, lost.
But to tell me, how did youwind up going that direction of
(24:35):
into tournaments and becoming acoach?
I mean, I know you love thegame, but what made you
transition there?
Speaker 2 (24:40):
So background I started Fun Sport with just
unlimited stuff, right.
So I used to do my collegejoint in the pro league in 2004
I believe it's 2004 I felt likeI needed to get younger.
Uh, we created this junior prosmiddle school thing and I had
access to nice uniforms.
I was going to roll out thesedope uniforms to these kids for
(25:02):
a weekend event and I was ableto, through my guy, kamani Young
, kind of get team next, whichwas the number one eighth grade
team in the country at that time.
I got them locked in.
I got a few other teams lockedin Brooklyn, usa who was big at
the time Gauchos.
So I had a nice opening for amiddle school thing.
Now, middle school basketballin 2004 wasn't popular like that
(25:25):
.
It was not popular.
I was basically going to takeoff and I think I just had this
vision.
It was like, hey, you know what?
Everything around in New YorkCity basketball is either
unlimited or ISA.
Isa was the biggest ticket intown, I said.
But before they get to ISA,these kids got to be doing
something.
And I honed in on middle schoolbasketball a lot of times.
You people like the team.
Next, they had to traveloutside of the city to really
(25:47):
get those type of events.
So I created something calledfun sport, junior pros and I was
going to kind of like have aconcept where we check report
cards and we did everything toprepare middle school kids for
the high school process, and itjumped off kind of well man.
So next, that's what kind ofreally springboarded the joint.
I was already had relationshipswith nike, so I already had, uh
, you know, some eyeballs on myprograms already because of the
(26:11):
things I was doing on the proside of it.
And then the middle schoolthing just jumped right off.
My first thing for that weekendI think it was a thanksgiving
tournament jumped off real easy,real quick and then we started
to piggyback off it.
I just grew the program I satdown with.
If you know, tippy at the timeI brought tippy in.
It was like tippy, these are thethings I like, what you do, I
here's, I need I need to bechecking balances and I want to
(26:32):
just grow this thing because Ithink we could do something
special here with middle schoolkids.
And then I started havingchampionship games.
The first one was at the garden.
I had the championship game atthe garden, nice, and then, once
I had it the second time, thenI have shoe companies get
involved in it.
Uh, it just just.
It just started to becomebigger and bigger and you kept
on adding pieces to it.
(26:52):
So I had like a pre-season.
I had so many teams that wantedto get in it.
I would have a pre-seasontournament to evaluate the teams
, to decide which 36 or 32 teamsI was going to take into the
main tournament to play at theGarden or, as later became the
Barclays.
I had teams come from Canada tokind of like come in and play.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, you was doing it.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
So I had teams that was coming from all over.
So at one point people werewriting about that I held the
biggest middle school tournamenton the East Coast, right, right
.
So that's how the youth stuffstarted and from that, because
everybody couldn't play in that,I started to create other
little things for kids to be apart of if they couldn't be a
(27:33):
part of the bigger event typething.
So next thing, you know, I wasrunning like maybe six, seven,
eight tournaments at one timeand sometimes in a year.
So I did a lot of stuff overthe course of the year because I
was just, I mean in a year.
So I did a lot of stuff overthe course of the year because I
was just, I mean in a year.
Over the course of me justdoing this stuff.
I've done a lot of events, alot of things, and sometimes I
look back on those jointsbecause, like man, I wasn't even
(27:56):
thinking about it at the time.
You in it.
You just go Next thing.
You know there's another onethat you're preparing for and
you don't even reflect, like dad.
You know what that was.
That was dope right.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Social media wasn't buzzing, but I was probably the
only one with a website, thoughright, right right right so you,
you could basically say thatyou was like the first one who
bought middle school, likebasketball to new york.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I don't know that for sure to really make a statement
, but I think on a big scale Iwas to probably the biggest to
do it.
Now they have other programsthat are definitely doing well.
When you look at what may hoopsis doing conrad mccray's joint
I mean conrad mccray was only inthe summertime but they had.
They had a nice buzz going towith their tournament, but just
middle school basketball at thispeak I still don't believe
(28:39):
there's too many programs thatcompete with what we did.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
And so when did you start high school?
When did you?
You do the?
Speaker 2 (28:45):
high school.
So the high school stuffstarted after the middle school.
I really didn't want to competein the high school space
because I thought ISA had thelock on it.
But once I started getting atJeff I started running programs
at Jeff and my middle schoolstuff started bubbling so much
that the middle school kids fromthat experience wanted to see
me continue.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Graduate and grow with graduate.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
So I kind of like started to create this high
school thing because I said Ihad all the top middle school
kids.
There was no way I couldn'thave all the time because I had
the programs I had therelationships with.
So we started in the highschool space, which was which
was came very competitive atsome time between me and isa.
There was a time that I couldthink back on and I love pete,
that's my guy but there was onepoint where he was having his
(29:28):
playoffs and I was having myplayoffs and there was people
that was leaving both gyms tokind of like bounce back
whatever I, I remember that Ihad zach randolph with the may
bet, with the, with the bentleyin the front of jeff waiting.
We waited like an hour or so fora game because out of respect
for Pete, he had something going.
We waited an hour or so in thegym for his game to finish and
(29:49):
just a whole big crowd leftthere came to Jeff.
So I like when we were doingthe high school stuff, it was
big.
I mean we had Kimba, irv, truck, all of them on one team at one
point.
That created a nice buzz forthe high school thing.
So you had like threeAll-Americans, four
All-Americans on one team and sopeople would come out and see
that the place would be packed,had some good energy man, and
(30:19):
you know, the one thing that'scool that I say is that what's
my guy, russ Smith, if youremember him playing in high
school, russ Smith used to getbuckets at McGloy and somebody
asked him not long ago duringCOVID I think it was tiny he
said, yeah, of all the thingsthat you had, you done played at
San Antonio, you done played atLouisville what is the best
experience that you've had inbasketball?
They asked Russ Smith that Nowthis Russ Smith done played with
the pros.
He done played with Rick Pitino.
He done played all over.
(30:40):
He said yo, the best experienceI ever had in basketball.
And he paused on it and he saidyo, I remember playing in fun
sport and they put gave me aposter after I had 63 points and
I had that poster on my wallfor for the longest type joy so
when I heard that during covid,which was not long ago, and I
and that type of reflection, itkind of like, took me back to
(31:00):
like damn, we were really doingsome impactful stuff right,
giving people posters ofthemselves to hang in their wall
.
And some grown folks to the daythat tell me they still got
their poster in their room.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Nice, nice, nice.
I remember I used to haveposters of Patrick Ewing.
You remember I used to have thelife size of the posters I had
the life size of Patrick Ewing.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
And I just took that concept and just because I had a
plug and I just said, yo, letme do that.
Oh, you did a similar, yeahSame hype type thing.
So I used to get a highlight.
I used to get a picture of youdoing something great in the
game and I used to come back thenext week with a big old poster
that you can hang in your room.
And people still have that.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Nice, nice.
Do you still do it on FunSport?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, I'm still doing it, Not as at the scale that I
was doing it years maybe.
I started coaching in like 2010or so.
I went to I was teaching at aschool in Liberation, liberation
and Coney Island.
They didn't really have abasketball program, so I decided
to create one for them and Icreated a tournament and
everything.
(31:54):
Eventually I got us in the PSALand at the third year we
competed and we won achampionship.
I led them to the citychampionship at PSAL, so we won
in 2014 and 2015.
I led them to that championship.
I led them to the citychampionship at PSL.
So we won in 2014 and 2015.
I led them to that championshipand after I won the
championship, I left.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
I left and somebody else took over after that, but I
closed out on a good note.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Nice, nice, nice, nice.
That's good to hear.
I've seen you on Facebookpictures with certain NBA
players.
Name some people that you'reproud to say that you met
through your travels whoparticipated in your program.
Name some people that you'reproud to say that you met
through your travels whoparticipated.
There's been so many.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
So, just like I remember when I ran fireball, I
remember Rafer Austin being thefirst NBA guy that played in our
thing to validate what we weredoing at Baruch College and I
know my man, Rob from Sean Bell,would be happy that I
acknowledge that and then fromthat it would just be so many
NBA players Once that gateopened and that fireball thing
(32:47):
that I used to do from May toJune right before the summer
season start, all the NBA guysat the end of their season a lot
of them would come down andplay, so most of the Knicks.
So Nate Robinson was like astaple at fireball.
He would come all the time.
I think he has the record forthe most points in one game
against Gun Hill and my man, BobMahoney.
My bad, I ain't going to plugyou like that, Bob.
(33:08):
So you got Nate.
You had Wilson Chandler theyused to be there.
Ron Artest used to be there.
Kimball Walker was the one whostarted with me in high school,
went to UConn, did well, becamea pro and came back as a pro.
Smush Parker is another onethat's been a part of that.
So it's been a lot of names.
Kyle anderson graduated in theprogram and I watched him as a
(33:29):
seventh grader.
Quincy duby uh, so there's alot of guys that I could just
think of.
I could run off that that'splayed in our program.
I'd like to see the ones thatplayed when they were in middle
school and high school and thenon the pro level and right, and
that's guys like kimball walkerthat I could think of right, I
saw a picture you you posted atthe all-star game oh yeah, yeah,
(33:49):
we were just at the all-stargame just past this.
Mean this, yeah, the one thatyeah, I was there so I was able
to really support my godson whoplayed at tuskegee, kasami
draper, who won the mvp in thattuskegee game uh, they played
against uh, I think it wasmorehouse.
So I was there to reallysupport him.
But you know, you're enjoyingyourself while you're out there
meeting and kind of like hangingout.
So I got an opportunity withhim to go to the All-Star game,
(34:12):
bump into some people that youknow at the same time and had
that experience.
So it was fun.
Down in the Bay Area I got tohang out with my big, with my
homie, the guy who I told youthat I was going to go to
college, with Kahe, the guy whoI told you that I was going to
go to college, with KareemDraper in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
You pulled some strings to get him in there.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Well, he may have pulled some strings to get me in
there either way.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
No is that the one that you said the only way you
would go to that school inColorado, if you bring your
friends.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
So I definitely wasn't going togo if he wasn't going to.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
I'm glad to hear your story, man.
And so currently, what are youdoing?
Now?
I know you're not really doingthe front sport or fireball, but
I heard you say a little bitlike you do, a little bit of
coaching.
Where are you right now withcoaching?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
So during the day I teach at a charter school in the
Bronx, at Highbridge in theBronx, at New Austin Next
Generation Charter.
I teach financial literacy andPE to high school students From
there.
I leave there and I go toCanarsie High School.
For the past four years I'vebeen coaching at Canarsie High
School and there's been growthin the program, I think since
I've been there.
My JV team that I'm a headcoach of we've been to the Final
(35:15):
Four in the city.
I came up a little bit short inone game against the Jada Swan
and we went to the playoffs justrecently this year and lost a
heartbreaker at the buzzer.
Uh, our varsity team that I'mthe assistant coach at we've
been growing.
The program has been growing.
This year we went to the citythe final four.
We lost on in the final minutesto a nice, to a very good bronx
(35:36):
eagle team.
So there's been some steadygrowth in the program and since
I've been in part of it andhopefully, like you know, we
continue to turn the corner.
So, yeah, coaching has been oneof those things that allowed me
to kind of like pass it on andpay it forward and then running
my programs at Tillery Parkduring the summertime.
Are you still over there?
I'm still in Tillery Park.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
I've been in.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Tillery Park.
Now, for I want to say 10, 12,10 or 12 years I've been in
Tillery Park.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Yeah, because I remember me bringing the kids
there.
I was at Tillery and we wasgetting beat up in both
tournaments.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
What other tournaments you have where you
was getting beat up in so.
I hold the keys there to TilleryPark right now.
So I look forward to doing thatevery summer, making it fun,
giving the kids a safe and apositive place to play, a nice
atmosphere to play in.
So, man, my thing is I just tryto pay it forward because
somebody, like, as we talkedabout these people say they've
(36:29):
done it for me.
They've allowed me to sit inthis seat and to talk about
myself and to talk about thethings that I've done has been
because of coaches.
Some of the coaches who the gailreynolds, the jim couches-
right kind of like believed andset the example for me man right
, right, right, right, right.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
It's a little fun.
Now I'm not gonna, you're notgonna say no names here, but
it's like the reason why Iwanted to, you know, do an
interview with you is becauseI'm like I was part of your
journey, right, and what it isis that it's not just basketball
, the basketball players, whatyou've done outside of the game.
I like what you did.
I'm like, wow, you transitionand you know people.
(37:04):
There's a lot of times peopletalk about basketball and debate
on who was good and all that.
No, we don't need to talk aboutwho was good.
What are you doing after thegame?
yeah yeah, well, how are youcontributing after the game?
But then one, there was aperson that I felt was.
I thought it was blasphemy thathe was heckling.
He was heckling you anytime youwrite something, I'm like yo.
I mean that's my guy too.
(37:24):
But man, we're gonna benameless.
We're gonna say nameless he'smy guy too, he's your guy too,
but I'm like he's.
And then he would say somethinglike gil reynolds, but I'm like
yo, I was there, he wasn'tthere.
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
So I had some kids yo mental illness at an old-time
high man you know what I'msaying like if you go to erasmus
right now, ricky river's nameis on a banner hanging with his
number retired.
So there's something that I didthat was impactful to make them
kind of like, pull me.
There's some other names andnumbers that they've joined, but
there's something that I didthat says, hey, you did
(37:56):
something that needs to beacknowledged.
That other person that'snameless.
You can't find none of thisstuff and nowhere in the history
of it.
And I'm not saying that thatguy who played with me wasn't
wasn't a decent player, right,but to attack what I did, it
just sounds kind of like to evencompare it it's just even like
(38:16):
no comparison.
It's very lopsided there's nocomparison to it.
I've been in a lot of roomsplayed with a lot of people
competed and I'm done.
I'm not even going backwards,I'm done.
So that comparison like come on, bro, like you, you don't.
When I see it, it's like, okay,why are you trying to nudge me?
You know why are you trying tonudge me?
Speaker 1 (38:36):
because you know that I was a good player, but you
know what what's funny is is youreplying to it.
That's what makes me laugh.
I'm like yo.
Why is he even?
Speaker 2 (38:45):
I'm like no, because it'd be too many people.
I guess it gets too many earsand people keep nudging me to
have a comment.
So when I see it, I was like,okay, I'm going to have fun.
First, it was for fun.
Right right, it was definitelya joke, it was definitely for
fun.
Oh, I think he's really serious.
Uh-huh, uh-huh, he's serious,he really got.
He really believes in what he'styping right now.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
So, yeah, I remember time I kept going, I was reading
the comments.
I was like yo going back andforth.
I just needed to speak that.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I was like nah, bro, like come on, man, ain't nobody
that didn't even see it.
You know what I mean.
Like that wasn't there duringthat time.
Maybe they came up later.
When I look at some of thepeople that was in that chat,
right right, but the people thatwas there, they know the rails.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
They know what they know.
They know what it was.
Yeah, man, that's good youain't got that many receipts.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
You got only receipts , yeah, and you got Photoshop,
photoshop, photoshop, all ofthose things that you could do.
But I know what's real RickyRivers averaged 30 points a game
in that senior year and he hasthe most points in one season
than many other people have had.
(39:57):
Not very few people have had atErasmus and that person can't
say that.
Nice, I mean, yeah, I mean hey,I always tell cats I concur you
gotta be nice when you'resupposed to be nice, cause some
people wait till like 40 andover, or they wait till 50 and
over to try to.
That's not when you're supposedto be nice.
Nobody's recruiting you, thenNobody's recruiting you, then
(40:19):
that's not when you're supposedto be nice.
When you're supposed to be niceat high school.
That's when you're supposed tobe nice.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Right, right right.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
If you wasn't that.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Then don't talk to me at 40, 50.
Yeah, you're trying out for thesenior center.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
I want to hear what you're doing at BRC.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
I want to hear that Right right right, right, right,
right right.
We both got love for him.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
but he's going to say he's real, be nice when you're
supposed to be nice, that's agood one.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Be nice when you're supposed to be nice.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
When you're supposed to be nice, yo Don't wait till
40 and over.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Yeah, man, when you're supposed to be nice, I
mean, or you live vicariouslythrough, and that's okay.
Father, figure what's going onwith your family so man, I like
to talk about my daughters.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
I think I have the best family structure that I can
have, right.
So, just knowing that, Istarted my journey young.
So when I was in FIT I had akid.
Actually, in Colorado I had myfirst daughter Her name is Shani
Rivers in 1991, born in January.
My wife and I got married whenI was 18, 19 years old and that
August of 91, we got married andthen in 1993, we have another
(41:27):
daughter while I'm in Iona atthat time at Andrea Rivers in
1993.
So my journey as being a parentcame alongside my journey of
playing basketball.
It was married together.
So there's been some rollercoasters with basketball but
there's been a steady incline, Iwould say, with me being a
parent and me being a father andbeing a husband at home, type
joint.
So my daughter's now the fruitof that is my daughter's now my
(41:50):
oldest one.
She's an executive.
She's a VP at Goldman Sachs.
She graduated with a chemicalbiological engineer degree,
which is not something that'seasy.
She went to NYU and got adegree and she's working as a VP
in Goldman Sachs.
My youngest, who came rightbehind her, is a lawyer.
Now she does antitrust law.
She graduated from Howard wentto American and she's now a
(42:15):
lawyer, so they both have verycompetitive in careers that I
like to say that as a dad, I'mresponsible for, and more than
I've been there since zero.
I wasn't an absentee father, Iwasn't a child support father.
I was, every night, every day,type of father, right, so that
so, seeing my daughters climb toget to that point, knowing the
(42:35):
sacrifices that I had to make interms of playing basketball,
knowing the sacrifices that Ihad to make in terms of playing
basketball Do I do it or do Inot?
I chose to, kind of like, staysolid and be a father rather
than try to go overseas and dosomething, because that's what
they ask you why you didn't gooverseas.
I could have played Division I,but that wasn't the choice that
I was going to make.
Just like why couldn't I havegone to another university that
recruited me?
When I was in Iona I gotinterest from Kentucky,
(42:56):
washington State, duquesne therewas a number of them that but
they were all outside of NewYork so I didn't even.
I took no interest from thosethings.
And Kentucky came in becausepeople would think that I'm
joking about this we played atOdessa at junior and I was like
first team all tournament and Ihad very good games against
South Plains and Odessa withRick Pitino and his crew
(43:18):
watching, because they wererecruiting Rodney Dent, so I had
a lot of interest from him tooas well.
They would constantly ask aboutme, but I chose to be a parent
and all those things.
Throughout the whole thing Ichose, I said no, I'm going to
stay south.
What people may not know is thatIona, when things were getting
so frustrated and I was goingthrough this challenge of being
a parent or as a player, we weregoing to Notre Dame the next
(43:39):
day.
We was going to go out on thefloor to Notre Dame and I called
the athletic director and saidI'm going to quit, I'm going to
stay home.
I remember my daughter was sickat the time.
It just felt like I should behome and I was frustrated about
how the coaches was using me inmy playing time as a senior.
So I chose to say, hey, youknow what, I'm going to stay
home.
(43:59):
And I really wanted to play theNotre Dame game because I had
two friends on the other sidethat we had circled the game to
play.
But I choose not to show upbecause I didn't like how the
coaches was handling me in thatsituation and I know I couldn't
change their mind, even thoughthe players had a meeting with
them to talk about me.
So parenting I've alwaysprioritized that I like my kids
(44:19):
to know because they don'talways understand some of the
decisions I make to be there forthem rather than chase this
basketball thing.
That's kind of like always beenbehind me or always been with
me.
But I always chose to kind oflike be a parent and I've always
told them the best holiday ofthe whole year is Father's Day.
So they know that.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
Right, right, right, right, and that's the level of
maturity that I give you.
Is that even to hear thesacrifices you made?
But one thing is like.
It's interesting is that youwas married at a young age.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Married at a young age, bro, I've been married.
That's that throwback.
I'm still there too.
I'm still in it.
I've been married going on 34years, now 33 and a half.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Nice, nice.
Three and a half nice, nice,that's rare.
That's rare, that's rare.
I'm a young father, I'm not ayoung father, a young husband at
that.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
So so just think, a young husband that's playing
division one basketball, youknow I mean.
So you back, I'm not an uglyguy you know what I'm saying I'm
playing division one basketball, so it's opportunities is there
and I'm and I'm doing my bestto deflect.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Right, right, right, all those opportunities, that's
there.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Especially in college , man.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
They're doing it so yeah, Good defense.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
But because of how I was set up it was somewhat
easier, because after games I'mgoing straight home.
I'm not even living on campus.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Right right.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
I don't even live on campus, so I'm a ghost really.
For the most part After gamesI'm gone.
You could only probably catchme at games or practices, right,
and so it wasn't that manyopportunities for me to kind of
like be exposed to too manydistractions unless you're on
the road.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Right, right, right, man, I commend you on who you
are and what you became and whatyou are continuing to thrive
for.
Man, what's your end game?
Speaker 2 (46:00):
So I don you in the drive forward, man, what's your
end game?
So I don't know.
Like I'm, I'm trying to thinkabout that now.
Like life, like basketball, hasbeen with me for like so many
years.
Now, right, I'm about to turn53 years old and I'm starting to
look at what the last chapterlooks like, so I I may kind of
go back into this executive role.
What I didn't share is, aftercollege I started to work at
morgan stanley and so I rose upat Morgan Stanley.
It was at Dean Witter Reynoldsand then became JP, then became
(46:22):
Morgan Dean Witter Reynolds.
Morgan came Morgan Stanleyafter a while and I was a
manager in that space and I wasthere the day of 9-11.
I worked in the Trace Center.
I worked in Two World TraceCenter.
That morning I was working inmy office, which is an interior
office, so I was in the buildingthe day that the plane hit the
tower.
I was there in the tower.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
I was two blocks away , bro.
I was two blocks away and myfather owns a photo shop.
He's the only black store inthat neighborhood in the lower
Manhattan, and I always walkedwith a disposable camera.
I took pictures coming out thetrain I see people looking up at
the first hit, the first one,the first building that got hit.
Yeah, I was.
(47:00):
It was facing me as soon as Igot out of the train.
I took pictures and that'sthat's crazy to hear that you
was connected.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
That too as well and this one as you say that,
because when I end up making myway out, everybody was going in
the stores to buy disposablecameras I remember that
everybody was trying to finddisposable cameras.
There was a newsstand, becausethey had these little newsstands
that used to be on ChurchAvenue over there, and they were
buying these disposable camerasto take pictures.
Right, right, so I rememberthat part, like it was yesterday
(47:26):
.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
Right right, right right.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
But coming out of that experience kind of made me
want to do more in my communityand less corporate work.
So my daughters-in-law alwaysasked me me, dad, do you want to
go back corporate?
I was like nah I don't uh, Iwant to kind of like be more
attached to my community and notbe restricted, but there is
some thoughts right now.
When you ask about the lastchapter, do I close it out back
(47:47):
in this corporate space becauseI got?
Speaker 1 (47:49):
I got some interest from a couple of spaces that I
that I might consider all right,nice, nice, nice man, it's good
to hear that you still you'renot trying to get in that
wheelchair, you know.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
I would keep moving, baby.
I like the vacation to keepmoving.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Right, right, right, right, right.
It's a pleasure, man, to haveyou on here, man, and to talk
your talk, Because, I'm happy tosay, I was a part of it, of
your journey, and then myjourney went this way, yours
went that way.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
You know what I'm way .
Yours went that way.
You know I'm saying but it's,you know, when I see you it's
always good man to see youalways smile.
You got the same smile fromhigh school.
Yeah, man, I'm always gonna tryto be happy man.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
Yeah, you gotta be happy man, I'm gonna try to be
humble too.
You gotta be humble and behappy, man, be happy.
And also, right now, I wouldlike to gift you a game.
This is called the your opiniondoesn't matter game, right,
it's named after the podcastyour opinion doesn't matter
Podcast, and it's the ultimatedebating game for family and
friends.
You can get that at wwwyodmcomand I'm gifting this to you, bro
(48:47):
.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Thank you, reverend, and I'm going to open this with
my family and we're going to tryto see how we can kind of like
debate, because there's someintelligence within our unit.
I want to see if I can come outa winner with these intelligent
young ladies that I have Go.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
I want to see if I can come out a winner with these
intelligent young ladies that Ihave Go over some of the cards.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Go over some of the cards for us.
Okay, Some of them is kind ofrisque.
Okay, all right, you don't wantto I'm going to filter.
Okay, I'm going to filter someof them, right, because I got a
15-year-old son.
I want him to kind of like ittoo much.
Yes, yes, I'm just trying toget him in the right lane, right
.
So.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
I'm trying to get him .
Speaker 2 (49:18):
You know teenagers these days a little bit
challenging.
He's a 15 year old and he'sit's the age gap between him and
my daughter.
This is pretty big.
You know what I mean.
So trying to just make surethat he he knows that he raised
on love.
Now that I've been goingthrough it with my daughters, at
what works and what don't work,yeah, and I'm trying to,
especially being in anenvironment with kids every day,
(49:40):
I know what works and whatdon't work.
Right, and sometimes they wantyou to do more of what don't
work.
Yeah, and I'm like, nah, bro,we not doing that, we not
walking across the grass, wegoing to stay on the path.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Right right, right right.
I hear you call him a a youngterrorist.
He was, he was.
He was bad all the way up tolike now he's a senior, he's,
he's okay, but before, in thebeginning, all right.
So, um, I think that, um, thethe game itself of of sports is
small man, but this is about theimpact you're doing after the
(50:14):
game.
Man, it's a pleasure that youcame on the show to tell people
you know you're not just a ionaplayer.
Yeah, you're a husband, um, agreat father, and you've been
places.
Man.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
People need to put some respect on my guy's name,
absolutely, man not only have Idone stuff in new york, I've
done events in dallas, I've doneevents in bermuda, I've done
events in atlanta, I've doneevents in DC, so I've spread
this brand of mine in differentmarkets and kind of like.
When I look back over 27 yearsit's like, damn, I've done a lot
(50:46):
, I've accomplished a lot, I'vemet a lot of people.
I've tried to always handle itin a humble, with some humility,
and also try to handle it withsome responsibility, knowing
that I got people that comebehind me, that I want to try to
mentor and do the same becauseI've grown a lot just by doing
tournaments.
I've learned a lot aboutmarketing.
I've learned a lot aboutbusiness.
I've learned a lot about otherareas that they didn't teach me
(51:08):
in school just by running thesetournaments.
So it's a responsibility thatgo with it when you bring your
communities together.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
So I value it and I say thank you to everybody who
supported me over 27 years manright, right, right, man, and um
, this is the your opiniondoesn't matter podcast, and we
are outie thank you, brother,thank you, bro, appreciate it.
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