Once upon a time they were just little boys walking the streets of Pittsburgh’s Hill District looking for a game.
On most days they’d take the short walk to the Ammon Rec Center or Kennard Park. On others they might grab the 81-B to the Boys Club in Shadyside if they had enough change in their pockets for bus fare. The conversation on those journeys — even as the walks and buses were replaced by flights to AAU events as they entered adolescence — inevitably would turn to the same topic: How they would some day play in the NBA.
“DeJuan (Blair) and I talked about it all the time,” says D.J. Kennedy, “and we always believed in our hearts it would happen.”
Despite the naysayers.
A woman I know once told me she thought the story of a particular group of basketball playing boys — a group that included Blair and Kennedy — would end up a tragic tale. She had a connection to them through a grade school coach and she was sure that they were bound to be exploited by the basketball machine and spit out. She didn’t believe they’d ever make it past a semester of college, let alone beyond that. She thought it was wrong that they were traveling all over the country for basketball when, in her words, they should be doing things that other kids their age were doing. I tried not to choke as she shared this, having been a kid that might have avoided all sorts of trouble if I’d been flying around every April-through-July playing basketball…You know, instead of doing what all the other kids my age were doing.
Read more:
http://www.nbebasketball.com/w3/2010-1003/d-j-kennedy-unfinished-business-and-dreams/