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Whatever sport I was playing at the time would be my favorite--if it was football season, then that was what I liked; if it was baseball season, then that was my number one. Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to play on any serious teams. The middle school teams weren't much of anything, so I also played for a local church team. But things really took off for me when Big Tony Henderson showed up at my door one day.

I'd been playing ball in one of the local parks when some kids in the neighborhood talked to their coach, Big Tony, about me. There was a tall guy named Zack who played for Tony. He was older than me, but everyone thought he was my big brother because he and I were built so much alike. Some of the other kids on the team told Tony that I might be good to have playing with them as well.

Tony didn't know who my mother was, so he made some calls and a friend of his, Earl, said he'd take Tony over to our house. So one evening, Tony and Earl showed up at our door and talked to my mother about letting me play on the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) basketball league Tony had going in Hurt Village. As it turned out, Tony had known my uncle Gerald, who they all called "Hawkeye," after a character on the old TV show M*A*S*H. (No one seems to remember why they called him that; they just did.)

Since everyone had told Tony that my size and speed were unusual for a kid my age, he was determined to get me as part of his team, and my mother agreed. So starting in eighth grade, I began playing basketball with the Hurt Village team, which was for middle-school-age boys, roughly fourteen and under, and took on other neighborhood teams around the city.

Tony moved me around to every position, but I preferred to play a bit out of the fray where I could just shoot baskets without having to be in the mix of players so much. I was good at hitting the basket from a distance. Refs loved to call fouls on me--every time I would get a rebound or even get close to another player while trying to guard them, it seemed that the whistle would blow. When you're as big as I was and you're playing in a league full of normal-size eleven- and twelve-year-olds, it's almost impossible not to foul. This was a challenge I would have to deal with all the way up to varsity basketball in high school.

Tony understood what it was like to be a big kid. He'd never actually played basketball himself--he'd boxed when he was younger--but he was a pretty big guy (hence the name). I think he understood some of the challenges of trying to move a huge body effectively in a game where I was literally double the size of everyone else.

Our team did very well, winning a number of tournaments in both my eighth- and ninth-grade years. We traveled all over the city, playing other teams and nearly always beating them. I loved playing in AAU. I felt with each practice like I wasn't just enjoying the game but that I was doing something that was going to make me better and help set me up for the career I wanted.

I am pretty laid-back about most things, but when it comes to something I feel is a responsibility, I get very worked up about it. If practice was at 5:00 p.m., I showed up at the gym at 4:30 p.m. I don't think I ever missed a practice or was even late. I might have been willing to slack off on some things, but sports was my future and I was fanatical about my practice and discipline.

Tony had pulled some strings to get me transferred from Manassas to Westwood High School, which was where his son Steve was going. Steve was a year younger than me, but it was a seventh- to twelfth-grade school, so we were together. Westwood technically wasn't in my district or in theirs, but an uncle let Tony use his mailing address so that Steve could go there to take advantage of the better sports programs, and Tony let me use that as my address, too. I was so happy when Tony managed to get me into Westwood for my freshman year of high school that I started going much more regularly.

I loved Coach Johnson, who