You are out here with the lions, the tigers
and the bears. And if you out here with
the lions and tigers and bears, you can't be a poodle.
♪ North Star ♪
♪ I walk it like I talk it, Naomi flow ♪
♪ Real Brookfield, if you know you know ♪
When Damian was born, we lived on 82nd Avenue.
So in the avenues, it was kind of crazy.
Seven years old, Damian started playing basketball.
We also spent a lot of time in Brookfield,
which is where my mom lived.
The first, very clear memory I have is being with
my grandmother.
And just that bond, you know,
I always think back to that time.
So if you walk out of my grandmother's front door
you walked through the grass, it's like her front lawn.
It was just a tree there. And it was just
a branch that hung a little bit lower.
It wrapped around like the front of a rim.
He would shoot through that hole til dark.
Because he would always shoot through the hole in the tree.
Everybody would come and shoot through the hole in the tree.
I started to picture how it would hit,
how it would go through
there, like it was going through a rim.
One day, he came and the tree was cut down.
And my grandmother was like, when I was getting over there,
she was waiting at the door to tell me
like, it was almost like the dog died or something.
And she standing at the front door
waiting for me to walk in,
"Did they tell you?"
I was like, "Tell me what?"
And she was like, "They cut the tree down."
And I turned around and it was down to a stump,
just gone. And I just remembered like,
wow, that's never coming back.
Damian had a fit.
He lost it.
I thought he was going to have a nervous breakdown.
My dad went and found a crate
cause Damian was going so crazy.
He bust the bottom of the crate out
and nailed it to the telephone pole.
So then he had a square basketball hoop.
So I was in the streets shooting.
And people would be walking down the street,
older dudes that was selling drugs
and stuff like that, they would stop by like,
"Dame, you can't guard me," and
"Dame, I could out-shoot you" and
I would play them one-on-one, do shooting competitions
against them all that type of stuff.
You growing up in a place where if you are not coming
ready to strap your boots up,
you're going to get your lunch took.
And you could be one of the tough guys,
then your lunch took could be a little more magnified.
It can be getting jumped or getting beat up
or getting robbed or getting shot.
And then it could be a guy like we were
where we were at the rec,
and it's like if you don't come ready to play
you might get off the court and never get back on
so, the magnitude varied,
it just was everybody had that kill or be killed attitude.
I think all that stuff makes me more
alert and aware.
We would meet here in the rec center
after school everyday.
This was home, this was home away from home
and this was home after school. You know,
we knew we was safe here.
All the adults are out of the community.
You know, everybody formed
that village around us at the end of the day
and I think that's what it took.
And that's what it takes in general,
you know, it takes a village.
We was just at it. And me and Damian,
we would walk around the corner with our basketballs,
we had one each. And weave between our legs the whole way.
Step for step, I'm talking about a hundred in a row.
Like we're kids.
We get there, we go half-court,
in-and-out crossover, get to the free throw line, elbow.
Spin move, finger roll,
and we'll go move. And we'll be there for hours
until the gym opened.
I remember it was the first time I played 21.
And I played against my brother and my cousin, John,
and when I played against them, they was out there doing the
Allen Iverson crossover and doing all these moves
and doing all this stuff. And, I couldn't do it.
After that day, I was practicing at that stuff
a lot more. Trying to do crossovers and trying to shoot
from far, up and under layups and
trying to do a left hand layup and stuff like that.
It just clicked. I wanted to be good at it.
I couldn't compete with them and I wasn't good enough.
So getting better at it
and also like once I get better
I know I'm going to beat them.
I'm going to beat them.
I do remember when I was 13 and we would catch the bus
to my grandmother's house and our parents come pick us up.
And I remember, my mom pulled up to the house.
I was having a real hard time at work.
And I was worried about a lot of things
and I was stressed out about a lot of things.
And he came over to the car and he asked me,
"Are you O.K.?"
I'm like, "Yeah I'm fine, go over there and play
you know, go ahead and do what you're doing."
He came back.
And it was a show at the time,
it would tell people a story
like basically they rise to where they are.
And I basically started, saying my story.
We were in front of my mom's house,
everybody was inside, they came out.
They all stood around and they watched him
like he was a storyteller.
He said, "Mom, don't worry about anything.
I'm going to the NBA, I'm going to be a pro.
I'm going to be Rookie of the Year.
I'm going to be an All-Star.
I'm going to make a lot of money,
and you won't have to worry about anything."
As he talked, and he sat there and he said all these things
and the tears rolled down my eyes,
everybody noticed.
They started off laughing, you know,
when I first started saying all this stuff,
they started off laughing.
And, by the time I was done
it was almost like they recognized, the conviction
in how I was saying it, 'No,
this is really what's going to happen.'
They didn't clap or nothing,
they was just more like looking at me like
they believed me, you know what I'm saying?
A dog hunts.
A dog needs meat,
A dog got to eat.
In sports, it's about competition.
You got to take what you want. And so, where you come from
kind of dictates who you are.
And it wasn't just all about basketball
it was what we was going through in life.
If we want to eat, we got to go take what we want.