Basketball Diaries - Entry #1

Let me paint you a picture...In the summer of 1993, there was an 11-year-old Jewish boy who devoted his entire life to basketball. That boy was I, Adam Schleichkorn, and I was booked for an entire summer of basketball camp at Lu-Hi, in Brookville Long Island. I still had full aspirations of being in the NBA at this point in my life, and for a little Jewish kid, I could really play. I busted my ass at camp to get better everyday, and it was happening. Every session on the first day, I would get moved up to an older age group, and still excel. I was voted an all-star at the end of every session, playing with the kids that were sometimes even 3 years older than me. I was on top of my little basketball world, until this one dreaded day towards the end of that summer. The entire camp was in the gym, and we had a guest speaker, Bill Wennington of The Chicago Bulls. He gave us this boring speech, and then started going around the crowd, playing 1-on-1 against different campers. He played the first two very easily, let them have the ball, and barely played defense. He then went up against one of the high schoolers, and he went at him really strong. The kid stopped Wennington, then backed him in, and scored on him! A high-school kid scoring on an NBA player! The whole crowd erupted, and Wennington was pissed! He starts looking around, and looks at me sitting there, and throws me the ball. Let me remind you that I was 5 feet tall, 11 years old, and he is a 7 foot tall NBA player, who was just embarrassed in front of a couple thousand people. So Bill was nice enough to give me the ball first. I look up, and he was guarding me close, I mean really guarding me! I dribbled in, came back behind the 3-point line, and heaved up a prayer. Bill then proceeds to block the ever-living shit out of my shot, and recover the ball. I line up to play defense, and he drives hard to the hoop. I had to get out of the way, because he was about to barrel me over. He then throws the ball of the backboard, catches it in the air, then dunks it with authority, and comes crashing down in to me. So not only did he serve me in front of the whole camp, I was in pain for about 2 weeks thereafter from a 7-footer landing on me. Way to go Bill Wennington, you sure showed em. This story is 100% true, and was the start of my realization about the NBA possibly being out of my reach. I'm confident that I would've made the NBA though, if I was about a foot and a half taller.
-AS