I apologize for the delay in posting up news, I had a major setback this week.
On Tuesday, September 11th at 8:00 PM, my car slammed into a telephone pole at 50 MPH. I was making my way home from dinner with my team, and the conditions were wet and slippery. The day prior to the accident, the road had been paved and the white line on the right hand side was thus concealed. I was unable to make out where the road had ended and where the grass started, and I turned to sharp. My right front tire caught the grassy edge and put my car into a spin. After hydroplaning on the wet road and grass for approximately 150 feet, my car spun directly into a telephone that hit my driver side door.
Had it not been for the fire hydrant just 6 feet in front of the telephone pole, I would have been dead or seriously wounded. Miraculously, I crawled out of the totaled car with nothing but a sore hip. I'm lucky to be alive, and I no longer take life for granted. Most people thing that these kinds of things will never happen to them: I was one of them.
For all those out there who drive: please be safe and don't be a reckless driver. I almost lost my life to this car accident, and I would hate to see the same pain I'm going through now (without a car) affect anyone else.
I will get some more posts up as soon as possible, and thanks for your understanding.
This is a sample beta tee shirt. A larger image will be available soon.
I want to make a line of t-shirts, long sleeve shirts, and sweatshirts for the online streetball/basketball community. I will only use 2-3 images/logos on the shirts so that when they are worn they can be easily recognized, like a kind of trademark like the old Dime tees.
Whether it features The Playgroundz logo or just streetball, I want to get a line going. The prices won't be expensive: for example, a simple white tee with an image on the front and back will be around 11 dollars. If you think you can contribute to the line and its success, please e-mail me at
with your thoughts.
On a summer weekend in New York City that saw a thrilling WNBA Playoff Game and the best high school players in the country going head to head, there was also some of the world’s best streetballers, in the form of the Ball 4 Real tour, in town. We sent Sherman Johnson to check it out…
I was excited about attending this event since the original plans I had to run weekly profiles on the streetballers on this tour fell through a couple months ago. The tour is sorta like a spinoff of And-1, which spuriously ran their own tournament in some of the same major markets as Ball4Real a week before the latter was due in town. The former definitely stole some thunder because a lot of people obviously confused the two and figured they were one in the same. Maybe that can explain why attendance at the event was marginal when you consider that NYC is the mecca of streetball...
A notable "Riding With" first was established with Grayson Boucher, who most people know as The Professor from the And1 Mixtape Tour, the modern-day Harlem Globetrotters.
Boucher, whose gifted ball-handling has made him a cult celebrity, is the first sports figure to use a rental car in the occasional Page 2 series where we interview athletes in their cars.
Boucher's real car is a 2005 Mercedes-Benz E-500. Unfortunately the Benz had yet to be shipped from Portland, Ore. -- Boucher's hometown -- to Los Angeles, his new residence. So we cruised around Santa Monica in a late-model Mustang.
As rapper Biggie Smalls would say, The Professor has gone from ashy to classy. When the 23-year-old tried out for the And1 team four years ago in Portland, he was a struggling, scrawny college student working at a grocery store...
Playground legend James “Speedy†Williams, age 41, the same cat seen on AND1 Mixtape Volume 2, plowed through players bigger, stronger, and faster than him to take the second-ever Last Man Standing 1 on 1 Championship today at Madison Square Garden. Along with a trophy and ring he won a $5000 check and a work-out with an NBA scout. How did a guy who didn’t even play high school achieve all this?
Speedy is an enigma. Many of us in the community have noticed that he keeps on getting better every year, and have joked that by age 45 he will be an NBA lottery pick! In the last three years he has played in every single major championship that NYC summers have to offer, and has taken MVP honors in Nike Pro City and West 4th. He is no stranger to any of this. Since starring at Division 3 Medgar Evars College (Brooklyn), he has taken every tournament, in any borough, by storm. In the ’90s, when the National Pro-Am had their title games @ Rucker Park televised, it was Speedy who led New York past a Chicago squad filled with former D-1 players. He was immortalized in the film “Above The Rim†as he played that dude in the park with the handle who couldn’t be beat...
The Notic: Uncut & Unreleased
And1 vs. ATL All-Stars
On a summer weekend in New York City that saw a thrilling WNBA Playoff Game and the best high school players in the country going head to head, there was also some of the world’s best streetballers, in the form of the Ball 4 Real tour, in town. We sent Sherman Johnson to check it out…
A notable "Riding With" first was established with Grayson Boucher, who most people know as The Professor from the And1 Mixtape Tour, the modern-day Harlem Globetrotters.
Playground legend James “Speedy†Williams, age 41, the same cat seen on AND1 Mixtape Volume 2, plowed through players bigger, stronger, and faster than him to take the second-ever Last Man Standing 1 on 1 Championship today at Madison Square Garden. Along with a trophy and ring he won a $5000 check and a work-out with an NBA scout. How did a guy who didn’t even play high school achieve all this?
Spring 2008
