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Written by Ross Weingarten
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Tuesday, 24 July 2007 |
Ghost doesn't appreciate the labels. Call him too white or too Canadian, and the 21-year-old Toronto streetballer will prove you wrong. He has the quickness, the tricks, and the range - think Jason Williams int he Sacramento days. Calling him white also doesn't fit: he's half Lebanese, and sometimes wears shirts with Arabic writing as a shout-out to his family tree.
The kid born Mike Zanidean arrived in Toronto 3 years ago from his hometown outside of Vancouver, carrying two suitcases, $300 and dreams of better competition. He's been working ever since to perfect his game. "I have that type of style that people can't judge me, can't label me because I'm coming with a million moves," Ghost says, "And if they take that away, I'm coming with a million and one."
The 6'3" trickster has been grinding hard to crack the streetball elite. After a year at Division II Le Moyne College in Memphis, Ghost began traveling with the Hustle Up Tour, plus delivering ball-handling clinics and motivational speeches in Toronto. His YouTube highlight reels have collected tens of thousands of hits, and he's working on a DVD and clothing line. His big break comes this summer when he joins the AND1 Mixtape Tour as one of the "other guys" playing against Hot Sauce, Professor, and the rest. Don't expect Ghost to be intimidated: when Sauce came to Toronto with Hustle Up, the local boy says he held his own. "At fist, I was like, 'Oh, no, this is Sauce.' But as soon as the ball went up, I wanted to represent my city and make my hard work pay off."
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