POST the touching stories ofathletes that make u cry....no +#*%

cheezybaby

cheezybaby

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http://www.charlotte.com/456/story/397692.html Richardson found tragedy, triumph and trusty fansin Saginaw[h3]DAVID SCOTT[/h3][h3][email protected][/h3]
[h5]THE SAGINAW NEWS[/h5] [h2]Jason Richardson's emphatic dunks while playing for Saginaw's Arthur Hill High helped him win Michigan's Mr. Basketball award. (JEFF SCHRIER -- THE SAGINAW NEWS)[/h2]
[h3]SAGINAW, Mich. --[/h3]Elaine Richardson-Cook didn't see this coming.
It's the holidays and people are busy. So Richardson-Cook was prepared to understand if the good folks of Saginaw decided to pass on a chance to see herson -- Charlotte Bobcats guard Jason Richardson -- play a homecoming game today against the Detroit Pistons in Auburn Hills, Mich.

It has become an annual ritual for Richardson-Cook. In each of Richardson's first six seasons in the NBA, his mother chartered a bus for the 75-miletrip down Interstate 75 from Saginaw to Auburn Hills, allowing local fans a chance to see Richardson and the Golden State Warriors play the Pistons.

But Richardson plays for the Eastern Conference's Bobcats now. Since they return for a second game against the Pistons in February, Richardson-Cookfigured that might be a more convenient time to dispatch what she calls the "fan bus."

Not so.

"My oldest son said people keep asking, `Are we going to have the bus?' " said Richardson-Cook. "I hadn't planned on it. But it'scrazy. I guess I don't have a choice."

Richardson-Cook ponders this while sitting in the kitchen of her well-appointed home in suburban Saginaw, a city of about 60,000 on the banks of the SaginawRiver near Lake Huron.

Jason bought her the house after he signed with Golden State in 2001. He played two seasons at Michigan State, helping the Spartans to a nationalchampionship as a freshman.

Before that, Richardson led Saginaw's Arthur Hill High to the state championship game as a senior and won Michigan's Mr. Basketball award. He wasthe best player they'd ever seen in Saginaw.

That's where Richardson's story begins -- full of success and tragedy. And why there will be a fan bus heading from Saginaw to Auburn Hillstoday.

Too big for his booties

When Richardson was born one January day in 1981, the fourth of six children Richardson-Cook would have, his cousin Marlow Prescott walked into the hospitalroom and gasped.

"He was amazed at how Jason looked," said Richardson-Cook. "He had huge hands, big feet. He said, `Oh my God, this is my boy. Look at thesehands and feet!' "

It was true. Only Jason's toes would fit into normal-sized baby booties. Richardson-Cook had to find larger booties made for older infants.

Three days later, Richardson-Cook looked over to the bassinet where Jason was lying. Prescott had Jason holding a basketball up in the air.

"Get that ball out of my baby's hands!" she said.

"Look, he can hold a basketball," Richardson-Cook said Prescott told her. "This is the is one who's going to make it."

Prescott would soon play a large part in the life of Jason, whose father would leave when he was 3.

"He was his father figure," said Richardson-Cook. "Marlow took Jason everywhere. He was taking him to pickup games in the park before hecould even walk."

One day when Jason was 8, Prescott drowned in a pond near the family's neighborhood in the Saginaw suburb of Carrollton. Standing outside their house,Richardson-Cook told Jason about it.

"I didn't really understand it," said Richardson. "I didn't really know about people dying."

But another voice spoke up. Richardson-Cook's brother, Tyrone Bowen, told Jason he'd take up where Prescott had left off.

Dunks, hockey, highlights video

Bowen and Jason soon developed their own close relationship. Bowen was nearby when 12-year-old Jason dunked for the first time, at Sherman Street Park inCarrollton. It was an event so momentous for Richardson -- who would eventually win the NBA's slam-dunk contest two years in a row -- that he ran down thestreet and dragged 10 relatives back to watch him do it again.

Then, when Richardson was 13, tragedy struck again. Bowen died of unknown causes while playing basketball.

Standing outside their house at the same spot, Richardson-Cook again told her son that a close relative had died.

"All my father figures were passing away," said Richardson. "It was really tough on me."

Since Bowen died on a basketball court, Jason couldn't bring himself to continue playing the sport. Instead, he took up hockey, telling his mother hewanted to become one of the first African American players in the NHL. That lasted for about six months because he outgrew his skates and couldn't afford anew pair.

One day at about 6 a.m., Richardson-Cook was awakened by the sound of a ball bouncing. Jason was playing basketball again.

At Arthur Hill, Richardson developed quickly into one of the state's best high school players. But in a state where most of the publicity goes toplayers in the Detroit-Ann Arbor area, he wasn't being noticed much beyond Saginaw.

That's when Arthur Hill coach Dave Slaggert stepped in. Slaggert put together a 15-minute highlight video of his star, mailing it to 800 coaches aroundMichigan who voted on the Mr. Basketball award.

"It was something I felt I could do to help him out," said Slaggert, who's retired now and whose basement is home to several mementos ofRichardson's career at Arthur Hill.

Half-price Warriors jersey

Richardson is in the NBA now. He returns to Saginaw periodically, hosting a benefit golf tournament and making other contributions to charity. Stores inSaginaw have Richardson's Warriors jersey on the half-price rack. His Charlotte jersey hasn't arrived yet, although a Bobcats T-shirt with his name andNo. 23 can be found.His road to professional stardom hasn't always been smooth -- he was sentenced to one year of probation in 2003 for assaulting hisex-girlfriend.

And his career in Charlotte has started unevenly as the Bobcats struggle to stay at the .500 level. Brought in to bolster the Bobcats' late-gameoffense, Richardson is the team's second-leading scorer, averaging 16.9 points (before Saturday's home game against Cleveland) on streaky 40 percentshooting.

And today, the fans from Saginaw will board a bus to watch him once again play in the Palace of Auburn Hills.

Bet you didn't know

• Richardson's childhood idol was Dominque Wilkins.

• His late uncle Tyrone Bowen was a backup singer to singer Gladys Knight (but after the Pips brokeup).

• He has a daughter named Jaela, 8.

• He is the only player besides his boss, Michael Jordan, to win back-to-back NBA slam-dunkcontests.

woow what a truly touching story

post your favorite athletes coming up through rough times story
 
dont make me cry but its something that had a HUGE impact on my life, but the life of Pistol Pete Maravich....
 
Originally Posted by cheezybaby

http://www.charlotte.com/456/story/397692.html Richardson found tragedy, triumph and trusty fans in Saginaw [h3]DAVID SCOTT[/h3] [h3][email protected][/h3]
[h5]THE SAGINAW NEWS[/h5] [h2]Jason Richardson's emphatic dunks while playing for Saginaw's Arthur Hill High helped him win Michigan's Mr. Basketball award. (JEFF SCHRIER -- THE SAGINAW NEWS)[/h2]
[h3]SAGINAW, Mich. --[/h3]Elaine Richardson-Cook didn't see this coming.
It's the holidays and people are busy. So Richardson-Cook was prepared to understand if the good folks of Saginaw decided to pass on a chance to see her son -- Charlotte Bobcats guard Jason Richardson -- play a homecoming game today against the Detroit Pistons in Auburn Hills, Mich.

It has become an annual ritual for Richardson-Cook. In each of Richardson's first six seasons in the NBA, his mother chartered a bus for the 75-mile trip down Interstate 75 from Saginaw to Auburn Hills, allowing local fans a chance to see Richardson and the Golden State Warriors play the Pistons.

But Richardson plays for the Eastern Conference's Bobcats now. Since they return for a second game against the Pistons in February, Richardson-Cook figured that might be a more convenient time to dispatch what she calls the "fan bus."

Not so.

"My oldest son said people keep asking, `Are we going to have the bus?' " said Richardson-Cook. "I hadn't planned on it. But it's crazy. I guess I don't have a choice."

Richardson-Cook ponders this while sitting in the kitchen of her well-appointed home in suburban Saginaw, a city of about 60,000 on the banks of the Saginaw River near Lake Huron.

Jason bought her the house after he signed with Golden State in 2001. He played two seasons at Michigan State, helping the Spartans to a national championship as a freshman.

Before that, Richardson led Saginaw's Arthur Hill High to the state championship game as a senior and won Michigan's Mr. Basketball award. He was the best player they'd ever seen in Saginaw.

That's where Richardson's story begins -- full of success and tragedy. And why there will be a fan bus heading from Saginaw to Auburn Hills today.

Too big for his booties

When Richardson was born one January day in 1981, the fourth of six children Richardson-Cook would have, his cousin Marlow Prescott walked into the hospital room and gasped.

"He was amazed at how Jason looked," said Richardson-Cook. "He had huge hands, big feet. He said, `Oh my God, this is my boy. Look at these hands and feet!' "

It was true. Only Jason's toes would fit into normal-sized baby booties. Richardson-Cook had to find larger booties made for older infants.

Three days later, Richardson-Cook looked over to the bassinet where Jason was lying. Prescott had Jason holding a basketball up in the air.

"Get that ball out of my baby's hands!" she said.

"Look, he can hold a basketball," Richardson-Cook said Prescott told her. "This is the is one who's going to make it."

Prescott would soon play a large part in the life of Jason, whose father would leave when he was 3.

"He was his father figure," said Richardson-Cook. "Marlow took Jason everywhere. He was taking him to pickup games in the park before he could even walk."

One day when Jason was 8, Prescott drowned in a pond near the family's neighborhood in the Saginaw suburb of Carrollton. Standing outside their house, Richardson-Cook told Jason about it.

"I didn't really understand it," said Richardson. "I didn't really know about people dying."

But another voice spoke up. Richardson-Cook's brother, Tyrone Bowen, told Jason he'd take up where Prescott had left off.

Dunks, hockey, highlights video

Bowen and Jason soon developed their own close relationship. Bowen was nearby when 12-year-old Jason dunked for the first time, at Sherman Street Park in Carrollton. It was an event so momentous for Richardson -- who would eventually win the NBA's slam-dunk contest two years in a row -- that he ran down the street and dragged 10 relatives back to watch him do it again.

Then, when Richardson was 13, tragedy struck again. Bowen died of unknown causes while playing basketball.

Standing outside their house at the same spot, Richardson-Cook again told her son that a close relative had died.

"All my father figures were passing away," said Richardson. "It was really tough on me."

Since Bowen died on a basketball court, Jason couldn't bring himself to continue playing the sport. Instead, he took up hockey, telling his mother he wanted to become one of the first African American players in the NHL. That lasted for about six months because he outgrew his skates and couldn't afford a new pair.

One day at about 6 a.m., Richardson-Cook was awakened by the sound of a ball bouncing. Jason was playing basketball again.

At Arthur Hill, Richardson developed quickly into one of the state's best high school players. But in a state where most of the publicity goes to players in the Detroit-Ann Arbor area, he wasn't being noticed much beyond Saginaw.

That's when Arthur Hill coach Dave Slaggert stepped in. Slaggert put together a 15-minute highlight video of his star, mailing it to 800 coaches around Michigan who voted on the Mr. Basketball award.

"It was something I felt I could do to help him out," said Slaggert, who's retired now and whose basement is home to several mementos of Richardson's career at Arthur Hill.

Half-price Warriors jersey

Richardson is in the NBA now. He returns to Saginaw periodically, hosting a benefit golf tournament and making other contributions to charity. Stores in Saginaw have Richardson's Warriors jersey on the half-price rack. His Charlotte jersey hasn't arrived yet, although a Bobcats T-shirt with his name and No. 23 can be found.His road to professional stardom hasn't always been smooth -- he was sentenced to one year of probation in 2003 for assaulting his ex-girlfriend.

And his career in Charlotte has started unevenly as the Bobcats struggle to stay at the .500 level. Brought in to bolster the Bobcats' late-game offense, Richardson is the team's second-leading scorer, averaging 16.9 points (before Saturday's home game against Cleveland) on streaky 40 percent shooting.

And today, the fans from Saginaw will board a bus to watch him once again play in the Palace of Auburn Hills.

Bet you didn't know

• Richardson's childhood idol was Dominque Wilkins.

• His late uncle Tyrone Bowen was a backup singer to singer Gladys Knight (but after the Pips broke up).

• He has a daughter named Jaela, 8.

• He is the only player besides his boss, Michael Jordan, to win back-to-back NBA slam-dunk contests.

woow what a truly touching story

post your favorite athletes coming up through rough times story
Click to expand...

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Originally Posted by mario23407

surprised you didnt post the story of when j-rich stuck it in your butt.
Click to expand...

he couldn't post that story because found a new picture of j-rich to fap to.
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frequent S&T NTers should know what to expect when Cheezybaby makes a thread by now. com'on.
laugh.gif
 
laugh.gif
JRAIN just randomly finds new athletes to ride (Moss, Zimmerman, Gay,etc.) but Cheezybaby never cheats on jRich.
 
[table][tr][td] [h1]Monta's Small Miracle[/h1] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr][/table]
[table][tr][td]
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adlog.php


The tiny old house looke like it belonged in a circus. Painted bright green with a red-shingle roof, it appeared only big enough for two rooms, maybe a closet.

But as the screen door opened, the people began pouring out. Big ones, little ones, old ones, like the trick of the sideshow Volkswagen, they just kept piling out.

As I looked up and down the cracking street in the Georgetown section of Jackson, Mississippi, I felt certain every other house along the way, the yellow and blue and red ones, would be able to pull off the same trick. Each one bulging with life, ready to explode.

The bright green one, however, was special for it had given birth two decades before to a young man who had escaped to the NBA. Monta Ellis, the swift little guard with the Golden State Warriors, who had grown up right here, would have been one of the dozens to pile past that screen door this day, had the Warriors not made him a second-round draft choice right out of Lanier High School.

But his success story has only a little to do with basketball. It has more to do with the choices we make at an early age, some perhaps divine.

Monta, short for Montana, which is his grandfather's name, wanted nothing more as a little boy than to play the game. He devotedly watched his older brother by five years, Antwain, take Lanier High to a state championship. Monta, in fact, was a ball boy on that team.

1167881940_240p.jpg

Monta Ellis left the mean streets of Mississippi for the bright lights of the NBA.

"He could've been another T-Mac," says Monta today, referring to Tracy McGrady of the Houston Rockets. "He was that good. Six-eight, fast, good skills, man..."

And then the voice, shy and hesitant at best, trails off.

A year after Antwain and his teammates won their first state title and were on their way to a second, a close friend and teammate of his was killed in what has been claimed as a busted drug deal.

"'Twain never was the same after that," says Rosa Ellis, the remarkable single mother who raised her boys on the mean streets. "He coulda been so good, but he let all that other stuff eat him up."

Monta watched and listened. He knew what was happening, he knew how bad the neighborhood had become. Even as a child, he knew the places he really shouldn't be going, especially the park down the street. Great hoops, good flat surface, lotta action, everybody meets there to play.

"But there's guns there," he says today, "and drugs and trouble so I stayed away."

He had his grandfather nail a milk carton to a telephone pole outside that little green house and he began building his life there.

"Oh, I had the toughest time getting him in at night," laughs Rosa. "He'd just shoot and shoot and shoot, all by himself."

That learned skill was taken indoors as a young high school player, and he never looked back, a blazing star through the darkest of nights. The stories of his legend are so grand that they beg indulgence and then someone hands you a yellowed clipping.

"See? 72 that night! Man be on fire, unconscious," they laughed.

As the screen door opened, and the extended family piled out to meet us that day, a hulking figure in all black lowered his head and slowly managed to move into the sunshine. Hands deep in his pockets, he kept his eyes to one side or the other or down at his sneakers. It was a shuffle that might have been learned in prison.

After a while, with the little ones running through our legs, all bright and colorful in their holiday Golden State warm-ups, I made my way to Antwain Ellis' side.

"Whattya think of your brother?" I asked.

He frowned for a moment and then stared off into the distance.

"Always knew one of us was gonna make it," he mumbled. There seemed the hint of a smile.

"You feel good he didn't go your direction?"

He looked at me for the first time and then looked away quickly.

"Yeah, proud of that real good."

Odd what brings us to the street corners of our life, isn't it? A little brother simply follows his older brother, as so many do, and this is just another sad tale probably told only in the police blotters.

But Monta Ellis went the other way. A small miracle we can herald.
[/td] [/tr][/table]
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Originally Posted by Paul Is On Tilt

^ Why you riding Monta Ellis so hard now 5288? Because last season, it was the opposite.
Click to expand...

How old were you when you received your first basketball and what did it feel like to have your very own?
ME: I never had my own basketball. We played with tin balls or we would find a kick ball to play with. I never had my own basketball.


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surprised you didnt post the story of when j-rich stuck it in your butt.
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.

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[h3]Re: POST the touching stories ofathletes warriors/ex-warriors that make u cry(bc the warriorsdidn't make the playoffs and Warrior fans still need to shine)....no +#*%[/h3]
Click to expand...
 
[h3]Re: POST the touching stories ofathletes warriors/ex-warriors that make u cry(bc the warriors didn't make the playoffs and Warrior fans still need to shine)....no +#*%[/h3]
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very clever
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Click to expand...
 
seriously..is j-rich your father or something?? You ride him more than you ride women
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