Endangered Hoops

Rudy Gay, Dime #25

*This feature can be found in the latest issue of Dime Magazine on newsstands now*

The man in the front passenger seat shifts his weight as we pull up, then starts talking again.

“I know exactly when it was,” Devin Ferguson says as he adjusts the fit of his hat. “I know exactly what he did…”

They were 11. It was a rec league game. The ball was drifting out of bounds outside of the three-point line. Rudy Gay caught up to it in the corner, cuffed it with his left hand, and threw it at the rim backwards. It went in as the shot clock buzzer sounded.

“I’ll never forget,” Devin says, chuckling. “It was me and this boy named Kenny Allen, and we was like ‘he going to the NBA’. I swear to God.”

Everyone steps out onto a couple of neighborhood basketball courts. A community center is to your left, and the ocean is so close you could throw a basketball into the water. Young kids are playing a casual game on one of the hoops, stopping every 20 seconds to look at us. Is that…? They seem to be asking themselves. There are shouts from the parking lot. People know he’s here. They see the cameras, the crew of people and that one really tall guy. But no one’s overbearing. This is his home. Earlier in the afternoon, we walked across a street towards Sollers Point Tech High School and people drove by as if this was nothing. Read more…