Chamique
My Story
Chapter One
My story always begins in Astoria, in the housing project in Queens where I grew
up playing ball with the guys, my grandmother watching out for me through a
bedroom window in our apartment. When people write stories about me, they always
call it something of a desolate place, my building one of a bunch of
battered-looking high-rises grouped together along the East River, with the
basketball courts in the center. There's a lot of graffiti, and I suppose a lot
of drugs, if you wanted them and knew where to look. I never did, and no one
ever bothered me.
It wasn't a pretty place, but that's not something I really noticed. To me it
was just home, the best home I'd ever had. I had the basketball courts just a
few steps outside the front door of my bu ... read full excerpt from Chamique: On Family, Focus, and Basketball ebook
