http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/09/sp...partner=EXCITE
In the Coney Island Footsteps of Marbury
By VINCENT M. MALLOZZI
Published: February 9, 2007
Just minutes before the start of a game between the Brooklyn high school rivals Lincoln and Boys and Girls on Jan. 30, nearly 200 people were still waiting in the cold to experience the thrill of Coney Island’s latest attraction, Lance Stephenson.
Lance Stephenson, who had 30 points against Boys and Girls, draws inspiration from Lincoln’s own Stephon Marbury and Sebastian Telfair. More Photos »
“If you don’t have a ticket, you may as well go home!” one of a dozen police officers guarding the door at Lincoln shouted. “There are no more seats available!”
Inside the tiny gymnasium, 400 others had already gathered to see Stephenson, a 6-foot-5½, 205-pound hoops prodigy who is seen as the next great New York City point guard, following in the stutter-steps of high school stars like Mark Jackson, Kenny Anderson and Lincoln’s own Stephon Marbury and Sebastian Telfair.
Marbury and Telfair, Coney Island cousins, serve as inspiration to Stephenson, a 16-year-old sophomore who lives 15 blocks from the Surfside Gardens housing project where Marbury and Telfair were raised.
“I talk to them a lot,” Stephenson said. “They always tell me to keep focused and to keep my grades up.”
Stephenson recently received a progress report from Marbury.
“I think he’ll have the opportunity to be in that elite class of New York City point guard legends,” said Marbury, whose Knicks play Telfair’s Boston Celtics four times a year. “I think he just has to continue to do what he’s been doing. He’s dominating right now, and he needs to make sure he goes to college with the mind-set of dominating there. As far as the N.B.A. is concerned, it’s just timing.”
Tom Konchalski, the longtime high school basketball recruiting expert who is based in New York, said Stephenson’s fellow Coney Islanders were giving him the kind of valuable advice he needed to stay grounded — and become successful.
“Lance has a chance to be a special player, to be the next great one,” Konchalski said. “And while he has the talent to be great, in order to get there, he must learn how to deflect all the special attention that surrounds him and to keep the number of voices inside his head to a minimum.”
“There are so many minefields on the way to someone’s destiny,” Konchalski added. “Especially in New York.”
Stephenson, who has been told by his doctor that he should reach a height of 6-9, has a basketball reputation growing as fast as his body. During the summer of 2005, he was showcased at the ABCD Camp in Hackensack, N.J., as one of the nation’s top young players, and he has since become a hot commodity on the city’s A.A.U. circuit. He is already considered basketball royalty at the famed Rucker Park in Harlem, where his nickname is Sir Lance a Lot.
Stephenson made headlines in September 2005, with an 11th-hour decision to leave Bishop Loughlin High School and enroll at Lincoln. The decision left some to assume that he may have been influenced by Lincoln Coach Dwayne Morton, who also coaches the Juice All-Stars, an A.A.U. team that Stephenson joined after playing for the New York Panthers. The Panthers, another A.A.U. team, have close ties to Bishop Loughlin. In discussing the last-minute leap to Lincoln, Lance Stephenson Sr. said that his son merely had a change of heart.
“Coming to Lincoln was Lance’s call, no one else’s,” he said. “This is what he wants to do with his life, and he’s going for it.”
Against an undefeated Boys and Girls team that was in first place in the Public Schools Athletic League’s AA Division and had defeated Lincoln in December by a point, Stephenson showed why people were willing to stand in long lines on a frigid winter evening to watch him play. He displayed a vast arsenal of jaw-dropping aerial moves and eye-opening ground attacks en route to 30 points, 12 rebounds and 8 assists.
“I was just in a zone out there,” Stephenson told a large group of reporters who surrounded him after the game. “I think I did a lot today.”
When the dust cleared, Lincoln (19-5, 13-1), the defending P.S.A.L. city champion and winner of four of the past five city title games, had won easily, 90-74, serving notice that it was still the team to beat in New York. Stephenson, who was averaging 26 points, 12 rebounds and 8 assists going into last night’s game against Grady, continued to convince college coaches that he is capable of lifting a team on his muscular shoulders and carrying it to a Final Four.
“I’m thinking about a lot of big-time colleges right now,” Stephenson said. “But before that, I want to win a state championship here at Lincoln.”
Glenn Braica, the top assistant to St. John’s Coach Norm Roberts, was sitting in the crowd that evening. Though N.C.A.A. coaches are not permitted to discuss high school players unless they have signed a national letter of intent to play at a particular university, Braica’s body language said all that was needed to know about his, or anyone else’s, interest in Stephenson.
After a long stretch on the bench because of early foul trouble and a short-temperedness with teammates who were not passing him the ball when and where he wanted it, Stephenson returned with 4 minutes 11 seconds remaining before halftime. Braica’s eyebrows shot north when Stephenson burst between two defenders in the lane and leaped high for an alley-oop pass, laying the ball softly into the net.
Stephenson raced back on defense, soared above the pack to corral a rebound, wheeled into open space, sidestepped an opponent at midcourt with a crossover dribble that energized the crowd and, through a maze of scrambling defenders around the foul line, threaded a perfect pass to a teammate streaking down the lane that resulted in another basket. Braica gently nodded in approval.
With 2:57 left in a game that had already been decided, Stephenson gave Braica and the rest of the crowd a mighty display of his speed and strength, racing ahead of the field for a dunk that seemed to bruise not just the egos of the powerful Boys and Girls team, but the rim itself.
Two days later, against South Shore High, Stephenson had 29 points, 12 rebounds and 6 assists in leading the Railsplitters to a 76-53 victory. Last night, he had a triple-double (30 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists) in a 91-63 rout at Grady. “This is a parent’s dream come true,” Stephenson Sr. said of his son’s emergence. “What Lance is doing out there is the product of 100 percent hard work.”
Each morning before school, father and son partake in what the elder Stephenson, a 38-year-old construction worker and former basketball player at California-Santa Barbara, jokingly calls “the Coney Island workout.”
Their regimen begins with 100 push-ups and is followed by five trips up and down the 15 flights of stairs of their apartment complex at West 28th Street and Mermaid Avenue.
After the stairs, father and son start jogging the beach, mile after sandy mile. “I’m trying to get Lance down to running a six-minute mile,” his father said. “He runs a seven-minute mile right now, but he’s getting there.”
Morton, a former Long Island University star who played at Lincoln in the mid-1980s, said that before “getting there,” Stephenson still had some considerable work to do.
“He has to learn how to play defense, and to stay in control on the basketball court,” Morton said. “When I watch Lance, as skilled and strong as he already is, I sometimes forget that he’s only a sophomore, that he’s just a 16-year-old kid.”
After the game against Boys and Girls, Stephenson discussed his on-court demeanor, which can dampen easily if a teammate fails to deliver the ball to him in a timely manner.
“I know I yell too much out there, but my teammates know I don’t really mean it,” he said. “We have a whole team of talented players here, and I would never disrespect any of them. It’s just another one of those areas where I need to improve.”
Morton said that Stephenson, whose height, weight and athletic ability make him nearly impossible to defend as a point guard at the high school level, would continue to play that position.
“At 6-9, with his skills, he would be most effective and, really, unstoppable as a point guard,” Morton said. “If you double-team him, he hits the open man. If he’s not double-teamed, he can take you outside or drive right by you, and he’s strong enough to take you down low if he has to.”
Shades of Magic Johnson, perhaps?
“Lance’s potential is there, and it’s unbelievable, but let’s not call him the greatest this or the greatest that, at least not yet,” Morton said.
------
Anyone remember where Tinsley went to school?
In the Coney Island Footsteps of Marbury
By VINCENT M. MALLOZZI
Published: February 9, 2007
Just minutes before the start of a game between the Brooklyn high school rivals Lincoln and Boys and Girls on Jan. 30, nearly 200 people were still waiting in the cold to experience the thrill of Coney Island’s latest attraction, Lance Stephenson.
Lance Stephenson, who had 30 points against Boys and Girls, draws inspiration from Lincoln’s own Stephon Marbury and Sebastian Telfair. More Photos »
“If you don’t have a ticket, you may as well go home!” one of a dozen police officers guarding the door at Lincoln shouted. “There are no more seats available!”
Inside the tiny gymnasium, 400 others had already gathered to see Stephenson, a 6-foot-5½, 205-pound hoops prodigy who is seen as the next great New York City point guard, following in the stutter-steps of high school stars like Mark Jackson, Kenny Anderson and Lincoln’s own Stephon Marbury and Sebastian Telfair.
Marbury and Telfair, Coney Island cousins, serve as inspiration to Stephenson, a 16-year-old sophomore who lives 15 blocks from the Surfside Gardens housing project where Marbury and Telfair were raised.
“I talk to them a lot,” Stephenson said. “They always tell me to keep focused and to keep my grades up.”
Stephenson recently received a progress report from Marbury.
“I think he’ll have the opportunity to be in that elite class of New York City point guard legends,” said Marbury, whose Knicks play Telfair’s Boston Celtics four times a year. “I think he just has to continue to do what he’s been doing. He’s dominating right now, and he needs to make sure he goes to college with the mind-set of dominating there. As far as the N.B.A. is concerned, it’s just timing.”
Tom Konchalski, the longtime high school basketball recruiting expert who is based in New York, said Stephenson’s fellow Coney Islanders were giving him the kind of valuable advice he needed to stay grounded — and become successful.
“Lance has a chance to be a special player, to be the next great one,” Konchalski said. “And while he has the talent to be great, in order to get there, he must learn how to deflect all the special attention that surrounds him and to keep the number of voices inside his head to a minimum.”
“There are so many minefields on the way to someone’s destiny,” Konchalski added. “Especially in New York.”
Stephenson, who has been told by his doctor that he should reach a height of 6-9, has a basketball reputation growing as fast as his body. During the summer of 2005, he was showcased at the ABCD Camp in Hackensack, N.J., as one of the nation’s top young players, and he has since become a hot commodity on the city’s A.A.U. circuit. He is already considered basketball royalty at the famed Rucker Park in Harlem, where his nickname is Sir Lance a Lot.
Stephenson made headlines in September 2005, with an 11th-hour decision to leave Bishop Loughlin High School and enroll at Lincoln. The decision left some to assume that he may have been influenced by Lincoln Coach Dwayne Morton, who also coaches the Juice All-Stars, an A.A.U. team that Stephenson joined after playing for the New York Panthers. The Panthers, another A.A.U. team, have close ties to Bishop Loughlin. In discussing the last-minute leap to Lincoln, Lance Stephenson Sr. said that his son merely had a change of heart.
“Coming to Lincoln was Lance’s call, no one else’s,” he said. “This is what he wants to do with his life, and he’s going for it.”
Against an undefeated Boys and Girls team that was in first place in the Public Schools Athletic League’s AA Division and had defeated Lincoln in December by a point, Stephenson showed why people were willing to stand in long lines on a frigid winter evening to watch him play. He displayed a vast arsenal of jaw-dropping aerial moves and eye-opening ground attacks en route to 30 points, 12 rebounds and 8 assists.
“I was just in a zone out there,” Stephenson told a large group of reporters who surrounded him after the game. “I think I did a lot today.”
When the dust cleared, Lincoln (19-5, 13-1), the defending P.S.A.L. city champion and winner of four of the past five city title games, had won easily, 90-74, serving notice that it was still the team to beat in New York. Stephenson, who was averaging 26 points, 12 rebounds and 8 assists going into last night’s game against Grady, continued to convince college coaches that he is capable of lifting a team on his muscular shoulders and carrying it to a Final Four.
“I’m thinking about a lot of big-time colleges right now,” Stephenson said. “But before that, I want to win a state championship here at Lincoln.”
Glenn Braica, the top assistant to St. John’s Coach Norm Roberts, was sitting in the crowd that evening. Though N.C.A.A. coaches are not permitted to discuss high school players unless they have signed a national letter of intent to play at a particular university, Braica’s body language said all that was needed to know about his, or anyone else’s, interest in Stephenson.
After a long stretch on the bench because of early foul trouble and a short-temperedness with teammates who were not passing him the ball when and where he wanted it, Stephenson returned with 4 minutes 11 seconds remaining before halftime. Braica’s eyebrows shot north when Stephenson burst between two defenders in the lane and leaped high for an alley-oop pass, laying the ball softly into the net.
Stephenson raced back on defense, soared above the pack to corral a rebound, wheeled into open space, sidestepped an opponent at midcourt with a crossover dribble that energized the crowd and, through a maze of scrambling defenders around the foul line, threaded a perfect pass to a teammate streaking down the lane that resulted in another basket. Braica gently nodded in approval.
With 2:57 left in a game that had already been decided, Stephenson gave Braica and the rest of the crowd a mighty display of his speed and strength, racing ahead of the field for a dunk that seemed to bruise not just the egos of the powerful Boys and Girls team, but the rim itself.
Two days later, against South Shore High, Stephenson had 29 points, 12 rebounds and 6 assists in leading the Railsplitters to a 76-53 victory. Last night, he had a triple-double (30 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists) in a 91-63 rout at Grady. “This is a parent’s dream come true,” Stephenson Sr. said of his son’s emergence. “What Lance is doing out there is the product of 100 percent hard work.”
Each morning before school, father and son partake in what the elder Stephenson, a 38-year-old construction worker and former basketball player at California-Santa Barbara, jokingly calls “the Coney Island workout.”
Their regimen begins with 100 push-ups and is followed by five trips up and down the 15 flights of stairs of their apartment complex at West 28th Street and Mermaid Avenue.
After the stairs, father and son start jogging the beach, mile after sandy mile. “I’m trying to get Lance down to running a six-minute mile,” his father said. “He runs a seven-minute mile right now, but he’s getting there.”
Morton, a former Long Island University star who played at Lincoln in the mid-1980s, said that before “getting there,” Stephenson still had some considerable work to do.
“He has to learn how to play defense, and to stay in control on the basketball court,” Morton said. “When I watch Lance, as skilled and strong as he already is, I sometimes forget that he’s only a sophomore, that he’s just a 16-year-old kid.”
After the game against Boys and Girls, Stephenson discussed his on-court demeanor, which can dampen easily if a teammate fails to deliver the ball to him in a timely manner.
“I know I yell too much out there, but my teammates know I don’t really mean it,” he said. “We have a whole team of talented players here, and I would never disrespect any of them. It’s just another one of those areas where I need to improve.”
Morton said that Stephenson, whose height, weight and athletic ability make him nearly impossible to defend as a point guard at the high school level, would continue to play that position.
“At 6-9, with his skills, he would be most effective and, really, unstoppable as a point guard,” Morton said. “If you double-team him, he hits the open man. If he’s not double-teamed, he can take you outside or drive right by you, and he’s strong enough to take you down low if he has to.”
Shades of Magic Johnson, perhaps?
“Lance’s potential is there, and it’s unbelievable, but let’s not call him the greatest this or the greatest that, at least not yet,” Morton said.
------
Anyone remember where Tinsley went to school?
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