I have great memories of the Flint City Pro-Am from back in the not-so-distant past. It wasn’t an all-too-rare occurence for me to be at the gym at Northwestern on Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. It was that good, at least for a time.
The Pro-Am has seen better days, but it’s still fun to reminisce — like, for instance, when GLH columnist Marcellus Miller got crowned by Jason Richardson. That holds a special place in my heart because I got it on tape, in long-lasting DVD format. It was on the highlight reel for the documentary film “Flint Star” that came out several years back.Check this out from Mlive’s It’s Just Sports blog:
I remember one time you walked in the gym late and turned the gym out. You were pulling three’s from half court.
You know what? I like to go places where people love basketball and display my God-given ability. I mean, a lot of times the people in Flint don’t get to come down here and watch us play in person so obviously Mateen (Cleaves) was a teammate of mine at the time and a very good friend and still is to this day and he invited me to come down and once I came down there and seen how the people enjoyed the game and seen how packed the gym is I made it a thing to try to come down there as much as I possibly can because I loved it.
I was actually at the game mentioned in the blog, and it was crazy. Atkins was raining shots from like 35 feet.
Just for fun, here are some of my favorites on the pro-am circuit from back in the day. Some still show up while others stay home: Cory Hightower, Darvin Ham, Chucky Atkins, Morris Peterson, Mateen Cleaves, Jason Richardson, Nick Stapleton, William Hatcher, Lamar Rice, Kelvin Torbert, and Maurice Ager.
You had to call me out, huh? LOL! At least it had to be a NBA slam dunk champ to get your boy! Those were the days though…
I remember going to a game at Northwestern with my sons. Flint Pro-am versus Columbus Pro Am. It was in the summer, hot as heck and the place was packed. That was a great experience.
And I don’t use the word great loosely. You could feel the energy when you walked into the gym.
I was at that game where Chucky should up at halftime. It was seriously outta control. C-High was my all-time favorite to watch at the pro-am. I thought for sure he was gonna play a few years in the league. Only if Kobe was a lil more grown up then…