I'm currently blogging while trying to avoid the blinding glare of A-Rod's butler-like spiffy white gloves as he runs around the bases...

In honor of the 48 points hoisted up by Lebron James in a positively Jordan-ian performance in last night’s pivotal Game Five of the Cavaliers/Pistons playoffs series, Hacks with Haggs figured that we would go ask resident Sox hoops junkie Kyle Snyder about James, his brushes with basketball greatness and a couple of excellent playground stories.

Snyder was a standout basketball and baseball player at Riverview High School in Riverview, Florida, where he played as a 6-foot-8 shooting guard before agreeing to a baseball scholarship with the University of North Carolina.

Snyder played plenty of pickup hoops with future NBA players like Vince Carter and Antwan Jamieson as well as Shammond Williams while on the Chapel Hill campus in the late 1990’s, so we’ll first let him tell us about his thoughts on Lebron and then more on the time he drained a three-pointer in Vinsanity’s “eye.”

“I was actually really happy for Lebron when I saw the highlights because I’ve always thought that he was unfairly compared to Michael Jordan from the time he came into the league. Lebron’s doing amazing things right now, and he’s the same age that Jordan was when he came into the league. I think sometimes people forget that.”

As far as the pick-up hoops goes, Snyder considered trying out as a walk-on to the Tar Heels basketball team where he thinks he would have been able to come off the bench and been a contributor to the stacked hoops team.

But then he met with some success on the baseball diamond during his sophomore year in Chapel Hill, and the baseball coach told him there wouldn’t be any shot of him walking on the hoops team.

“I used to play pick-up basketball with those guys all the time, and I played with them enough to know that I could ‘play with them.’

“I remember one time when I actually dunked on Shammond Williams on a fast break, and then another time I nailed a three-pointer right in Vince Carter’s eye right toward the end of a game. It was actually a big shot that our team one and the guys on his team started to give him a hard time about it. He covered me and shut me down for the next two games that we played after that. He was by far the best hoop player I’ve ever gone up against.”

I'll share the story of the best hoop player I've ever shared the B-ball court with in a little bit...and the WNBA certainly doesn't count. Any other good playground hoop "Brush with greatness" stories out there?

 

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