Prep School Transfers Impact Flint Prep Hoops and Culture

Flint, Michigan, has long been touted as a hotbed for high school basketball. Indeed, Flint has produced some of the top basketball talents in the nation. Many Flint athletes are playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and at major colleges and universities. Flint basketball players have had lucrative careers playing internationally.

Flint area residents are accustomed to watching high school talents honing their skills in high school gyms against their favorite teams. However, watching those most likely to be the next NBA All-Star or college All-American player may be a thing of the past.

A new trend has emerged in which teenagers as early as 10th-grade ship off for Prep Schools that promote basketball and play games against the best competition in America. These Prep Schools position themselves to show off all those talented players to college and professional scouts. 

Brandon Green, ABC-12 Sports Director, joins Radio Free Flint to discuss the disappearing high school superstars who transfer to Prep Schools. We discuss the implications for young people placing a bet on basketball and eschewing the traditional path of community education. Is it too early to let teenagers put all their eggs in one basket and bet that this career choice will materialize? We know that only a tiny percentage of high school basketball players will sign on at an NCAA Division 1 College or University. Even a smaller percentage of college players ever make it to the pros.

We discuss whether Flint has seen its better days of glory with the likes of the Flintstones, the Michigan State University national champs led by 5 Flint High School basketball players.  

Please join us and meet Brandon Green, the new Sports Director for WJRT ABC-12 in Flint, as we discuss his welcome to Flint, his passion for basketball, and his love of High School athletics. 

Read these interesting articles on High School Athletes and Prep Schools.

•  Flint Hoopers Lost in the Shadows by Brandon Green, ABC-12, Sports Director. May 26, 2022
• Public prep transfers have taken over high school sports in Connecticut, but is that a good

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Okay, this is Arthur Bush listening to Radio Free Flint on the air here with Brandon uh Green from ABC 12. He's the sports director. I want to welcome Brandon. Good morning.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Good morning.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Brandon, you're from Maryland, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:26

I grew up in Maryland, about 20 minutes south of DC. So I grew up in like this huge basketball culture, which is the DMV, where I remember seeing like Kevin Durant in high school, Jeff Green, Victor Olin Depot. That's just naming a few. There's so many great talented basketball players that have come out of the PG County, DC area, Virginia over the years. And probably ladies and right now is Hunter Dickens and Terrence Williams over in Michigan. I remember covering them in high school when they went to Damantha and Gonzaga. So I always loved basketball.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

And where did you go to college at?

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Hood College. It's in upstate Maryland.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Where did you get this uh attraction for sports and basketball?

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Uh it was just where I grew up, played basketball all throughout high school, all throughout my childhood, really. And then where I grew up is the DMV area, being around that basketball culture, you kind of just it's it's just like in you. I don't know how to explain it, but you just fall in love with this game because it it's everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Now, when you had a chance to come to Flint, did you know it was a basketball, a basketball city?

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yeah, um, not as much as I do now, but just from looking at stuff and doing research on ABC 12 before I came here, you get a sense of like, yeah, this this is a sports town.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yeah, that's that's a for sure, maybe an understatement. Brandon, in your work at channel 12, you cover high school athletes as well, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

I think I read someplace where you said maybe it was your employer's website, said that you love to do your job in a way that that makes all these kids that you're interviewing think they're on ESPN. I get a kick out of that.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

When you interview kids, this may be their one and only time that they're ever on TV. Why not do it up big for them and their families? And when you get into that mindset about people, and that's what we all do at the end of the day, is just talk to people all day. So when you start thinking about it like that, you really start to really put, in my opinion, really start to put your best foot forward.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

You also, when when you were, you know, your career has progressed, you didn't start in Flint, you as I understand it, you started in South Dakota.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Yeah. Sioux Falls.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

That's an odd place to start for uh kid that loves basketball so much, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 3:05

A little bit. Uh Sioux Falls, don't don't get me wrong, they they love their sports there too. Um, whether it's football, hockey, they love basketball, all it all year round.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

How is Sioux Falls different than Flint?

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Um, just from let me ask it the other way.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

How's Flint different than Sioux Falls?

SPEAKER_00 3:28

For me, Flint's a little bit faster. I feel like Sioux Falls is like um real Midwest, where it's like a real tight knit, like everybody knows each other kind of thing because it's so small. Yeah, Sioux Falls is nice, uh, especially downtown Sioux Falls.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

I don't think you like about Flint. What was attractive to you to come here?

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Um, for me, it was the job because I saw the opportunity to be able to cover Michigan and state, plus get your fit high school sports too. Um I don't think you could really beat it. It's a real sneaky sports market. It may not be the highest, but when you start thinking about what you get to cover, it's it's one of the gems in the U.S.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

What attracted me to uh calling you up and asking you if you'd be a guest on Radio Free Flint was the fact you wrote this story about hoopers getting lost in the shadows out as flint hoopers who have who you know were in the basketball scene around here in in large numbers over the past, you know, since the 50s really, but in the TV era, uh we've had tremendous attention paid to our athletes here. And you wrote the story that kind of talks about the transition of high school sports.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

And I guess just to preface when we talk about this story, how it how it really came about was just watching how things changed. I remember the first thing I saw was Jalen Terry from Beecher. He had offers from like Oregon and Michigan State. He ended up going to Oregon first before leaving and going to DePaul. But then you look at a kid like uh Keon Menifield Jr. from last year, with the same school with Beecher, and he wasn't getting the same looks. But so it was like, what's what's the problem here? Why isn't um he getting the same looks? Why isn't Carmelo Harris getting the same looks? And before I knew it, you just start diving a little deeper into the Monte Allen Johnson stories, where this kid is Mateen Cleve's cousin, but he isn't getting the same looks that his cousin did uh almost 30 years ago. So when you just start looking at stuff like that, and then when you have kids like Trey McKinney leaving the city before they even entered high school to get a jump start on his high school career, going to Orchard Lake St. Mary's, it just it all becomes a melting pot. You have to wait, wade through all that and try to figure out what's really going on.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

In your article, you did describe Flint as having been a hotbed for basketball for the last 20 years. And it was also, as I think were your words, a hotbed for the NBA. We uh we currently have several uh D1 college players. We have, I think in your story, you wrote that we had four current NBA players that all come from Flint. In some ways, you know, we've talked a lot on this podcast about the golden age of Flint and reminiscing about you know how much uh sports means to our city. But you almost talk about it as the end of a golden era that we've been through. And it's interesting generationally, you call the golden era the 1980s, but there's people that you know were tremendous athletes and professional football players. You look back at Paul Krauss, you look at Paul Storoba at the University of Michigan, later went to the Green Bay Packers and played. Uh, but you go back into that era with Don Coleman, you know, the great teams that Michigan State had in the 1950s. Later, you know, you go into uh Glenn Rice era. But I was fascinated by the statement that you made in this article that you wrote and published on TV, that these four four players who are currently in the NBA from Flint, not a single one played in Flint in high school.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Uh no, that's correct. I said people don't connect with most of them because a few of them didn't. Like uh Miles Bridges was here his freshman year, and then he left. Um, Monte Morris was here his whole career, but Kyle Kuzma only played about one year, but then Jael McGee didn't play here at all.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

And and JaVel McGee obviously is probably as recognized as Flynn as they get, with his mother and his aunt, Pam and Paula McGee, who were fabulous basketball players and fabulous people, by the way. What I found interesting about your story, we haven't Flint went from four high schools to one. You attributed that to obviously Flint's population has dropped, the city has. And you know, we had the water crisis, and some people may have left the city. I don't know that I'm familiar with those statistics, but I'll take you at your word for that. And then there was the the layoffs at General Motors, which contributed to all of this. I think you called this whole trend of going to prep schools uh kind of a snowball effect.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

It's not just one happened. Since the 80s, the population's been on a steady decline. But now, when you start thinking about school size, like these schools just started going away because of all these things. When, and then when you really start looking at it from a basketball standpoint, when you have a kid that's supposed to be really good, you want to play against the best competition. And right now, that's not in Flint. Best competition is you got to go down to Detroit, play Detroit schools, or like go to a prep school and get on a national schedule and play these teams, which is why a lot of a lot of kids for their AAU teams, they right now they're traveling all over the country, going to all these big tournaments, trying to get in front of as many eyes as they can right now.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

What is it in the culture of not just Flint, but the country, really? Uh, because this isn't this isn't just a Flint problem. This is a problem for schools all over the nation, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Yeah, because when you start thinking about prep schools and private schools, kids are able to really get a jump start on life. Um, they really get exposed to stuff early when you leave out of your comfort zone, which is good in a sense, but it's also taking away talent from the local community where it's not like a feeder system like it used to be, where everybody either went to northern or central or southwestern or one of those four-funk schools. Now everybody's going to uh Grand Blank, Carmen Ainsworth, Hamity, Powers, everybody's the talent's being more spread out. It's not just coming from one central area anymore. But like you said, that is happening around the country, especially how congested the market is getting for college basketball, and these kids trying to get as much recognition as they can so they could set themselves up for their best route of success.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

I realized after I did some research on this, after I listened to your story, that really we're we're not alone. I mean, this is a problem that affects a lot of cities across the country and and communities, and uh and it may even be embedded in the culture. The culture's changing, so is sports.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Is that about right? Yeah, because it's it's a huge shift that we're literally in the middle of. So I don't think you can really see it because we're in the middle of it, but everything is changing from just even how the high school game is played to how these kids are marketed to how these kids are recruited because I think even we go back a couple of years, everyone used to be on Huddle and put out Huddle mixtapes and send it out to coaches. Now kids are getting professional video editors to edit up a highlight tape so they put it on Twitter and Instagram.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

And it doesn't matter, it doesn't necessarily have to be that they're gonna go to a D1 school. A lot of these kids are sending this stuff to you know the smaller schools.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yeah, so when you start thinking about it like that, about how everything's changed, and then you bring in um the COVID year where everyone just had to sit, and then kids got all the college kids got a COVID year back, and then the transfer, everything just starts beating down on these high school kids where it's hard for them to get seen.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Now, in your article that you wrote, you said that there were about 4,600 scholarships, and I assume that was nationally. Yeah, and there were about a half a million high school athletes competing for these scholarships. That's that's uh some tall odds for people.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Yeah, that's why they say um it's the one percent that make it to division one, because that number that I got from is just every school gets 13, everyone, every D1 school gets 13 scholarships. So then you just multiply that and you get that figure I got, which I think was like 4,000. Just for basketball, these numbers is that this is just strictly for basketball. Oh, okay. Um, because the NCAA did a well, they do this basically every year where they see how many high school basketball players are in the nation. Um, and for this past couple years, it's been around the 500,000 mark. When you start thinking about that, there's 500,000 high school basketball players, 4,000 about a little more about four, 4,500 scholarships. Then you add in the scholarships that are already spoken for uh with the returners and everything, and then you add in the COVID year, most of these scholarships are gone. Um, when you this is just strictly for the D1 level.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Um work its way out of the system, but it still isn't it's a drop in the bucket, really, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Yeah, like uh you gotta now you gotta be the one percent of the one percent.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

And of those people that go to, I mean, you may be able to play at at uh you know the field houses across the country and the big schools at Duke or Michigan or Michigan State or Northwestern, but even of that group, it's still a very small percentage that ever go to the professional ranks. Yep. I don't know what that percentage is, but I've been told that it, you know, it's about the same as what you were just talking about. There's a lot of dreams that don't get matched. But I must say, in fairness, we've had a lot of Flynn athletes that went on and had fabulous long careers overseas. And we have a lot of basketball. I in fact, I thought one day that I might uh do a podcast on that. How many kids are going uh to other places? You know, Marquise Gray started out and he sounded like a world traveler. I mean, he had you know, he went to seven or eight countries in several continents. I think he even played in Japan, uh in Israel and Turkey, and and I've talked to other athletes who played in other exotics, Greece, uh another and Spain. So they they do, you know, they do get, and I just read a story uh about some Michigan State kids that have been playing together in other uh they graduated, Tice. I think Tice was one of them. I can't remember the other kid. Uh so they've had successful careers and they've been, you know, they've done well financially as as well. And some of them told me, I think Marty Embryott was told me that he'd rather go play overseas than in the United States. He liked it more.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Yeah, there are there's a lot of opportunities to play um professional basketball all around the world.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

One of the things, the statistics that you quoted in your story was uh you said there were about a thousand kids in this transfer portal, which allows tell us what the transfer portal is and why it's significant.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

So the transfer portal is um basically like free agency in any sport um where anybody could go anywhere. You just put your name in this portal, and coaches can see you, see who you are, what you did. So the transfer portal made its debut back in 2018, but now it's really picked up traction where you could go on different sites and see, because there are sites tracking this, how many kids have entered into the transfer portal.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

And at one point, yeah, these are kids that for whatever reason decide they don't want to stay where they were looking for college, they didn't get to play enough minutes or they were too far away from home.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

And one of the changes is that they could go straight and they don't they could go from one campus to another and play. Um, because it used to be you had to sit out a year of eligibility, like you had to give up eligibility in order to do that, but now you don't have to. You could just go from one thing to another and just play. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Well, it got me riled up when I was sitting in my comfortable chair in my living room listening to you talk about this stuff. My first reaction was that doesn't anybody value staying at home anymore? You know, you're talking about these youngsters that are, you know, juniors in high school. I don't know how old that is, probably 50 years old. And all of a sudden now they want to go to Phoenix, want to go to a lot of them go to Florida at the IM school. And I thought to myself, I said, man, what is that? Why why why are we changing and encouraging kids to like bust up what could be some of the best years so they'll at least was for my growing influence, some of the best years.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Yeah, it's to it's all about what's best for the kid now. As much as I mean selfishly, I want these kids to stay so I could cover them. But I understood Jada Nunn wanted to go to Dream City and Phoenix while Amonte is going to Dream City and Phoenix, it's because they're trying to set themselves up for their best life. They want to gain that exposure and go to the best school that they can. Because for me, there's no way that you could tell me that Amonte Allen Johnson, who was the SVL MVP, helped lead Graham Blaine to a state championship, and he only has one D1 off. No, like this kid is so skilled. It doesn't always show up in the boxboard, but he is a tremendous defender, like can guard some of the best point guards and guards in the state and completely take them out the game, but then he's still giving you 12, 14 points with five rebounds and five assists a game. Like, there's no way that this kid shouldn't be at least a high major or low major D1, like and have all these offers, or Carmelo Harris, a kid that averaged about 27 points for a beecher team that they had to go to Breslin to lose. Like he never lost a home game in his career. Like when you start thinking about kids like that, nothing against Wayne State where Carmelo is going, because Wayne State is a great school, it's a great fit for Carmelo, but he should have more offers than what he had. When you start thinking about it from the kids' standpoint, you really get it because they're trying to do what's best for them. Like Jacob.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

What I think about it is the kids' point of view, and that is there's other, you know, is it bad to get? I mean, kids are starting to think like adults. I mean, they're narrowing the road that they're traveling. And when you look at the odds of success, I mean, these kids obviously could play at some Division I school someplace and probably will. But when you look at what a narrow road they're trying to maneuver, they really are putting a lot on a risky bet. Instead, it comes at a cost that uh, and this is where I started computing. We used to value our neighborhood. I grew up in Flint and we played basketball or baseball or football every single day. I mean, that was just part of our culture. We didn't have our parents come and tell us, you know, bring us orange slices and tell us to take a time out and sit in the middle of the field with our legs crossed. We, you know, when we got done playing ball, we went to the drugstore and got some bottle of pop or something, but we learned to play together in the neighborhood. And so what what you're saying is, and what was disturbing to me is that, you know, kids have friends in school. They, you know, they find their first girlfriend, they, you know, uh the advantage is, at least for me, was you know, I had all my friends from my own neighborhood. We had our class reunion for Southwestern, which is 50, is coming up in the at the 40th. I think about two thirds of them were from my elementary. So I mean a kid that's moving to Phoenix, he's starting to think like an adult at 16, 15. He's gonna give up all that. I don't know, maybe I'm off base there, but just it struck me as odd. So I guess the the question I have is have we gotten to the point where the lack of there's a lack of belief that dreams can come true in Flint?

SPEAKER_00 21:14

I don't think we gotten to that point. I just think for what it is right now, everybody's making their best decision because we're not even through COVID yet. Like it's still here. Nothing, I know everyone's saying we're back to normal, but we're not. We're still waiting through the repercussions of what happened, of kid these kids losing a year. So it's just what it is right now. I think everything, in my opinion, will reset itself and we'll go back to a sense of normalcy when you start thinking about kids high school and then getting the offers that they want. But right now, these kids have from what they can get. Like, let me put it like this. So in AAU, you get seen by all these coaches, all the college coaches come to one area and or one tournament, and they could see all the kids they want. So when you start thinking about it like that, and thinking about these kids wanting to play a national schedule, to get that same sense all year round and not just in the summertime. So it starts to make sense like, hey, I could go to Texas where I know that we're gonna be playing the top teams in the country, and then their coaches are gonna be there looking at them, but I could get a look too. So it just increases, which is something that can't happen in Mission because the MHSAA is not going to allow you to play a national schedule and be a member school. When you start thinking about it like that, it really does become a business decision for these kids when they're thinking about their future.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

You know, Brandon, I remember my kids all played basketball in school, powers. And uh my boy, I remember watching my boy went up to Saginaw when they had some summer competition with the kids up in Saginaw, and it was an invitational. And I remember in that gym, I can't remember all the all the coaches, but there was, you know, there were several major coaches, top 10, what I'd call top 10 coaches, who came to watch a guy named Draymond Green. Uh, and he wasn't really, I'm sure he he was good, but he wasn't, I don't think he was the star of the show back then. I mean, he was a different, you know, his body was different and he was different. I just think, you know, when when you look at the history of Flint, the history says that they can play in Flint and somebody will find them. They all didn't get found by Duke and you know, or Kentucky or Kansas or wherever. But some of them made, you know, as I look at what happened at Michigan State, the kids from Flint, you know, made it. I'm just wondering if if we've gotten to a point where that kind of pressure has gotten us, you know, off the rails. Um, I mean my mother told me I had to start over a grade when I was 17. I wouldn't have been too crazy about that. How about you? Did you want to stop to want to stop high school and start another grade again?

SPEAKER_00 24:08

No. No, not really.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

That's what these boys are doing, and girls, some of them, you know, they see their careers to get a scholarship, and many of them, uh, you know, they're they have financial need, and that's their ticket. And that's understandable. Uh, because kids never stopped out of school unless or they went back and they I used to always think of these prep schools as kind of a remedial education kind of place because they could they used to be, and I don't know if it's still true, but they had to have a certain test score to get into college, right? Um, for the athletes to get into college? Used to be. I don't know whatever happened to that rule, but they used to say, okay, you have to have a high enough score on ACSAT in order to play your first year.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

I'm not too familiar. I know um you gotta take those tests in a sense, get into college. Uh, I didn't know that you had to get like I know you gotta get a certain score for some schools for them to look at you. Um, I'm not too familiar with that.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

They still have that score.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

I mean that they must.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Yeah, I think there is some benchmarks that you have to hit with your GPA and stuff, but um so that that what it always used to be, at least when I was paying attention, was that they would go to these schools, usually they were in Pennsylvania or someplace not all that far away, uh even Kentucky, and they had to and they would go there and they'd work on their academics enough that they could get into a top-tier college because there's no question a lot of these kids were talented athletically, but it's really it's evolved to be more than that if that's still the case.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Yeah, because now, because I think what you're talking about is like kids after high school going to these schools to get the test scores that they need to get into college and all that, but now these kids are just you could just go there, and it's like a normal high school education that you get where you're learning everything that, or even more um, than what you would be learning at your current school. So it's like you're getting the best of both worlds in a sense.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Well, you know, if you look at it for somebody that's going to one of these prep schools just to take an extra year and try to, you know, buff up their academics, because I mean these kids aren't all stupid. Uh a lot of it just has to do with guidance and discipline and you know, eliminating some distraction. There are a lot of those today. This has really gotten into about money, hasn't it? I mean, now with this image and likeness thing where they can sell their their self, you know, or get t-shirts printed with their name or shoes or whatever, or sponsorships. Uh money's kind of seeped into this, hasn't it, Brandon?

SPEAKER_00 26:51

I don't think it's just seeped in. Money's always been in college sports. When you really think about the schools paying for these kids' education for them to play a sport for them, play it well, where they could get their scholarship revoked if they're not playing well. Um, so it's always been a thing. Now it's just it's not in the dark anymore. Everything is out front where these kids can make money off their name, likeness, name, image, and likeness.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Yeah. Let me come back to this cultural change because that's what I really see is the the thing that we need to ask more questions about. And that is, you know, when we were little, at least I was. I imagine in Maryland, you must have grew up in a neighborhood where people played sports, didn't they? Yeah. Yep. I mean, we had we had people like Paul Krause, who's who's still, I think, leads in the most interceptions in in the NFL, the defensive back safety. He was our supervisor for baseball in the summer. And we would go to Freeman School. If Paul Krause was there, he wasn't there, he was being paid to be there by the schools. We'd organize our own games. I think about how this impact of these kids are going off to some other school, whether there's even going to be high school sports before it's all done. The coaches are all forwarned about. Do you see that impacting the ability for kids to participate in athletics?

SPEAKER_00 28:16

No, because when you start thinking about kids leaving, it's not everybody. It's the athletes that separate themselves. Y'all know there's there's different levels to high school athletes. You got kids that are good, kids that are great. You got these like really, really good kids. Um, when you start thinking about the really, really good kids, they got to capitalize on their talent and their name and get set themselves up for their best opportunity in life. So I think there's always going to be high school sports. Um, I don't think that's ever going away. Now, the product will change, but I don't think high school sports in and of itself is ever going to be in jeopardy.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Yeah, I know one of the articles I read it talked about should athletic culture be school culture? And you're you're a guy that does cover sports and loves it and sees the value of it. And I think what they were talking about in that athletic culture teaches the things that schools try to teach leadership. One of the things that you learn in athletics is how to lose. Have you seen kids that grew up and just didn't know how to lose?

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Like Draymond. Uh I wouldn't say that they don't know how to lose that, they just don't like it.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

That's right. They learn to accept it, is what I'm trying to say. And not everybody gets to win. You know, I mean, we have a capitalistic system where we think that's what's the big deal, but you know, sometimes in life, look losing isn't the worst thing can happen to you. Sometimes it's the sometimes it's the best thing. Should draw a lesson if you're wise. So I look at that and I say, well, okay, when we were kids, we were playing in the park at Wendy Park in the south end of Flint. It was polluted by the uh, you know, our culture at the time said, okay, well, we have to have rules in order to govern ourselves. No parents were around, you know, no orange slices and sitting in the middle of the field. We we learned to to to make up rules. Sometimes we had this rule, which was called tie goes to the runner. Have you ever heard that one before? Yeah, because what happens is if you have a close play at first base, then you just give it to the runner if it looks like it's real close because you want to fight about it all day because you only have an ump. So you come up with these kind of basketball, I can't, you know, none of us were really dunkers, so we didn't get to too much goaltending, but we didn't, you know, call every foul. But what I'm trying to say is that our culture of of not being overboard determined our behavior. And and so, like, you know, we were like the team itself, if you play on a team, a high school team, they the team itself enforces the behavior. So it's not you know, you can have a coach, but I mean it's the other kids on the team that say, hey man, reel it in a little bit. Uh, I just wonder if we lose some of this in in thinking about sports in the way that it has the resulting in some professional thing. I wonder, I guess what I'm worried about is these kids going off to Phoenix without their parents. And I just don't know that they're gonna gather all these lessons that are important. You got any feelings?

SPEAKER_00 31:28

I don't think um, I don't really know if winning has anything to really do with it because Carmen Ains were with Jaden Nunn was winning. Umate Allen Johnson, the last game he played at Grand Planck was in the D1 state championship. Now they lost to Warren Day LaSalle, but they they're winning and they're getting these lessons of losing. They just have to grow up a little faster. That's it. Um, which I think is good. I think it's good to expose kids to different environments and see how they fit um because it's gonna do nothing but help the kids.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

They're able to think these kids are gonna do just fine and and that they're not gonna infect the rest of the school culture. No, in other words, this whole idea that you should plan what you're gonna be when you're sitting or 15 years old, what what you're gonna be. I mean, actually, I I wouldn't advise my children to start thinking like uh I wouldn't encourage it. I remember one time my girl was little, she told me she was gonna be like Christina Aguilera. Uh I you know, I just kind of nodded my head and smiled, but it it seems like you know, this narrow kind of narrow castings taking place might not be the best for satellite.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

When you say um narrow minded is just like trying to get to the pros kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 32:43

The only thing you're gonna do when you grow up is get to be a basketball player, or you just like the the sport of the furthest odds actually getting be a professional, or you know, I mean they couldn't be an engineer or they couldn't be, you know, some any of these other they couldn't be a sports director, ample. And we know that there's a lot of these athletes that are really good at that. I I listen to Jalen Rose every day, man.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Funny. Yeah, but when we think about um, because I think we do this anyway, picking what we want to be, because if having kids, but if my niece, um, who I love a lot says she wanted to be um next, like Lisa Leslie or my more and she really wanted to get into a sport, I want to help get her the best opportunity ever to achieve her dream. And that's what I think is everyone's doing right now. Because a lot of these kids, their dream might not be the NBA, their dream might be to be a D1 college basketball player. So if that's what they want to do to achieve their dream, I say, who are we to stop then? Who are we to say, no, you need to build this and this when they're just trying to achieve their dream.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

I guess what I'm saying is maybe it's best if you give them a whole bunch of options and they can explore all kinds of things like music or you know, or all the other arts, or you know, any number of other stuff. But uh, I don't think we'll solve this argument today about what what's best. Uh, I think the society is gonna do that because there's certain values that we have as a society, and and part of that is community, and Flint needs that more than ever right now. And I I talked to a lot of people on this podcast that say the best part of Flint was growing up. They they almost speak of it in in the rearview mirror in the sense that this doesn't exist. And I disagree with them on it because I think we still do have a sense of community.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Tier, are you a Flintstone yet? Um, no, I don't think um, I don't know if I ever become that because I didn't grow up here, but I try my best to understand the culture and what it means to be a Flintstone.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

Have you had a chance to go to Burston Fieldhouse and start bouncing a basketball around down there?

SPEAKER_00 34:55

No, I haven't had a chance to do that yet.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

Well, if you do, give me a call. I'd like to hear what happened. Brandon Green, uh, you have a good future ahead of you, and I appreciate the time you spent talking to me. Hopefully, we'll talk again when I get riled up about your next story. And uh keep at it.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Yes, sir. Appreciate that. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

You're certainly very welcome. Uh, this is Radio Free Front. We're signing off. Uh, we'll see you next time. Bye.