Escaping poverty is one of the best motivations for bettering one’s lot in life.
This thought came to mind yesterday when I attended the Coney Island press conference for former Lincoln High School and Seton Hall basketball star Isaiah Whitehead after the Brooklyn Nets took him 42nd in last week’s NBA draft.
The coming out party was at the Brooklyn Nets merchandise story across the street from Nathan’s and not far from the West 27th Street and Mermaid Avenue building where Whitehead grew up, and where both his basketball and street skills were developed.
The building is not far from where a teenage girl was beaten to death on West 24th Street in April, and just a couple blocks away from where four people were shot earlier this month.
In recent years these streets and playing for the local Lincoln High School has produced the most NBA players of any neighborhood in the city. This includes Stephon Marbury, who is currently a major star playing professionally in China, Sebastian Telfair and Lance Stephenson.
And it’s no accident or fickle wind of fate that many see basketball as the way out of the neighborhood as it is strewn with public housing and low-income developments. Western Coney Island also seems like a world unto itself – often forgotten compared to the carnival atmosphere of the amusement area – it’s a bus and a train ride away from the rest of the city. The kind of place where you don’t have to look hard for trouble and sometimes trouble comes looking for you.
The press conference itself was billed as a celebration of sorts. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams greeted Isaiah with a soulful hand slap and a hug, and then Isaiah took pictures with the current Lincoln High basketball team. Additionally, Nets Coach Kenny Atkinson lauded Whitehead for his work ethic and his basketball IQ and the importance for the Nets to have a homegrown star on the team.
And Whitehead mouthed the usual words of how playing in the NBA and for the hometown team was a dream come true, and how it probably wouldn’t hit him until his first game before family and friends on the Barclays Center hardwood floor.
But the 21-year-old’s face told a different story. There was a world wariness to the lines on his forehead, and a street smart look that seemed to say in this neighborhood it’s best to have eyes in the back of your head as well as what’s in front of you.
Asked where he planned to live now that he’s playing for the hometown team, he said he planned to stay in the city, but it wouldn’t be Coney Island.
“I definitely got to move me and mom out of here. That was the plan since young so that’s what I’m going to do,” he said.
Another Coney Island success story.
KCP wishes Isaiah Whitehead and his loved ones the best. God speed.
