Dec. 12--The boy and his brother flew to Atlanta, using most of the cash they had on hand. The rest, they spent on fees for the recruiting showcase in front of some of the biggest programs in college basketball.
Prince Ali, now a freshman at UCLA, was a high school sophomore then, and still mostly unknown. His older brother, Sayed, had been raising Ali for about a year. Before the showcase, he pulled Ali aside. It was a lot of money, he told Ali. Make it count.
Looking back, Sayed says, that moment was one of his proudest from the years he spent rearing his younger brother. He still remembers Prince's confidence.
"I got you, bro," Prince said.
The bond the brothers shared grew stronger over the two most important years of Ali's young life when he moved away from his parents in New York to Miami, with Sayed, 11 years his senior.
The brothers scraped by. Sayed treated Prince like a son as the youngster transformed himself from a swaggering street-ball kid into a more polished, complete player.
This camp was his breakout. Ali made good on his promise. He was small, but no one could guard him. Afterward, college interest intensified before he landed with the Bruins.
It completed a journey from the Bronx, where the brothers had grown up on the playgrounds.
"In the neighborhood, you know, you have the drug dealers, you have the ballplayers, you have the fashion guys," Sayed said. "I fell into the ballplayers."
Prince, and a third brother, Sharif, took after him.
"The older cats, the old heads, they played on one court," Prince said. That was where Sayed played. "And the younger cats would play on the other court."
In grade school, Prince fastened a hoop to his bedroom door, his father said, and would mimic the dunks of Sayed and his friends. He begged his brother to let him play on his court, but he never got the chance. Sayed joined the Army when Prince was 8.
Each time Sayed returned, he'd challenge Prince to a game of one-on-one, to gauge his progress. In the summer before high school, Ali visited Sayed, who was stationed with the Army near Miami, following deployment to Iraq.
By then, Sayed knew Prince could make something of himself, maybe even play professionally, but he was too raw. There were too few basketball teachers in New York.
So, Sayed asked his brother to live with him.
"He didn't even think about it," Sayed said.
