Alston back to coach in Houston

Rafer Alston thinks back to when he was a small person doing a big thing, and it seems like such a long time ago. He is 34 now. Old enough to reflect a little. So when people recognize him in his native New York-- "I'm not Rafer to them," he says. "I'm Skip." it strikes him a little more deeply than it once did. Skip To My Lou has been the long and most reverential way of referring to Rafer Alston. Until now. Now people are going to be calling him Coach Alston as the coach of a tiny Christian academy in Houston. He is essentially The Black Shadow, a modern-day, hip-hop adaptation of Ken Reeves, the fictional coach of "The White Shadow's" Carver High. "I never could have imagined this," he said. A lot of people say Skip was the last true streetball legend. This is a heavy designation Alston says he doesn't necessarily feel himself, though he will not dispute it. "I think what makes you a legend is the people that watched you grow up and play all those years, their take on everything," he said. "I know over the years it donned on me that I really captured a lot of people's attention on the playground." He did it by being the kind of talent that could last 11 years in the NBA. That was necessary. But he also did it with showmanship. He liked to skip as he dribbled, which earned him the nickname, and Skip would do dazzling, unnecessary things with the basketball. Things that humiliated defenders, things that made watching basketball feel kind of like watching a rap battle. In 1998 some comically low-quality video of all this was set to rap music and released to the world at large as the And1 Mixtape, Vol. 1, a title that even borrows terminology from hip-hop. A lot of people just call it the "Skip mixtape." Ten years later, the And1 Mixtape Tour landed in Dubai. "We're used to Mississippi, California, Chicago, Detroit, Wisconsin, places like that," Skip says. "You're talking about going to Dubai and a taxi is a Range Rover. Like, wow, we're thinking we're out of our league." Skip had made streetball both glamorous and accessible. But at the same time that was happening, streetball tournaments were moving off the playgrounds and into gyms. "When you take it inside a gymnasium, it's no longer considered playground ball," he says. "It's more structured, organized. It takes away the competitiveness of it all." Something has been lost. And this is why Skip To My Lou is the last playground legend. Skip's lament about the gymnasiums is ironic for multiple reasons, the most timely of which is that, as Rafer Alston, he has recently become the basketball coach and athletic director at Christian Life Center Academy in Humble, Texas, a school with about 80 high school students, approximately a fifth of which are extremely talented boys basketball players. Deandre Jordan and Latavious Williams, both recent NBA draft picks, attended Christian Life. One of the top players in the class of 2011, Ben McLemore, transferred to Christian Life after getting dismissed from Oak Hill Academy in Mouth of Wilson,Va. The school plays six-man football. Christian Life pastor Richard Rodriquez said when he posted the job opening, he received resumes from all over the world, including from at least one other former NBA player. "But Rafer is a pioneer," he said. Alston's name recognition, basketball expertise and ties to the AAU circuit, where he has coached a team for the last five summers, won him the job. "I believed he could bring the attention and also expertise to the program that we need," Rodriguez said. "We've got a lot of good ballplayers here that are looking to expand their career into the college level and possibly the pro level, and I felt like a guy like Rafer is someone they'd respect and listen to." As much as it is about the current ballplayers, Alston's hire is about a future that Rodriguez hopes will involve world domination. Christian Life does not have the brand recognition of programs like Oak Hill, Mount Zion Christian Academy (Durham, N.C.) or Findlay Prep (Las Vegas), but it rubs those shoulders and aspires to that standing. "Our short-term goal is to make our basketball program the best that there is, not only in the state of Texas but in the country and in the world," Rodriguez said. That will require an influx of talent at Christian Life, and part of the reason Alston was attractive to the school was that it saw his handiwork up close last year, when his New York-based AAU team beat Christian Life in Las Vegas. "Not many teams do that," Rodriquez said. "I thought he would have access, so to speak, to the type of players we want to bring in here." There are some publicly recorded moments in Alston's life that bothered Rodriguez. Alston has been arrested three times once for assault and public intoxication, once for allegedly slashing a man during a bar fight and once for DWI. He was not convicted in any of those cases, the most recent of which occurred in 2008. Alston also has gotten sideways with a couple of employers. He was suspended while with the Rockets (for an on-court fight) and Miami Heat (for missing practice and a game). "I did reference checks, I called the Houston Rockets corporate offices, spoke to media, spoke to coaches about his character and if he was a family man, that type of thing," Rodriguez said. "And I talked to Rafer about it. There were things in his life, in his past, that were really big concerns for us, because Christian character is very important to us. I think Rafer has grown up a little bit." To whatever extent it is surprising Christian Life would offer Alston the job (probably somewhere between "not at all" and "completely"), it also is surprising he would accept it. If they choose to stay in basketball, many former NBA players can quickly catch on as scouts or assistants for NBA teams. Likewise, some AAU coaches find themselves with offers to do things like be the "director of basketball operations" at a school that happens to be recruiting one of their players. The point being that chances weren't bad Alston could have skipped the high school step altogether. But he didn't want to, although he says he eventually would like to move up the coaching ranks. "I think sometimes you have to start somewhere and get a feel for everything," he said. "You've got to get a feel for game decisions, game-to-game decisions, knowing how to manage games and kids and players." It has been 20 years since Alston first stepped into a man's game at Rucker Park as a scrawny 14-year-old who didn't know what he was in for. "I wasn't scared to go out there," he said, "until I got out there and realized how big and strong these people were." Within a couple years, he was "having his way with them." Within a couple more, he had become a phenomenon on his way to becoming a legend. "It's amazing," he said. "It was almost 20 years ago and it's still with me to this day that people are still intrigued about what I did back then." The And1 thing undoubtedly is Alston's most lasting contribution to basketball, and to American culture, which is unusual because it is not necessarily his greatest accomplishment. He was taken in the 1998 NBA draft. He was on a Rockets team that won 22 consecutive games. He played in the NBA Finals. He once made eight 3-pointers in a game. "I didn't have a great NBA career, but I was solid," Alston said. "I've done some things in the NBA that people remember. I had some nights and some moments. You put that with the fact that I could get people off their feet in every other city in the summertime as well, and that's a lot." It is enough to invert his existence. Because now he is Coach Alston. He is a big person doing a small thing. He admits he is nervous. "A little bit," he said. "It's a different chapter in your life. I think the kids are more nervous than I am."