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LENNY WILKINS: Team sports you’ve got to play with other people.
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It’s getting along with people.
It’s working together to be successful.
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[TEXT: Sports in America, “A Ball and a Hoop”]
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[TEXT: Lenny Wilkins, NBA Hall of Fame Player/Coach]
I had a lot of friends that got interested in basketball
and they would be on the playgrounds.
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So I started going to the playgrounds a lot.
There were games going on all the time.
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And if you were a good enough player,
you could get in those games.
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Once you got involved, everybody loved to compete.
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Rucker Park is one of the ones that survived.
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Rucker himself, you know, he saw what he had
and he wanted to keep it alive.
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So every summer they had huge competition.
He maintained the park, he improved the park.
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If you have activity in the community and get people interested,
people start taking pride in that.
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Reporters started to come down and watch the kids play.
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They began to write about it, talk about it.
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And it has maintained its legacy, so to speak.
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You’d show up on the playground
and all we had to do was have a ball.
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A ball and a hoop.
A lot of kids, poor kids, that was our way out.
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So it was huge in keeping us off the streets or out of trouble.
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Basketball has been a steppingstone for me,
but I also know that you have to work hard.
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All young people need to be able to make decisions,
to be accountable for what they do.
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I think sports does that.
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And, certainly, the kids that play at Rucker Park,
they embellish that.
[TEXT: Every Play Matters
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