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The best non-Final Four story you’ll read this week

It isn’t all about the Final Four this week. Or coaching searches. Or early entrants into the NBA draft.

Sometimes, it isn’t even about basketball.

With that, I offer a terrific story by Yahoo! Sports columnist Dan Wetzel, who writes about Thabiti “Bruce” Boone, a kid from the projects in New York City who dreamed of playing basketball in the Final Four – except more important things too precedence. An excerpt:

On the day he left for college, Thabiti and 2½ -month-old Kim took the C-Train to the A-Train to Port Authority, all their stuff in tow, which wasn’t much: a few suitcases, some formula and diapers, an old black-and-white television. They boarded a Greyhound and crept through the countryside, for six hours. “I kept thinking,” Boone said, “‘Where the hell am I going?’”

They arrived in Rochester where McVean was waiting to pick them up and take them to a one-bedroom apartment. McVean already had put in an old leather couch and a lamp. That was all the furniture. Kim had no crib, so Thabiti laid a blanket on the floor where they both slept. They found a cardboard box to use as a TV stand. They didn’t have a phone.

“I just sat there and thought, ‘Is this really going to happen?’” Thabiti said. The plan sounded good in theory. In reality, he was equal parts excited and terrified. The silence of campus was more foreign than the chaos of the city. As the night fell, he sat on the floor, watching the flickering images on that little TV and holding his sleeping daughter.

“It was both one of the longest and shortest nights of my life,” he said.


That’s really just a small part of it, too. So take five minutes, click here, and read on.

You also can follow me on Twitter @MikeMillerNBC.