Friday night in Downtown Brooklyn and the newly opened Brooklyn Basketball Training Center is packed with kids practicing their skills.<\/p>\n
The night NY1 dropped by, it was all about dribbling, passing and shooting.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
The Brooklyn Basketball Training Center opened in October, and hosts youth clinics every weekday for kids ages six to 17 years old
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Brooklyn Basketball has teamed up with the city’s Department of Education to host clinics for students in more than 200 schools each year
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“It was very rare, being from a rural area, [a] country town, to have this type of thing,\u201d Day’Ron Sharpe said. \u201cAnd just to see the access these kids have to have is special, I wanted to be a part of it”<\/p>\n
\u201cI dribbled with my right hand five times, then I put it through my legs,\u201d said 10-year-old Naji Warlick.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do play during gym with my teacher, but I\u2019m not that good,\u201d 13-year-old Khloe Askew said. \u201cI do make a couple shots.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brooklyn Basketball head coach Michael Collins runs the programming at the center.<\/p>\n
He brings more than 15 years of experience to help grow the game he loves and help kids grow through the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaking sure kids learn resilience through the game, really having to work at something and see incremental improvements over time definitely builds that resilience,\u201d Collins said.<\/p>\n
And this night\u2019s clinic was made extra special thanks to a very special guest.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has so much aura, like I can feel the aura from so far away,\u201d Askew said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHelp me out, as an old person, what does that mean when you have so much aura?\u201d NY1 asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cAura is like when you walk in and they can feel like your coolness,\u201d Askew said.<\/p>\n
That coolness was emanating from Brooklyn Nets Center, Day\u2019Ron Sharpe, who says he wishes he had a chance to play with the pros when he was a kid growing up in North Carolina.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very rare, being from a rural area, [a] country town, to have this type of thing,\u201d Sharpe said. \u201cAnd just to see the access these kids have to have is special, I wanted to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou spend so much time watching NBA players on TV,\u201d Collins said. \u201cAnd so many times those kids grow up and you hear the stories about how they remember their first meeting with an NBA player and it invokes [a] sort of success within them, or some sort of confidence within them.\u201d<\/p>\n
And while Warlick may already have that confidence, he\u2019ll surely be telling the story of his first interaction with an NBA player for years to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I want to dunk on him cause, you know, he\u2019s an NBA player \u2014 and I\u2019m not, so I gotta dunk on him,\u201d Warlick said.<\/p>\n
Then he called Sharpe over and got the chance to take him one-on-one.<\/p>\n
Afterwards, Sharpe said, \u201cHe\u2019s got a lot of confidence, but I hope he puts in the work, too. He says he loves it, so hope he keeps working at it. Eventually, hopefully, when I\u2019m 50 or something, I\u2019ll see Naji on the court playing for the Brooklyn Nets one day, still talking smack.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Friday night in Downtown Brooklyn and the newly opened Brooklyn Basketball Training Center is packed with kids practicing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3767],"tags":[69128,1970,1977,7,670,247,3803,6682,6,671,7295,67,66,69127,1974,6032],"class_list":{"0":"post-484219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn-nets","8":"tag-app-education","9":"tag-app-sports","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-brooklyn","13":"tag-brooklyn-nets","14":"tag-brooklynnets","15":"tag-education","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-nets","18":"tag-new-york-city","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-stef-manisero","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-vod"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115749885423766445","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}