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The story starts here, in the drug-infested, gang-ravaged projects of New York’s South Bronx, a place where bullets fly and dreams evaporate in near synchronous rhythm, a concert of violence that engulfs even the heartiest of souls and swallows them whole.  It begins with a boy, painfully shy and wispy small, playing on the mean streets of the Patterson housing projects, gleefully dribbling a basketball, impervious to the dangers lurking on every corner.  He is unable to explain his connection to that rubber orb, and only years later, after his hall-of-fame legacy has been cemented, can he give pause and appreciate it for its true value – a life raft in a sea of temptation, a vehicle that delivers him from the clutches of abject poverty.  He shoots at the basket in the driving rain, too small to reach the rusting rim, too young to comprehend the vile graffiti sprayed onto the wall just beyond.  He sprints under the noonday sun, dribbling hard and fast, his shoes barely touching the pavement, sweat racing down a face so boyish it takes decades for time to catch up.  How many children, just like him, hear the drumbeat of the drug-pushers and succumb?  How many of them grow old trying to escape?  How many more sit in prison, a murder rap on their résumés, contemplating what might have been?