J on Solomon has the same birthday as Michael Jordan. Solomon will do whatever it takes. But as much as anything, Solomon is a storyteller. And the story he tells most is his own. This one is good, he says. It was He was flying from Dallas to Tucson when an older woman tapped him on the shoulder. Solomon is small and white, with the energy of a Chihuahua, a face that sprouts hair quickly, and a late-twenties paunch.
The players want jobs. Hans wants wins. Solomon wants all of that for everyone, plus something more β something that will end with him on a stage in Springfield, Massachusetts, accepting his induction to the Hall of Fame. It might be in the cards for me to put a dent in the game. I first learned about Solomon on YouTube.
It begins with grainy camcorder footage of a scrawny high school basketball player. It sounds as if he grew up in the Philly suburbs but took speech therapy lessons from rappers Freeway and Beanie Sigel. As the video rolls on, a few facts emerge: Solomon is a worldwide basketball impresario, founder of something called the Self Motivated Athletic Agency, and a dogged worker shown one moment leading aspiring pros through drills and the next barnstorming through China alongside Gary Payton and Tracy McGrady.
The first time I met Solomon, in February , he turned his video camera on me at the moment he shook my hand. Solomon wanted me to follow him to Germany and Mexico, to Delaware and Taiwan. Even as he boasted, something about Solomon was sweet. He never wanted to get off the phone.
He always wanted me to listen just a little longer as he discussed his plan to change the game. I was fascinated by the circle in which he ran β a global network of vagabond ballers from no-name schools, barely earning a living to play in remote hoops outposts, subsisting on pirated DVDs and mediocre cheeseburgers. Solomon was a gateway to a little-known basketball underground, a world that exists in the space between ambition and delusion. But how?
