October 12, 2008
ONLY ON NEWSDAY.COM
NBA Draft dream so close for this NYC hoops star
Son of streetball legend Ron Mathias is targeted as a second-round pick
New York City native Quinton Hosley arrived home last night around the same time the power stopped working across the city. Which made perfect sense, really, because he was starting to feel as if time wasn't moving, anyway.
Waiting for tonight's NBA draft is especially tough for him because he's been in this type of situation before. When something good is about to happen to him, something bad always seems to stop it.
Hosley was all set to go to St. John's, having verbally committed in 2004 to play for the school that he grew up rooting for. But then Norm Roberts took over for the fired Mike Jarvis and showed no interest in him, because they couldn't afford to give him the year away he needed to get his grades up.
So Hosley went to Providence. He signed his letter of intent, and they sent him at Globe Tech in the city. He passed his classes, he said, and was all set to play in the Big East, only to be informed by the coaches that the admissions department decided not to accept all of his credits.
So now Providence was out, and he felt as if his chances were slipping away.
"I just kept felt like I was about to get my foot in the door," Hosley said, "and then there was always something."
Hosley wound up at Fresno State, which accepted his transfer credits. Finally, Hosley had the chance to show everyone why the people in Harlem nicknamed him "T-2." Yes, they called him that because his father playground scoring legend Ron Mathias was famously known on the courts as The Terminator. But the son could play, too.
Hosley, a 6-6 small forward, made the most of his last two years of collegiate eligibility, averaging 16.1 points and 9.1 rebounds in 60 total games while leading Fresno State into the NIT tournament this past season.
His strong play earned him many looks from scouts in recent weeks. He took part in the NBA pre-draft camp in Orlando and left with four private workouts scheduled. That number grew to eight over recent weeks, capped by a trip north to Boston yesterday, a day before the draft.
"Now it feels close, it definitely does, and you never know what can happen," he said. "So I'm kind of anxious, but I'm really looking forward, because this is something I've been waiting for my whole life. I'm just anxious."
He's planned a small party to watch the draft inside the Abyssinian gym on 143rd and Lenox in Harlem, which is where he spent so many hours of his childhood. "That's pretty much where it all started, man," he said. "Might as well go back to the roots." Only family and close friends are invited to keep the gathering small, because he knows there's no guarantee that his name will get called tonight.
In attendance will be his father and mother, both of whom are city basketball legends in their rights. His mother, Hazel Hosley, starred for Franklin in Brooklyn and had played a year of junior college basketball in New Jersey when she stopped her career to give birth to Quinton.
His father, Ron Mathias, is one of the greatest cases of wasted talent. He could score almost at will, but never could get himself together on and off the court. "He never made it to the NBA because he had a bad attitude," Hosley said. "So that's something he has always tried to instill in me, to make sure that I have a good attitude."
Mathias was averaging more than 40 points at Palm Beach Junior College, the nation's scoring leader, when he was dismissed from the team during the 1985-86 season. After that he hung around, playing professional ball overseas, in the CBA and USBL. "Whatever minor league you can think of, he played in it," Hosley said.
A 1991 Orlando Sentinel story detailed his off-the-court problems in college, saying he was charged with selling free textbooks to the bookstore, making a sexual advance toward a female professor and showing up to a game at halftime. "I had to meet my probation officer in New York," he was quoted as saying. "What's a guy to do?"
"On the court," Hosley said, "if a ref made a bad call, he would run up on the ref and he was liable to swing at the ref. There was a whole bunch of things. My dad was short-tempered back in the day. It didn't take much to make him mad, and when he got mad he wanted to fight
I know if he could do it all over again, he wouldn't do some of the things that he did when he was younger."
Hosley said he's talked many times to his father about his mistakes and learned from them, and, in return, wants to let his father finally see what the NBA is like. "I guess you could say he can live the dream through me," he said.
That dream could begin to come to fruition tonight, if the name Quinton Hosley just so happens to be announced during the second round. "I'm sure hearing your name is an overwhelming feeling," he said. "I can only imagine."
"Hopefully, it happens."
Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.
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