from getting kicked off of Russell Westbrook’s AAU EYBL team to leading my D1 team to the championship game for the first time in 35 years. At 17 years old, I would’ve never thought I would be kicked off of Westbrooks EYBL ‘Team Why Not’, after playing there from the time I was in eighth grade to my junior year of high school. getting kicked off in the middle of the biggest week of EYBL peach jam blew my mind. All because of a petty Coach (not russell’s decision af all) When I got kicked off the team, the coach simultaneously called all schools, recruiting me and slandered my character, which is the number one way to get un recruited by any college coaches So going into my last year of high school it was extremely hard for me to get offers even when schools were interested because they heard about what that coavh said… at the end of my senior year. I had zero offers and was crying my eyes out in my room, thinking basketball was over forever. Finally, very late in the summer I got a offer from a small D1 school, Rider university. Where then that Coach lied to me, and even in front of the whole team said that I was the one. Telling the team that I was arguably the best player, but not going to play. This was the hardest peel for me to swallow at 18-19 years old and a freshman in college. I would find myself in my room, wondering how does this happen to me again? At the end of the season, I entered the portal, but my Coach ended up doing the same exact thing my high school coach did, which was slandering my name to every D1 school that called about me. Telling them not to take me unless they wanted to lose their job. So I was essentially forced to go to Juco, which I had no clue about until it came to that point. Did you call you was crazy that probably deserves a story of its own, but I ended up playing good. But it was almost like it meant nothing because I still had coaches going off of what they heard my previous coaches say about my character. Until… Louisiana Tech University came and offered me. They were the only ones that really took a chance on me and didn’t care about what somebody else said. Even though the journey started off rocky. Having games I only played 2-4 minutes. I stayed positive and eventually got to the point of starting and being the team’s best player and leading us to the conference championship game for the first time in 35 years. Even former NBA players, Karl Malone and Paul Milsap were proud because this is something that they weren’t able to do while they played at Louisiana Tech. my story isn’t over and I’m not gonna let anybody else. Write my story for me. I’ve hit rock bottom multiple times, that’s how I got my flow! ##d1##basketball##juco##journey##russellwestbrook - @djdudley0