Growing up in Upstate NY, there were very few Seattle Supersonics fans. Hell for all I know, I may have been the only one. The main reason I was drawn to that team was because of one player, Shawn Kemp. His powerful dunks were unlike anything I had ever seen & the way he blocked shots was enough to make any player think twice before driving down his lane. In my eyes The Reign Man, as he was also known, was a human highlight film. I had a VHS tape packed with amazing plays from Mr. Kemp, which I literally watched hundreds of times. There were many great players in the game but none of them impacted me like Shawn Kemp. Last year through the help of facebook, I reconnected with an old friend who left our High School in New York to move across the country to Seattle. It was more than 15 years ago since the last time my friend Mike & I played basketball, but apparently he never forgot that I was a fan of Shawn Kemp. A few weeks ago, he hit me up & told me he had a surprise for me. Mike asked me to mail out some copies of my new CD to him. He works for a radio station so my brain begin to come up with possibilities for what kind of surprise he had in store for me.
Yesterday he sent me this picture with the words "You grew up a fan of his, now he's a fan of yours! :)"
The man in the picture is Shawn Kemp holding the Mixtape I did with Lil Jon. Mike gave him a copy & had the other one autographed for me. I can't begin to tell you how happy I was when I received this message. I always knew that Mike was a special guy but the fact that he went out of his way years later to bring a smile to an old friends face was simply amazing. This was the last thing I could have imagined my surprise would be, but to be honest nothing could top it! Thanks again buddy!