ADAM JONES FIRST saw the impact professional athletes can have on young hearts and minds when he attended a Boys & Girls Club camp with his brother, cousins and neighborhood kids as an elementary schooler in San Diego.
Cliff Levingston, a guest instructor at the camp, was a San Diego native who earned two NBA championship rings as a member of the Chicago Bulls. Levingston averaged only 4.0 points per game in Chicago, but the campers regarded him as basketball royalty because of his affiliation with a certain tongue-wagging, basketball icon.
"We knew he played with Michael Jordan,'' Jones said, "so we always asked him, 'Are you ever gonna bring Michael Jordan here?