It was a simple gym inside a Jewish community center on the west side of Akron, Ohio; wood floor, a few baskets, in need of a facelift.
This was the late 1990s and this was a most unlikely spot for the confluence of basketball fortunes and figures that would converge there each Sunday night.
It led to the rebirth of one of the most successful mid-major coaching careers ever, the reshuffling of a city’s (and a state’s) high school basketball fortunes and, most notably, serve as the early development of a then-anonymous but soon globally known basketball prodigy.