What Inspired @realballersdotcom
Follow to see our journey to being your new community for basketball
#ballislife #hoops #basketball #basketballtraining #nba #hooper #hoopersofinstagram
Shoutout to the @hustle_20 mavericks who shared their business pitches and resumes, did mock job interviews, shared their life stories, and participated fully in emotional work to understand their own traumas and mistakes. These Mavericks are resilient, smart, talented (thats a pencil sketch in picture 5), and deserve a chance to prove that to the world. When you actually sit and talk to people you learn that life is way more nuanced than your simple judgement. From the kids of @experiencecamps to the folks who have been in prison for decades, many similar patterns show up that cause harm and trauma in peoples lives. These folks committed to making a change and I am seriously inspired and grateful that they spent time with me.
About 90% of them have not had a single person visit them in 6 months. 6. Months. For one it was 18 years.
Consider donating $150 to @hustle_20 to get this program to more incarcerated folks who are willing to do the work to become productive members of society when they are released. It will impact you as much as it does them, trust.
Shoutout to the photographer @jcjrdigital for capturing some of the fun and heavy moments through the day.
Hit me if you want to attend the next in prison event which is January 19th in Arizona or one of the virtual events that happens.
There are 6000 prisons in the US, and this program is in 300 of them. As a society we give up on people and have no compassion or system for forgiveness or redemption. Thats not the ideal society to me so I continue working with organizations like this until the job is finished. Job finished? Job not finished. Mamba out.
March 22nd, 2016: I was living in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment in a high rise in Santiago, Chile. Frustrated, broke, and isolated, I remember staring out the big glass windows at the mountains hoping to figure my way out of yet another predicament.
I browse through social media that night and see that the church I grew up in, with a community of people who raised me, was on fire. The sanctuary was engulfed in flames and multiple people in my town were posting about it. This would be the time to call my mom and see if she was ok, as she was the unofficial mayor of the venue.
Now my mother had a cell phone, but as she describes it, the point of a cell phone is for her to contact others. Otherwise itās turned off. Great. So I frantically call multiple times and get no answer. I call others at the church and everyone gives me a vague variation of the answer āI think I saw her but Iām not sureā. Quite the terrifying few moments.
Eventually I was able to confirm with someone that she was in fact alive and I could rest a bit easier, although a place I have so many memories was being destroyed.
The comfort wouldnāt last too long though as my motherās breast cancer diagnosis came soon after. Iād found my reason to leave Chile.
Years later my mother would be buried in the garden of that same church. I know she would have loved to be there today to see this moment which was 8 years in the making.
When I think about all the things Iāve wanted to happen faster, and felt ready for, it brings me back to the phrase that my mother had framed on my wall as a kid: āPatience is a virtueā.
Donde sea que aparezca un canastoā¦ hay que librar la coca! TocĆ³ en Amsterdam ššš
Si viajas y quieres conectar con jugadores en cualquier parte del mundo, baja el app Ballers del bro @frankdenbow š #BallIsLife
#Amsterdam #ballers #netherlandsš³š±
Much respect to @startupgrinder who has been helping support startups for 15 years. Huge impact on the community, definitely check out @startupgrind and the ethos behind it, which keeps the spirit of giving alive in this startup community.
HACKATHON TRASH TALK (Part 8)
After my cereal box fiasco (more on that to come) we did a 1 week Ballers (RealBallers.com) hackathon to work on some fun ideas for how we can add cool elements to our app.
Harsh worked on a combination of things brought together:
- team + jersey tracking (on the fly)
- player tracking (even when they disappear)
- event tracking (what players are doing)
- court homography (where are you)
- 3D player tracking (skeleton + mesh)
- all inside one coach-viewer app
These tools together give us the ability to make highlights, stats, and insights from your games, using just your phone to record.
Especially useful for leagues that want to find ways to give more value to the participants without adding too much extra work.
Grateful for Roboflow (Joseph Nelson, Piotr Skalski, Alex Norell + team) for their tooling and support of open source for helping make this possible.
If this is interesting to you for your league, pickup group, or as a technical challenge send a message!
Harsh was talking a lot of trash about how he was going to win, and he did back it up so itās all good.
@womenspba combine showcased many of the top talents in womenās basketball. Looking forward to seeing all of these ballers on the next level. Congrats to everyone who participated, and @faatimah_a and the @womenspba for putting together a professional event.
@realballersdotcom x @thestartupballer x @frankdenbow
