Growing up in the Bay Area, Brandon McCoy Jr. spent most of his time directly after school in a multi-sports complex tucked along the coastline of Alameda Island. The Bladium Sports & Fitness Club served as one of his earliest introductions to the game, where a young Beezy, as his family and close friends call him, developed his relationship with hoops alongside flag football, soccer and baseball.
Elementary school was filled with the joy that came from a myriad of sports. But after watching his older cousin’s middle school team streak up and down the court, Brandon turned to his pops with a simple request: I want to play.
From there, Brandon McCoy Sr. connected his son with a trainer. And by the time he was 9, his travel team was heading to Nike Nationals.
“Our team, we got second place,” Brandon tells SLAM. “And then after, some rankings came out and I saw my name pretty high up on there. And I was like, Yo, I actually might be pretty good. And then after that, [I] just kept working hard. Because of my pops, I always feel like I trained hard. I played hard and started playing really good, and then kind of just fell in love with it.
“And it wasn’t about anything else but just the love of the game. Like, it wasn’t anything that came with it. I just genuinely enjoyed playing.”
Jared ebanks 