http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/basketball/kings/story/14222463p-15047860c.html
Driven to a dream
Francisco García: He grew up on the mean streets of Santo Domingo, where life was rough. Through hard work, determination and the love of his family, he crashed through barriers on the road to the Sacramento Kings.
By Marcos Bretón -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, February 25, 2006
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- As this Caribbean nation of 8 million people was at the height of its frenzy for baseball in late January, one little corner of a sports bar in Santo Domingo was tuned to a Sacramento Kings game.
The bar's owners allowed Dominga Imbert, the 72-year-old grandmother of Kings rookie Francisco García, to claim one of their TVs in the back to watch Sacramento play against the Miami Heat. Imbert and several of her children and other relatives - some dressed in Kings gear - cheered on García and the Kings.
Everywhere else in the bar hundreds of customers were engrossed and roaring in groups of 30 or more around each TV showing the championship series of the Dominican Winter Baseball League - the Dominican Republic's equivalent of the Super Bowl.
If the family seemed out of step with their countrymen, it wasn't the first time. Unlike most Dominican parents, Imbert didn't push baseball on her children. She encouraged basketball.
Her daughter, Miguelina, García's mom, grew up playing basketball in school. Miguelina's brother, also named Francisco, grew up playing basketball on the streets of Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital city of 2 million people, and at age 39 today still dominates many pickup games after work. When García turned a year old, his mother gave him a ceramic basketball.
To keep up with García's NBA career, the family gathers at sports bars, since NBA all-access cable is unavailable to homes in the Dominican Republic.
"I get so enthusiastic when I see Francis on TV," Imbert said. "From the time he was little, Francis was crazy for basketball."
While Francis doesn't sound nearly as cool as "Cisco," the name Kings players and coaches call García, the 6-foot-7 guard isn't always as cool or confident as he appears on the basketball court, his family says.
During the start of his rookie season, with García consistently blowing three-point shots and defensive assignments, he kept telling reporters, coaches and teammates that he was confident he would soon find his game, and show he belonged in the NBA.
"I wasn't worried that he kept missing them (three-point attempts), I was worried he kept taking them," Kings coach Rick Adelman said with a grin.
After such games, García would call his mother, seeking comfort and support.
"He said, 'Mom, I don't feel right on the court,' " Miguelina said in a recent interview from the Bronx, N.Y., home she shares with her husband, Angel, García's stepdad.
"I said to him: 'There is only one place that you can't feel uncomfortable and that's on the court,' " said Miguelina, who would then remind her 24-year-old son of everything he had gone through to become the 23rd player selected in the NBA draft last summer and the only Dominican-born player on an active NBA roster.
"I said, 'Listen to me ... . You have to go to the court at 5 a.m. to practice until you get the confidence in your shot ... ."
It's always been this way for García. Reach for lofty goals, struggle, find strength from family, succeed.
"Francis didn't have a father around (as a child) so all of us, his four uncles and his whole family, always made sure he wasn't alone. He always had someone looking out for him," said his uncle of the same name.
Cramped apartment
García grew up in the inner-city tenements of Santo Domingo, in cinder-block buildings where he and his mother shared a small apartment with his four uncles and grandmother.
The family had lived relatively well in a rented house in a middle-class neighborhood, until García's grandfather Miguel Francisco García died in 1985, when Francisco was 3 years old.
"It was really hard after that," said García's uncle Francisco. "Very hard economically."
García's grandmother, a seamstress, felt the brunt of supporting her family while García's mother and uncles went to work at odd jobs to help make sure everyone had enough to eat.
When uncle Francisco would return from work, he would take García to a nearby basketball court adjacent to caves full of bees.
"A lot of times the bees would come out and we couldn't play," García recalls.
To avoid the bees, García says, he would try to play at night - when the men in the neighborhood would get off work and claim the court from the kids. The court had no lights, and while that made it hard to see the ball, the real obstacle for García was trying to persuade men to allow a boy on the court with them.
García's uncle taught his nephew not to back down from anyone on the court, no matter how physically overmatched he might be.
If García couldn't shoot over his opponent, then his uncle would tell him he had better find a way to dribble around the man defending him. If an opponent was too strong to keep from running to a spot near the basket, then García had better learn to steal the entry pass.
"My (adult) friends would battle him," García's uncle said. "At first, we wouldn't play him (when the games were close) but later we would."
Even as his game improved, García said, he never dreamed of playing basketball beyond the palm trees of Santo Domingo.
"I used to play (basketball) in the playgrounds, but not seriously," García said. "And when I first came to the United States as a teenager, I came to learn English. Not to play ball."
Moving to New York
When García turned 15, his mother moved to New York City to get a better paying job, and to make sure her two sons got a good education.
"And I liked it the first week, but then I wanted to go home," García said.
The South Bronx was where Dominicans could earn dollars but also where better wages came at the price of personal safety. García, his mom and his younger stepbrother Hector López moved into an apartment near 170th Street - two subway stops up from Yankee Stadium - in a neighborhood that annually saw up to 50 homicides, according to police reports.
"People would tell me: 'You can't be the way you are in the Dominican. You can't say 'hi' to everybody because you could insult somebody just by saying 'hello,' " García said.
He felt unsafe on the streets and like a prisoner at his public high school, García said.
"Someone introduced him to me and he said, 'I want to get out of here,' " said Gerald Brown, a counselor for at-risk kids in New York.
Brown tried to get García into a prestigious Catholic high school, but García's English was not good enough to allow him to compete academically.
"He called me and he was very upset," Brown said. "He was crying and I felt really bad."
Brown kept trying. As he spent more time with García, he realized García had basketball skills. Brown began contacting high school coaches and found a spot for García at Cheshire Academy, a boarding school near New Haven, Conn. The school was a two-hour drive from the Bronx, and meant for the first time García would live away from family.
"I had to go," he says now. "It was the only way."
In the classroom, he struggled with his English and fell behind in his class work. On the court, he struggled trying to learn how to play within a structured system against players who were more polished.
He'd call his mom and brother, and they would steady him and tell him he could succeed.
"I was crying every night wondering why am I doing this?" García recalled. "Is this the best thing for me, to be away from my family? The only way to get my head out of it was going to the gym and working out."
Soon, he was catching up on his class assignments, and on the court he was blocking shots, stealing passes, scoring.
He played in tournaments with New York's best high school players, and after each game the college scouts who came to see those other players would end up asking about García.
Recruitment letters began pouring in from colleges. Without visiting the campus, García accepted a scholarship to the University of Louisville because he had heard good things about the coach, Rick Pitino.
Again he struggled, on the court and in the classroom. Again he got support from his mom and family. He soon became a focal point of the Louisville offense, rising above the much-more heralded talent he was supposed to back up.
"That's when I realized I could go to the" NBA, García said.
That's when the family began to contemplate a much different life than they had ever had the capacity to dream about. García planned an early jump to the NBA so he could pay to move his mom and brother to a better neighborhood. His brother Hector promised to stop hanging out on the streets, and to start studying business and economics so he could manage all the money García would make in the NBA.
As the dreams grew, tragedy struck.
Best friend is lost
Hector López was 19 on the night of Dec. 8, 2003, when he was shot to death in an apartment complex in the South Bronx. García still doesn't know why his brother was killed, or who did it.
He just knows he lost his best friend.
On the night Hector was killed, García was in his dorm room in Louisville, suffering a terrible headache. Aspirin wasn't working, he couldn't sleep, and so he kept thinking about calling his mom to inquire about some Dominican remedy he was sure she would have for such pain.
It was after midnight in New York, and García was sure he would wake his mom. But she picked up the phone and indicated she had been awake. He asked how she was doing.
She fumbled her words, tried not to convey the awful news over the phone - and then the sobs came pouring out.
She told García she had just seen Hector dead in the hospital.
She told her son she had been saving money to move to a safer neighborhood. "We were a few months away from leaving," she said recently.
García said he thinks of his brother every day, and misses him most during times of his own basketball success because the one who would have enjoyed it most is no longer alive.
García said on the night last summer when the Kings selected him in the first round, he thought about how Hector would have been the most proud. How his brother would have gone to Las Vegas with García for Kings training camp.
And how Hector would probably have been a fixture at Arco Arena, encouraging his brother as he struggled early in the season and beaming as his playing time and impact on the team began to rise.
"He's starting to really understand how he can be effective," Adelman said. "He was always forcing the issue, he would lose his concentration defensively. ... But now, he's got a sense of what he can do to help us.
"He and Kevin Martin have really bright futures."
García says that such words make him happy but that he still has much to achieve - a championship in Sacramento, elite player status in the NBA. Most of all, paying back his family for all their encouragement.
The one person he can't pay back, though, is his brother.
"My brother used to say, 'Francisco is going to buy me a house,' " García said.
He would have. Instead, García says he is planning a foundation in his brother's name to help at-risk kids in the Dominican Republic and New York City avoid the fate of Hector López.
"I look at life differently now," he said. "I have to be there for everybody."
About the writer: The Bee's Marcos Bretón can be reached at (916) 321-1096 or mbreton@sacbee.com.
Driven to a dream
Francisco García: He grew up on the mean streets of Santo Domingo, where life was rough. Through hard work, determination and the love of his family, he crashed through barriers on the road to the Sacramento Kings.
By Marcos Bretón -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, February 25, 2006
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- As this Caribbean nation of 8 million people was at the height of its frenzy for baseball in late January, one little corner of a sports bar in Santo Domingo was tuned to a Sacramento Kings game.
The bar's owners allowed Dominga Imbert, the 72-year-old grandmother of Kings rookie Francisco García, to claim one of their TVs in the back to watch Sacramento play against the Miami Heat. Imbert and several of her children and other relatives - some dressed in Kings gear - cheered on García and the Kings.
Everywhere else in the bar hundreds of customers were engrossed and roaring in groups of 30 or more around each TV showing the championship series of the Dominican Winter Baseball League - the Dominican Republic's equivalent of the Super Bowl.
If the family seemed out of step with their countrymen, it wasn't the first time. Unlike most Dominican parents, Imbert didn't push baseball on her children. She encouraged basketball.
Her daughter, Miguelina, García's mom, grew up playing basketball in school. Miguelina's brother, also named Francisco, grew up playing basketball on the streets of Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital city of 2 million people, and at age 39 today still dominates many pickup games after work. When García turned a year old, his mother gave him a ceramic basketball.
To keep up with García's NBA career, the family gathers at sports bars, since NBA all-access cable is unavailable to homes in the Dominican Republic.
"I get so enthusiastic when I see Francis on TV," Imbert said. "From the time he was little, Francis was crazy for basketball."
While Francis doesn't sound nearly as cool as "Cisco," the name Kings players and coaches call García, the 6-foot-7 guard isn't always as cool or confident as he appears on the basketball court, his family says.
During the start of his rookie season, with García consistently blowing three-point shots and defensive assignments, he kept telling reporters, coaches and teammates that he was confident he would soon find his game, and show he belonged in the NBA.
"I wasn't worried that he kept missing them (three-point attempts), I was worried he kept taking them," Kings coach Rick Adelman said with a grin.
After such games, García would call his mother, seeking comfort and support.
"He said, 'Mom, I don't feel right on the court,' " Miguelina said in a recent interview from the Bronx, N.Y., home she shares with her husband, Angel, García's stepdad.
"I said to him: 'There is only one place that you can't feel uncomfortable and that's on the court,' " said Miguelina, who would then remind her 24-year-old son of everything he had gone through to become the 23rd player selected in the NBA draft last summer and the only Dominican-born player on an active NBA roster.
"I said, 'Listen to me ... . You have to go to the court at 5 a.m. to practice until you get the confidence in your shot ... ."
It's always been this way for García. Reach for lofty goals, struggle, find strength from family, succeed.
"Francis didn't have a father around (as a child) so all of us, his four uncles and his whole family, always made sure he wasn't alone. He always had someone looking out for him," said his uncle of the same name.
Cramped apartment
García grew up in the inner-city tenements of Santo Domingo, in cinder-block buildings where he and his mother shared a small apartment with his four uncles and grandmother.
The family had lived relatively well in a rented house in a middle-class neighborhood, until García's grandfather Miguel Francisco García died in 1985, when Francisco was 3 years old.
"It was really hard after that," said García's uncle Francisco. "Very hard economically."
García's grandmother, a seamstress, felt the brunt of supporting her family while García's mother and uncles went to work at odd jobs to help make sure everyone had enough to eat.
When uncle Francisco would return from work, he would take García to a nearby basketball court adjacent to caves full of bees.
"A lot of times the bees would come out and we couldn't play," García recalls.
To avoid the bees, García says, he would try to play at night - when the men in the neighborhood would get off work and claim the court from the kids. The court had no lights, and while that made it hard to see the ball, the real obstacle for García was trying to persuade men to allow a boy on the court with them.
García's uncle taught his nephew not to back down from anyone on the court, no matter how physically overmatched he might be.
If García couldn't shoot over his opponent, then his uncle would tell him he had better find a way to dribble around the man defending him. If an opponent was too strong to keep from running to a spot near the basket, then García had better learn to steal the entry pass.
"My (adult) friends would battle him," García's uncle said. "At first, we wouldn't play him (when the games were close) but later we would."
Even as his game improved, García said, he never dreamed of playing basketball beyond the palm trees of Santo Domingo.
"I used to play (basketball) in the playgrounds, but not seriously," García said. "And when I first came to the United States as a teenager, I came to learn English. Not to play ball."
Moving to New York
When García turned 15, his mother moved to New York City to get a better paying job, and to make sure her two sons got a good education.
"And I liked it the first week, but then I wanted to go home," García said.
The South Bronx was where Dominicans could earn dollars but also where better wages came at the price of personal safety. García, his mom and his younger stepbrother Hector López moved into an apartment near 170th Street - two subway stops up from Yankee Stadium - in a neighborhood that annually saw up to 50 homicides, according to police reports.
"People would tell me: 'You can't be the way you are in the Dominican. You can't say 'hi' to everybody because you could insult somebody just by saying 'hello,' " García said.
He felt unsafe on the streets and like a prisoner at his public high school, García said.
"Someone introduced him to me and he said, 'I want to get out of here,' " said Gerald Brown, a counselor for at-risk kids in New York.
Brown tried to get García into a prestigious Catholic high school, but García's English was not good enough to allow him to compete academically.
"He called me and he was very upset," Brown said. "He was crying and I felt really bad."
Brown kept trying. As he spent more time with García, he realized García had basketball skills. Brown began contacting high school coaches and found a spot for García at Cheshire Academy, a boarding school near New Haven, Conn. The school was a two-hour drive from the Bronx, and meant for the first time García would live away from family.
"I had to go," he says now. "It was the only way."
In the classroom, he struggled with his English and fell behind in his class work. On the court, he struggled trying to learn how to play within a structured system against players who were more polished.
He'd call his mom and brother, and they would steady him and tell him he could succeed.
"I was crying every night wondering why am I doing this?" García recalled. "Is this the best thing for me, to be away from my family? The only way to get my head out of it was going to the gym and working out."
Soon, he was catching up on his class assignments, and on the court he was blocking shots, stealing passes, scoring.
He played in tournaments with New York's best high school players, and after each game the college scouts who came to see those other players would end up asking about García.
Recruitment letters began pouring in from colleges. Without visiting the campus, García accepted a scholarship to the University of Louisville because he had heard good things about the coach, Rick Pitino.
Again he struggled, on the court and in the classroom. Again he got support from his mom and family. He soon became a focal point of the Louisville offense, rising above the much-more heralded talent he was supposed to back up.
"That's when I realized I could go to the" NBA, García said.
That's when the family began to contemplate a much different life than they had ever had the capacity to dream about. García planned an early jump to the NBA so he could pay to move his mom and brother to a better neighborhood. His brother Hector promised to stop hanging out on the streets, and to start studying business and economics so he could manage all the money García would make in the NBA.
As the dreams grew, tragedy struck.
Best friend is lost
Hector López was 19 on the night of Dec. 8, 2003, when he was shot to death in an apartment complex in the South Bronx. García still doesn't know why his brother was killed, or who did it.
He just knows he lost his best friend.
On the night Hector was killed, García was in his dorm room in Louisville, suffering a terrible headache. Aspirin wasn't working, he couldn't sleep, and so he kept thinking about calling his mom to inquire about some Dominican remedy he was sure she would have for such pain.
It was after midnight in New York, and García was sure he would wake his mom. But she picked up the phone and indicated she had been awake. He asked how she was doing.
She fumbled her words, tried not to convey the awful news over the phone - and then the sobs came pouring out.
She told García she had just seen Hector dead in the hospital.
She told her son she had been saving money to move to a safer neighborhood. "We were a few months away from leaving," she said recently.
García said he thinks of his brother every day, and misses him most during times of his own basketball success because the one who would have enjoyed it most is no longer alive.
García said on the night last summer when the Kings selected him in the first round, he thought about how Hector would have been the most proud. How his brother would have gone to Las Vegas with García for Kings training camp.
And how Hector would probably have been a fixture at Arco Arena, encouraging his brother as he struggled early in the season and beaming as his playing time and impact on the team began to rise.
"He's starting to really understand how he can be effective," Adelman said. "He was always forcing the issue, he would lose his concentration defensively. ... But now, he's got a sense of what he can do to help us.
"He and Kevin Martin have really bright futures."
García says that such words make him happy but that he still has much to achieve - a championship in Sacramento, elite player status in the NBA. Most of all, paying back his family for all their encouragement.
The one person he can't pay back, though, is his brother.
"My brother used to say, 'Francisco is going to buy me a house,' " García said.
He would have. Instead, García says he is planning a foundation in his brother's name to help at-risk kids in the Dominican Republic and New York City avoid the fate of Hector López.
"I look at life differently now," he said. "I have to be there for everybody."
About the writer: The Bee's Marcos Bretón can be reached at (916) 321-1096 or mbreton@sacbee.com.
