Tai Chi Winner

by Chris OVince Carter wearing the AND 1 Tai Chi‘Leary

After a tedious evaluation, we’ve got a winner to declare in our And1 Tai Chi giveaway contest.

Before I get into that, I wanted to thank everyone who shared their stories. I had loads of great, fun and inspiring stories to dig through with this. It makes you appreciate what SLAM is and what brings us together, whether it’s on this site or in the pages of the magazine.

With my moment of cornballness out of the way, let’s congratulate our winner, Migs, for his story of his own One Shining Moment.

“I was the third-string Center in grade 9. We had two coaches – Coach A hated me; Coach B loved my hustle. We were playing a good team, and word was that their Power Forward was going to light us up. The locker room was tense that day. Our starting Center hurt his ankle, and Coach A had me kneel on the ground to hold his ankle so they could tape it. I’d never been so humiliated, kneeling down, holding this guy’s leg while everyone else listened to the game plan. I was pissed. The game started, and as predicted, their forward was tearing up our big men, resulting in foul trouble. Suddenly, Coach B calls my name, and tells me to stop the guy, or foul him. Fueled by the ankle incident, I played the best defense of my life, fronting him, not giving up position, and boxing out aggressively. We still lost the game, but I was a hero to my teammates for that one game, and an example for my great D. Due to my play, I thought I’d get more playing time when we faced them again. I was wrong.”

I feel you on the limited minutes in high school, Migs. And the losing too, actually. We’ll get those sneaks out to you in sync with And1’s re-release of the Tai Chi on Nov. 12.