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THAT WAS HIS WHOLE PHILOSOPHY AND MINDSET WHEN HE CAME HOME FROM THE JOINT . I GREW UP IN A HOUSE WHERE THEY BUGGED OUR PHONES AND THEY WERE CONSTANTLY TRYING TO LOCK GATOR UP ALL THE TIME . PLANT STUFF ON HIM . IT WAS CRAZY .
parks and neighborhoods can you ever remember encountering any street issues and how did you navigate that ? GB : Being Gator Bradley ' s step son everyone knew who Watari was . I can remember it was game at Kenwood where there was about to be a brawl . Kenwood was my area . Nothing was finna shake . All of them were my guys in my area . The guys who had the money back then used to come get Watts to go play for that bread . There was no park that we weren ' t going to in the hundreds and people didn ' t know us . Fernwood , everywhere . Other people used Watari and the Julian players as measuring sticks . Julian had a lot of good hoopers . Tony Allen from the Memphis Grizzlies was a Freshman and I will never forget we took him up the hill from our house to a court and he was dunking on everybody . I had no idea that he was going to grow up to be the animal that he is today , but I had to go back and remember that he was there . He wasn ' t even on the team . There was no room for him . At the time Tony was mainly known for shooting dice and beating up people . J4 : What was one of the most powerful things you learned coming up under Wallace " Gator " Bradley ? WM : I love my father to death ( laughs ) but the thing I learned from his is persistence . He is super persistent more than anything . If it ' s something that you really want lock in and pursue it . I got that mentality from being around him . Even as a young guy he talked to me about the penitentiary . I knew that wasn ' t the place for me . Yeah I might toe this line and do some dumb sh *&, but when it comes to crossing that line .. nah I aint built for that . I might be fake tough all day , but I wasn ' t going there . He would always stress to make sure that you stay clean . Get your money , but make sure your things are in order so no one can ever come to you with any BS . That was his whole philosophy and mindset when he came home from the joint . He moved like I ' m about to get so clean that these people can ' t fool with me anymore . I grew up in a house where they bugged our phones and they were constantly trying to lock Gator up all the time . Plant stuff on him . It was crazy . He had to be super duper on point all the time . He still messed with his guys , but he made it clear , I don ' t move like that anymore . I
picked that up . Once I was advancing I knew I had to be on point . I couldn ' t move around with certain guys from my neighborhood that were doing things differently . He put a lot of game in me on that aspect from a real young age . J4 : What was your college recruitment process like ? WM :: Early on I had local schools sending letters , Illinois , De Paul , but once I came back from the ABCD camp in New Jersey as a ranked player , the larger schools started reaching out . I put is some serious work out there . Kansas , Syracuse , Arkansas , Tulane and a lot of those top schools began expressing interest hitting me up . But I grew up in a household with Wallace " Gator " Bradley so obviously I was exposed to things that most kids my age weren ' t . I grew up in a political household that didn ' t really care for White folks . I ' ve been in Farrakhan ' s house . All of that kind of stuff was in me at a young age so when it came to picking a college I knew I didn ' t want to play for a White coach . It wasn ' t very many black coaches . You had Nolan Richardson at Arkansas and Perry Clark at Tulane . Those happened to be the schools that were recruiting me the hardest . Secondly , I wanted to play for a University that would offer me the chance to play right from my Freshman year . Arkansas had Kareem Reid the PG from New York , so I knew I wasn ' t going to take his spot , it was his Senior year . It was either go there and be a back up for a year or go to Tulane with the chance to start . New Orleans was popping at the time with Master P , I ultimately though that being in New Orleans was a better situation for me . I picked Tulane , but it didn ' t turn out to be basketball wise what I thought it would be . We just didn ' t have the teams . We didn ' t make it to the tournament . We didn ' t get much exposure . J4 : So what was it like to match up against these guys with these big reps ? I always welcomed the challenge . I feel like I played up to the competition and rose to the occasion . My mind set was that those guys didn ' t respect me or know me so I felt I had to make a name for my self . I can remember being at a top camp and Frank Williams and Big Lance were on my team . Frank is my guy still . He told me " bro I ' m straight I already got mine I want you to get yours ".
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