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Dear friend, My name is Patrick Ocheni. The purpose of me writing you this letter is to share with you You see, I'm originally from Africa. My family and I arrived into the United States in 1992. Like most Africans that decide to move to the U.S., my father felt that we would have a greater chance of living a better life and achieving all our hopes, dreams, and aspirations in America. Why? Because, around the world, America is thought of and viewed as the "Land Of Opportunity." When we arrived into the U.S., I was very excited. At age 15, it was my first time that I'd ever been on an airplane. I was young, full of energy, and eager to learn everything about America. I don't know why, but the first thing that caught my attention was the game of basketball. You have to understand, being from Africa, soccer (called football in Africa) was the only sport that I'd played my entire life and I enjoyed it very much. So, my parents thought it was very strange that I would suddenly be fascinated by this new sport of basketball. In 1992, Magic Johnson and the Lakers were seemingly the dominant team in the NBA--at least I thought so because I couldn't hear enough about them on television. I remember sneaking out of my room late at night while my parents slept to watch the late night basketball games. I was immensely fascinated by how the players would dribble the basketball between their legs or how Magic Johnson would connect with a teammate using a no-look pass or how a player would jump high into the air and dunk the basketball. At the time, all these basketball "tricks" seemed like magic to me. And, it fueled my desire to learn everything I could possibly find about the game of basketball so that I could one day be able to play like Magic Johnson. And so began my journey to research and study the game of basketball... I spent many hours at the library checking out basketball books, used my school lunch money to buy basketball videos, and spent every spare moment that I had practicing how to play basketball. In my mind, I believed that I was going to be the next Magic Johnson and play in the NBA; I didn't know much about Michael Jordan at the time until later when I saw a clip of him dunking the basketball from the free throw line--that was unbelievable! Fast forward a few years... Unfortunately, my dream of becoming the next Magic Johnson or playing in the NBA didn't come true. Why? I never could make the cut to join my high school basketball team because I was too short, too slow, and I had the vertical leap of a slug--at least that's what the coaches said. The good news is that, not being able to play basketball competitively didn't destroy my love for basketball. I still enjoy watching it and learning about it every chance that I get. Later on, I decided that I wanted to share all the knowledge that I'd gathered about basketball over the years with fellow basketball lovers around the world. But, there was a problem... I didn't know how I was going to do that. I had heard of the Internet, but I didn't know the first thing about creating web pages or coding in html. And, the idea of programming or coding scared me to death. Plus, I couldn't figure out what this thing called hosting was all about. So, out of frustration, I gave up on the idea of creating a basketball website for a while. Until...
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