Andre Mills will tell you … he didn’t care about school. He didn’t need to. Education was simply an annoying obligation to make it to the pros. In high school, he was slated for the NBA. Scouts aggressively sought him out, he traveled on the McDonald’s dream team for high school standouts, and received countless benefits from being “the best.” School was low on his list of priorities. So much so, in fact, he was barely passing his classes. His grades were often padded and his absences were excused. He was going places! He was going to be a star! Then the unimaginable happened.
Mills went up for a jump shot, landed and shattered both his shin bones. A rare vitamin D deficiency brought everything to an excruciatingly painful end. The dream was over and, suddenly, so were the passes in school. Friendships ended. People he thought he knew faded into the background.
In his book, BALL IS NOT LIFE, Mills is as raw and real as one can get about being a young African-American male headed for the NBA one minute and just another kid struggling in school the next. But he understood that he had a choice. He could wallow in self-pity or take on education as he once had “the game.” As hard as he worked on the court, he admits, school was harder.
Down but not out, Mills began speaking to schools, sports teams and organizations about the value of education and being respectful to authority figures. He has “get real” discussions about social media, peer pressure, and self-worth. Mills has mentored hundreds of students and has only just begun.
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