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The conversation started because Rick Pitino,

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who was the coach and president of basketball operations,

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wanted the team to play in a summer league, but he didn’t want to travel,

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so the idea was, “Let’s have a summer league in Boston,

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let’s do our own here.”

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It could be a program that would benefit the city in as many ways as possible.

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And the mayor got involved, and after they tossed around a couple of ideas

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and looked at a couple of sites, the mayor said,

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“Well why don’t you go talk to the folk over at UMass Boston.”

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We would get here at like 6 in the morning and get set up for the first game

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which generally started at 9 o’clock,

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and then the games didn’t end until 11 at night.

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The camps were here during the day;

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The camps were here during the day;

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in the evening the paying customers would start coming in and they’d pack the place.

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It didn’t hurt that it was LeBron’s first pro debut here. He brought in a lot of people.

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I’m sure most of them were here to see LeBron.