Davis came from a rougher environment, South Central L.A., but made a splashier impact when he got to Crossroads. He was practicing with the varsity even as a 5-foot-6 eighth-grader. He was so small he needed a boost from teammates to be able to dunk. But then his growth spurt kicked in, and after his sophomore year, he was tearing it up at Nike camp. He led Crossroads to the state championship in 1997, 10 years after the school won its first. After two years at UCLA, Davis was off to the NBA, picked third by the then-Charlotte Hornets.
Thanks in part to him and Davis, today's players have an $18 million, 7-year-old gym two blocks from the main campus, a facility so nice visiting NBA teams sometimes use it to practice while in L.A.
"To a huge degree, I think it was their legacy," Roper says. "They put us on the map."
Now the gym has two new decorations, imprinted with the names of Croshere and Davis.
"That thing right there, it's never coming down," Davis said as he gazed at the giant red No. 5 jersey after the event Saturday. "The people coming in the gym, they'll know that Austin Croshere paved the way for me, and hopefully I paved the way for someone else."
J.A. Adande, ESPN