When you work on Wall Street in NYC you have to maintain..just ask "GC".

Norcross, GA - The name Gary Charles is synonymous with AAU Basketball around the country, hailing from the Roosevelt section of Brooklyn, NY; Charles started the AAU program known as the Long Island Panthers; nowadays they are known as the New York Panthers and are one of the most renowned AAU teams around.

If you know anything about AAU Hoops you know that it has been widely speculated that their coaches and the big sneaker companies have been happily joined at the hip when it comes to players and the high schools and colleges they should attend. Well because of all of these different allegations a lot of the “Big Time” AAU Camps like the Reebok ABCD Camp, the Adidas All-American Camp and The Nike All-American Camp have now fallen to the wayside, sort of and have been replaced by more quote, unquote skills camps.

Well in a real effort to try and sustain and generate broad support for the positive role grassroots basketball and its academic and athletic programs play in the United States, Charles who is still the director of the New York Panthers and15 other highly visible college basketball coaches and sports executives organized a organization called Grassroots Basketball of America or GBOA.

The GBOA held its first national tournament this year. The tournament was formulated something like the NCAA Championships with 4 regions (North, South, East and West). The finals of the tournament will be held in Chicago in mid August.

Well enough AAU talk this piece is about “CG” or better known as “The Dapper Don” of the Hardwood. No matter where you see this cool cat (slang from the 60’s, you know “Daddy O” and all of that jive”; oh much respect is given believe that.) he’s always dapper. The only other hoop aficionado that I have seen be as dapper as that is Sonny Hill, the creator of the famous Sonny Hill Summer Basketball League in Philadelphia.

The real Brooklyn Bad Boy!

I caught up with Charles at the GBOA South Region Tournament in Norcross, GA and asked him about being so cool and debonair:

L.A.: “Gary, we all know about you and grassroots basketball but the thing I believe our readers what to know about is why are you always so clean?”
Gary: “I’ve been dressing like this since I was 14 or 15 years old. I remember when I was in the 6^th grade my father had to come in and speak to one of my teachers and he was always dressed clean (you know three-piece suit, shoes shined etc.) and I noticed how all of the women teachers were falling all over him and that stuck with me. So every since that time I’ve tried to emulate that type of style and swagger just like him.” (Gary was telling me all of this with a big smile on his face, I ain’t mad at you “GC”)

L.A.: ”But you are so into basketball why aren’t you dress comfortably in a sweatsuit, sneakers and a baseball cap instead?”
Gary: “Well you know I work in the Wall Street area and I have three brothers who looked up to me so it was always important to me that I dressed and carried myself in the right way so they could follow in my footsteps. I tried dressing like that at one time but that was a bit out of my element, you know what I mean, I had to be me.”

L.A.: “So are do you dress like this all of the time?”
Gary: “All of the time. You know every year at the Roundball Classic, SLAM Magazine use to do a “Best Dressed” feature and then after a while they just stopped saying “why do we keep doing this, we are just wasting our time. Well I can remember a good friend of mine named Rodney Heard who works for the New York Knicks saying “Yeah why that’s 15 in a row in favor of Gary.” (I could tell from Gary’s chuckle that he always knew that he was going to be the best dressed…15 in a row, the numbers don’t lie!).

L.A.: “You know Sonny Hill is also a sharp dresser?”
Gary: “Absolutely, there are a lot of sharp dressers out there, my man Rodney Heard is a sharp dresser and Calvin Andrews, Mitch Malone from Texas Blue Chip Basketball is a real sharp dresser. There are a lot of guys out there who come with it. I can’t say that I’m the sharpest; I will leave that up to guys like you to determine that. I will give props where props are due.” (Big smile)

L.A.: “Gary, I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.”
Gary: “No problem.”