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I was wrong on Luka and Zion Before I retire, I would love to become a scout for an NFL or NBA fran chise. I pride myself on the ability to gauge how well a college player will fare as a professional and most often I am right. But sometimes I’m not. When it comes to Zion William son and Luka Doncic, it appears I missed the mark on both. When it comes to re cent NBA draft classes, I have been right about several players that I felt would transition well to the league, like Ja Morant, Coby White, Darius Gar land, Trae Young, Collin Sexton and Jayson Tatum. I have also picked certain players who were either drafted too early or would not live up to their pre- draft hype, like Markelle Fultz, Josh Jackson, Frank Ntilikina and Mo Bamba. That leads me to the players that I felt were too overhyped coming into the draft and would not pan out but did, and then surpassed expectations. The two most glaring ex amples of this would be Williamson and Doncic. When it comes to Doncic, who was drafted third overall in the 2018 NBA draft, I didn’t think he was athletic enough to transition to the league the way he has. Admittedly, I See Zion on B3 Photos by Alphonso Abbott Jr. BY TIMOTHY RAMSEY THE CHRONICLE Due to awkward scheduling, West Forsyth and Reynolds varsity men’s soccer teams played twice last week. To make it even more odd, both games ended with identical 2-1 scores won by the Titans. The two wins for the Titans extends their 10 game unbeaten streak. Black-owned apparel company aims to make splash in world of sports Player of the Week BY TIMOTHY RAMSEY THE CHRONICLE Nike, Reebok, Adidas and Under Armor aren’t the only games in town when it comes to team sports appar el. MOTTO Athletics can not only outfit your team with uniforms, they can also fulfill all your team’s acces sory needs with sleeves, headbands, backpacks and more. MOTTO Athletics stands for Motivation Overcomes the Toughest Obstacles. The company was started by Mike James, a Winston-Salem na tive and 2007 graduate of R.J. Reyn olds High School. He began MOT TO in 2012 while he was in school at Livingstone College. “I was actually working at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, but that wasn’t my ultimate goal, so I always tried to envision what my career path was going to be,” said James. James stated he took a semester off from school to figure out what his next move was going to be and during that time inspiration hit him. While playing a video game, a friend commented that a person spends more time outfitting their avatar than they do playing the game. That was where the idea for starting the sports clothing line came from. Soon after getting the idea for the company, James began doing his research on similar companies and finalizing the details for what he wanted his business to be. “From there I started thinking of logos and actually what I wanted for a name,” he said. “So. then I went Photo by Timothy Ramsey Mike James, left, and Ameer Watkins are hoping to expand the MOTTO Athletics brand. off of Nike, their name was short. Adidas stands for All Day I Dream About Sports, so I took that acronym and thought about what sports meant to me and I said ‘motivation.’ “Then the word MOTTO came and then the other words in the acro nym came soon afterwards. So that’s how I came up with MOTTO.” James says he was having a tough time coming up with a logo for the company after figuring out the name. He started thinking about ways of creating a logo using the let ter M because it was the first letter in the name, but once again inspiration hit him at the right time. “I was watching the Under Ar mor Combine and I had the remote control in my hand, and I couldn’t come up with a logo,” he continued. “I was sitting there drawing Ms and trying to figure out what the logo was going to be and then I thought about when my coach used to say, ‘Are you going to turn it on today?’ “I had the remote in my hand and I saw the power button and the Un der Armor uniforms had little rings around their logo on their clothes that day, so I took the rings and put it around the power button and said ‘that’s it.’ MOTTO Athletics was not an overnight success for James. He be gan by selling T-shirts to his friends and turned a small profit from those sales. He went back to studying larg- See Apparel on B5 B.J. McIntyre B.J. McIntyre rushed for over 175 yards and a touchdown against R.J. Reynolds last week. His efforts led the way for the Spartans in their 62-6 victory over the Demons. » MOTTOathletics 680 Hanes Mall Blvd. Winston-Salem, NC 336-912-3333
Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
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March 11, 2021, edition 1
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