Just a kid from Manhattan’s Lower East Side community, Brian grew up in Smith Houses.  I remember running into him on the court a few times for my middle school games and thinking he was as quick and as deadly as Allen Iverson, but the middle school version!  Actually, my first thought was, I hope we play a zone… The kid was amazing with the basketball, but he never spoke two words about his greatness.  Watching him made it easy to forget how much time, effort, and focus it takes to create a skill set like his.  To this day, well into his 30’s he’s still a threat on the court, but that’s a credit to his yesterday focus.  Brian’s focus for today is to continue providing his Lower East Side community with its own brand of high-caliber street ball.  He wanted to gift LES with a brand of basketball that that could be seen on NYC’s biggest street ball stages—the very stages of —West 4th Street’s “The Cage”, Kingdome, Rucker Park, Dyckman—where Brian showcased his talents as he grew from a boy to a man.  Brian started, “A lot of people from the L.E.S., if they didn’t really know ball like that, they didn’t really go other places and see basketball at a high level.”  His passion was calm but strong; he was focused as he spoke. “So I really wanted to bring that type of basketball down here for them to see it and really be a part of that culture.”  Isn’t that the way of a leader?  To experience, gather, and return home to redistribute? That was the start of a joke I wrote to begin and end this piece; but it wound up one of many in a pile of crumpled ideas that struggled to match the impact a man like Brian Gardenhire has had on his community.  To fully grasp the picture being painted we must start with the very background first.   The most technologically advanced societies lead the charge into tomorrows days and times.    Unfortunately, however, today’s most technologically advanced have become so focused on what could be, so entangled in realities that are founded on shared ideas rather than actual truths—the virtual—so  connected to machine, that tomorrow’s society is one that is fully disconnected from its original idea of community.  That was the goal: create a community so that the many can survive what the one could never survive alone.   We’ve been given so much access to one another and the worlds around us that our technologically sound societies have focused more on what’s entertaining than what’s fulfilling and what can’t be accessed or acquired rather than what is right in front of themselves.   Here the Pessimist says there’s no point in trying to fix it. The Optimist says, “We don’t need to fix it, people will find their way to a better tomorrow, no matter today.”  At least the Pessimist acknowledges that there’s a problem, that’s the first step! Today and tomorrow’s society needs leaders to remind people of the purpose and importance of community.  People have become distracted by their work and the entertainment that they use to ease the pain and suffering of their work and their everyday lives.  The truth is, people who work as hard as we have come to work, in a society that requires more workers than leaders to create more buyers than sellers, will continue to struggle to see the benefits of being community minded and community focused.   We need people who can bring us together in the name of bonding, strengthening, and connecting, no matter our daily walks of life.  We need those who are willing to put in the extra effort, step away from steering just themselves to help guide so that the rest of us can put in the extra effort it requires to shift the direction of a ship.   His summer league, L.E.S. Express— which actually stands for, “Learn Educate & Succeed”— is now mentioned amongst the top in NYC, boasting of high-caliber regulars that play on the national street ball circuit like Floyd Mayweather’s TM