The clothes told a story about the 37-year-old man coaching at one corner of the gym: white T-shirt with an NBA logo on the front and black sweatpants with an orange ball between the words AMITYVILLE and BASKETBALL emblazoned high on the upper left thigh.
“You want to stop the ball here,” he told two players not far from the basket before directing a three-on-three drill in this preseason practice late last month.
He is A.J. Price, who used to be one of these kids. He was an Amityville player in the early 2000s, a really good one.
After scoring 1,394 points and winning three straight Long Island championships, two state titles and two Newsday Suffolk Player of the Year awards, Price graduated to UConn in the Big East, then moved on for a six-season run as an NBA point guard and two more seasons in China.
Now he’s living in Baldwin and back at his old high school, beginning a new role. Price is trying to make a difference with another generation of Amityville players as a volunteer assistant under his former coach, Jack Agostino.
“I would like to think just me coming from these same hallways . . . and making it to the highest level of basketball, that I give these kids a newfound sense of hope or a chance, the opportunity,” Price said. “Just to be able to see me, touch me, feel me, hear me every single day.
“I played in the NBA. Let them know their dreams can come true.”
His clothes didn’t tell the whole story. There was much to overcome before Price’s dream came true.
Born in Orange, New Jersey, the son of former Penn and NBA player Tony Price moved to Roosevelt when he was 4 and then to East Massapequa.
He averaged 25.4 points as a junior and 28.5 as a senior before graduating from Amityville in 2004.
His most memorable game came as a sophomore, the time Amityville faced LeBron James and St. Vincent-St. Mary of Akron, Ohio, at a tournament in Delaware.
Price missed two free throws with about nine seconds left. James followed with a…
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