BOND OF ‘BROTHERS’
Like his former HS teammate, St. Francis’ Dunn remained home to build contender
RASHEEM Dunn and Shamorie Ponds made history, and then made each other cry. Leaving Madison Square Garden, Thomas Jefferson’ s star seniors had brought a city title back to the Brooklyn high school for the first time in 62 years, sharing MVP honors. It never had been so good, and it never would be the same again. “We hugged and we just broke down crying, seeing as were about to go our separate ways,” said Dunn, who helped lead the Orange Wave to their first-ever state title in 2016 before heading to St. Francis Brooklyn. “It wasn’t a regular friendship. It was a brother bond.” Dunn still remembers walking over to the vaguely familiar AAU player, who was shooting alone on a side hoop, and introducing himself to the soft-spoken Ponds, who soon was relying on his new friend to relay messages to girls for him. The boys from Bed-Stuy forged their on-court partnership in the sixth grade, but had a harder time envisioning leaving New York than each other. “Shamorie had [an offer from] Creighton, and we were so good of a backcourt together, they wanted him but they were gonna take both of us,” Dunn said. “Some people say we’re the same. Neither one of us went out of state because we’d both get homesick. We were kids. We didn’t know how to live on our own. “I’m a Brooklyn kid. I’m a city kid. I didn’t want to go to where nobody could see me play.”
Now everyone sees Ponds playing on national TV for St. John’s. At St. Francis, Dunn has everyone who matters watching, including his mother, Bertha Fuseyamore, at every game. Even Ponds recently returned to his native borough to watch his friend at the Generoso Pope Athletic Complex, busy leading his own unexpected turnaround.
In Dunn’s freshman season, the Terriers finished with their thirdworst record (4-27) in 98 years, recording the third-fewest wins in Division I. Picked to finish last in the Northeast Conference again this season, St. Francis is tied for second place in the league following Thursday’s win over LIU Brooklyn, in which Dunn had 24 points, seven rebounds, five assists and three steals.
For the second straight season, Dunn leads the Terriers in points (14.5), rebounds (5.7) and steals (1.2).
“When he went to Jefferson it was a building process, and he’s stepped into the same thing, where we had a bad first year and we’ve gotten a lot better and there’s a lot of promise,” St. Francis coach Glenn Braica said. “He’s a kid that needs to be comfortable wherever he is, and I think he feels that here. He’s from a tough area, but he didn’t want to be away from home, and he has the best of both worlds here.”
In Brooklyn Heights, Dunn resides on a street with some of the country’s most expensive real estate, near the Shake Shack and Equinox and Le Pain Quotidien.
Home is just a couple of miles away, where Dunn grew up with a single mother and two little broth- ers, living in cramped quarters and mostly without his father, who was in and out of jail.
“I see him around sometimes [now], but it’s not a relationship a kid’s supposed to have with their dad,” Dunn said. “But it doesn’t affect me. I’m 19, about to be 20.”
Then, there was the “typical stuff that goes on in the hood,” too typical for too many kids.
“Shooting, robbing, killing, stabbing, fights, brawls. I was there to witness a lot of stuff,” Dunn said. “My uncle, Kenneth, he was always on my back. He was in the streets, so me looking up to him and him knowing that, he didn’t want me to follow in his footsteps and was always making sure I always was doing the right thing to overcome where we’re from, and not be a product of the environment.
“I’d just stay in the gym and keep working and not focus on the negative things going on there. If you’re a kid from the hood, and you’ve got a talent, you need to use it to the best of your ability. I used it to get out of the hood.”
Dunn used basketball to move a few blocks from multi-million dollar views of the skyline and bridges, routinely spending beautifully foreign Brooklyn days on the piers and promenade.
“It’s better than where I’m from,” Dunn said. “It’s crazy because if I get on the A train to get back to where I’m from, it’s two stops away, but when I’m here, I don’t want to leave because there’s so many things I can do that I can’t do when I go back home. I can go to Brooklyn Bridge Park. I can meet people I don’t know, and have conversations with them. It’s a lot easier to socialize.
“You go to the hood and you see someone you don’t know, it’s always like, ‘ What are you looking at?’ It’s different.”
It’s still Brooklyn. It’s still home.