When NBA Superstars Grew Up With Absolutely Nothing..

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Now, with superstars around the league making hundreds of millions of dollars, a lot of them didn't have it so easy growing up around struggle and violence. And with that being said, you definitely won't believe the problems players like LeBron James faced at such an early age. Now, with Giannis quickly becoming an MVP and arguably one of the best players in the league, it definitely wasn't an easy road for Ante de Combo to get to this point. It all started with him being born in Athens, Greece, as the son of two Nigerian immigrants, who three years earlier left his older brother Francis in Lagos with his grandparents. Ante de Combo grew up in the Athens neighborhood of Sapolia, and his parents couldn't easily find work, so Giannis and his older brother Thanissis helped by scouting for watches, handbags, and sunglasses in the streets, which wasn't the life that him and his family wanted to live. Giannis even talked about what he had to do to make money for the family when he said, I was selling stuff probably since I could remember, like six or seven years old. I was always out there helping my mom and dad sell watches, glasses, CDs, DVDs, stuff like that, whatever we could put our hands on. And I did it till I was around 17, but I was just doing it because I had to. There was no other option. Giannis even said that his drive to be the best in the NBA comes from his family's struggles growing up, saying, that comes from my family seeing my parents struggle every day, working hard for me and my brothers just to provide food on our table. I had to do whatever it takes. Whatever I try to do, I always try to give my best to just try to be a killer because at the end of the day, if you don't work hard, you're not going to get food on your table. By 2007, Giannis officially started playing basketball. And by 2009, he was already playing competitively. Just two years later, he was promoted to the semi-pro league team, even scoring 50 points in a game, which gave him popularity at a young age throughout Europe. In 2013, leading up to the NBA draft, many teams began seeing Giannis' true potential on the big stage, which led to him being drafted with a 15-pick in the first round by the Milwaukee Bucks, and the rest is history. Coming from nothing and being a scrawny kid whose name nobody could pronounce, worked every day in the gym, lifting weights, practicing basketball, and single-handedly changed the Milwaukee organization from one of the worst teams to one of the best in just a few seasons. And when Giannis was asked about the skill level he's at today, shortly after winning a VP, he said, there's a lot of things I could improve on. First of all, look at myself before I look at anybody else. I try to self-improve as much as possible. There's a lot of things I gotta work on in my game. A lot of people say, you're the MVP. You're one of the best players in the league. You're so dominant, but I think I can get better. I think I'm at 60% of my potential, as good as I can be. I just want to be better. Now with Carmelo Anthony constantly being a headline over recent years, with teams not wanting to take a chance on him, he continued to stay unfazed throughout all the criticism because this wasn't the first adversity Mello's been faced with throughout his life. Mello was born in Red Hook housing projects in Brooklyn, New York, and by age two, his father had passed away from cancer in his liver. When Mello turned eight, him and his three older siblings and his mom moved to Baltimore, where instantly Mello began seeing things that no kid should ever see. Kenny Minor, who's one of Carmelo's childhood friends, even said, From drugs to killings, to anything you could name that goes on in the roughest parts of town, we've seen it and witnessed it hands on. Those are things that teach you toughness and keep you mentally focused on your goals. But growing up, basketball played a huge role in the reason why Anthony didn't involve himself in that lifestyle, even though it was everywhere, including blocks around his home. Mello took the bus to town some Catholic high school, which is where his drive for basketball really began and he was cut from the freshman team. That situation only made him work harder, and Mello came back his sophomore season after growing five inches during the summer and had a crazy year being named the Maryland High School Player of the Year. About the time his junior year came, he was already getting offers from school like Syracuse, which was the college he would eventually play for. But around that time, Mello's grades slipped and his ACT scores weren't good enough to attend Syracuse, which led to his mother moving them to Virginia in order to play Oak Hill Academy. While there, Mello had arguably the best single season in high school basketball history, winning countless awards, shattering records, leading his team to 45 wins and one loss, and even outplaying LeBron James in a match between Oak Hill and St. Vincent St. Mary's. Mello played one eventful season at Syracuse before entering the 2003 NBA draft, which is known as one of the best draft classes ever. And Anthony was drafted with the third pick of 2003 by the Denver Nuggets, and since then has been a 10-time All-Star, won the scoring title in the 2012-2013 season, and is looking to chase a championship present day with the promising Blazers team. Now, Derrick Rose is easily out of tremendous impact on the league today, as many players and fans feel a connection with Derrick Rose after all the adversity he faced in his life up to this point. At one point, he was arguably the best point guard in the league, but injuries have derailed his career to where we've seen him bounce around playing for many teams. But with that being said, Rose has been faced with ridiculous situations his entire life, so it's proof he's unfazed and he can handle anything. Growing up, Derrick was born and raised in Inglewood area of Chicago's South Side, and this area is known as one of the top three crime-filled areas in the United States. Derrick was one of four sons to his mother, Brenda Rose, and Derrick grew up in a very small house close to a park that started his love for basketball, despite all the violence surrounding him in that area. Rose grew up in a constant struggle in police shootouts because of the violence, and the neighborhood is widely considered among the most dangerous in all of America. In just December 2016, there were 61 violent crimes, 102 property crimes, and 63 other crimes in the Inglewood community alone. Rose often said that he hated living there, and he gives his three older brothers a lot of credit for keeping them safe and not letting his talent for basketball go to waste. Rose recently sat down and talked about his path to the NBA, as well as growing up in arguably the most dangerous city in the world, and he said, It was tough growing up in Southside, Inglewood, one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods. That's why I took school as I did. I could have done all the work, but at the time we were just trying to survive, me and my mom. My job every day was getting up and trying to find a way to hustle. Not where I'm selling drugs or anything, but things like shooting dice, shooting jump shots to get a few dollars from my mom. I pumped gas. I was a light skinned kid. My other friends, they all looked rough. So since I was a light skinned kid, I'd go up to you and say, hey, I could pump your gas. I did that. I shot jump shots for money. Anything to try to take the load off my mom. She'd get a check for $700 or some if she didn't get paid one time a whole month. She'd get $600 or $700 to pay in the bills, and we'd have $100 to spend for two weeks. And having a kid, how are you supposed to do that? Rose also spoke about how his mom had to play the father figure in his family as well, due to their father not being in their life. But he said, I rarely saw her feminist side. There were bills she couldn't pay and would break down. That's when I saw, hey, my mom is a woman. I saw her emotions. She had to be the one hard on us. If anything, we saw the dad side of her more than the mom side. In 2003, Rose went to Simon High School, where he was already being looked at by college scouts, despite not even playing a single game yet. The only reason he wasn't allowed to be on the varsity team was due to the head coach's long-lived rule that no matter what, no freshman could play on the varsity team. Rose then led that freshman team to a 24-1 record, which made the varsity coach approach Rose and ask him if he wanted to play for the varsity team in the state tournament. But Rose ended up turning that down. He said he wants those guys to get their credit. Over the four years that Rose played for Simon, the school went 120 and 12, which is one of the best high school careers in history. Derrick's high school coach, Robert Smith, talked about D. Rose growing up, and he said, he lived in a tough neighborhood, but his brothers were behind him and did everything to make sure that nothing was going to happen to him and that he's going to be safe. They were a big influence. D. Rose was eventually recruited by John Calipari at Memphis, and he played one season there before declaring for the NBA draft, where he was ironically taken with the first pick of the 2008 draft by his hometown Chicago Bulls. With Jimmy Butler being another athlete inspiring the world and paving the way for athletes who come from a shaky background, he's had a tremendous career despite being underestimated when he first came in and now signed a ridiculous contract with the Miami Heat. But Butler's path to the NBA was definitely a hard one. Being faced with adversity that most can't overcome. Jimmy did whatever it took, which makes it that much more inspirational. Butler was born in Houston, Texas, but his father left the family when he was still an infant. Growing up was tough for the family, and they had to move multiple times, eventually landing in a Houston suburb called Tomball. By the time Butler was 13, he recalls his mother kicking him out of the house and even saying, I don't like the look of you, you got to go. Which led to Jimmy living in friends' house for weeks at a time. Around that time, Butler went to Tomball High School where he met a friend named Leslie that convinced his parents despite having six siblings to let Jimmy stay with them. Butler spoke about the failure that took him in and said, they accepted me into their family. It wasn't because of basketball. She and Michelle Lambert, Leslie's mother, was just a very lovely woman. She just did stuff like that. I couldn't believe it. Butler didn't have a crazy high school career. He eventually went to Tyler Junior College where he became the best player on that team and eventually got a scholarship to Marquette University where he helped the Golden Eagles get to the tournament two years in a row. After being looked at as a top 20 pick of the 2011 draft, one NBA manager said, his story is one of the most remarkable I've seen in all my years of basketball. There were so many times in his life when he was set up to fail. Every time he overcame just enormous odds. When you talk to him and he's hesitant to talk about his life, you just have this feeling that this kid has greatness in him. Many people started hearing about Butler's story prior to the draft. And during an interview with ESPN prior to draft night, Butler said, please, I know you're going to write something. I'm just asking don't write in the way that makes people feel sorry for me. I hate that. There's nothing to feel sorry about. I love what happened to me. It made me who I am. I'm grateful for the challenges I faced. Please don't make them feel sorry for me. When it comes to the way his father and mother treated him as a kid, he said, I don't hold grudges. I still talk to my family, my mom, my father. We love each other. That's never going to change. But Butler was eventually taken with the 30th pick in the draft by the Bulls, where his career started to slow down, but he turned himself into a headline superstar playing in Minnesota, Philly, and now Miami. Now with LeBron James becoming one of the greatest to ever play, he's also had one of the craziest success stories growing up, as everything that happened in LeBron's life contributed to his drive to success. LeBron was born in Akron, Ohio, to his 16 year old mother and a father who had a long criminal history and wasn't involved at all in LeBron's life. As he grew up, LeBron and his mother moved to multiple apartments, often to a worse neighborhood each time, with shootings and violence surrounding them due to his mother not being able to find solid work. A neighbor visited the winter when James was 3 years old and saw their house was frigid and unkept, with dirty dishes piling out of the sink and a hole in the living room floorboards. The neighbor Wanda Rivas said, It's not safe here. Can you please come stay with me? And that night, Gloria and LeBron arrived at her house with a single suitcase and a blue stuffed elephant. LeBron thought to himself, I just grabbed my little backpack which had all the possessions I needed, and I said to myself what I always said to myself, It's time to roll. LeBron's mother loved to party according to her friends, and she would often leave LeBron to fend for himself where he would use her food stamps at the corner store to eat some nights. Eventually, his mother Gloria realized that her son would be better off without her in a terrible situation, so she allowed LeBron to move in with Frank Walker, who was a local football coach that introduced LeBron to basketball at the age of nine. In the summer of 1993, they were about to be kicked out again from a friend's two-bedroom place in downtown when Bruce Kelker pulled into the project's parking lot, looking for eight- to nine-year-old football players to join his rec team. As he walked over to Gloria, he saw LeBron, who was already as tall as his mother, playing tag with a few neighborhood kids. Kelker was more interested in scooping out football players than women, so he walked past Gloria toward LeBron and said, You guys like football? And LeBron said, That's my favorite sport. LeBron actually pursued football heavily while growing up, and he was so skilled that many felt he had a chance to make the NFL. But with the promising basketball career blossoming as St. Vincent, St. Mary's, it led James to be faced as a magazine to have national spotlight during his teen years. So basketball became an opportunity that he couldn't refuse. He was eventually picked by his hometown team out of high school in the 2003 NBA Draft by the Cavaliers, and the rest was history. He gave Ohio some legendary years, entered their 52-year championship drought in 2016, and even opened a school around the area of Akron he grew up in to influence the young youth dealing with similar struggles he was faced with. Recently, LeBron sat down and discussed growing up and what kept his motivations high through all of that, and he said, I think the best way I managed those struggles growing up as a kid was just always understanding that there's loved ones around me that want me to succeed, there's loved ones around me that want me to be great. Even though the adults and the people that we love are going through so much, they don't want us to feel that burden. They want us to continue to be as positive as possible, because they see the bright future in us. Even though there were some days that I felt like it wasn't the best day for me personally or for my mom, I always felt like there'd be brighter days. And yo, bro, click on this video, dude. What are you doing? Seriously? This is a fire video right here, bro. Trust you don't want to miss out on it. I'm dead serious, bro.