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Date: 2018-02-20
Location: 4500 Holden St, Philadelphia, PA
News coverage:
An Aug. 2015 profile from the University City Review:
Hoop for hoop, net for net, James “Wimb” Wimberly is one of the most skillful and talented basketball players to ever come out of Lee Cultural Center and Playground. There is a major difference between basketball and tennis schoolyard players.
“Playground players had a chance to make it and did,” says Wimb, who was determined to make it from the playground through school, and then gain a great leadership reputation in both the city and even the church community. Wimb, in his 40’s, is a product of Lee playground who, as the story goes, became a basketball legend.
“Spending a lot of time on the playground is one thing. Anybody else growing up like me stayed on that playground early mornings, noon, and late nights.”
Under the nighttime lamplights of the Lee Cultural Center and Playground, Wimberly played basketball, his game interrupted on occasion many nights by slow-walking men with a team of 5 or 6 that would walk on the court challenging anyone in a game of street ball.
Many of Wimberly challengers would become future celebrated professional basketball players at Lee Playground. You would always get tournament ball vs. street ball good sportsmanship competition. Street ball players had to be in top form like Wimb, because the players would player-coach, keep score, and at the same time be their own fair-referees.
Many times fans would appear to watch. Before and during Wimb’s time on the Lee Playground court, throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s college all-Americans who were home from school and pro-players who needed a competitive tune-up in their off season played organized street ball there. Throughout the 1980›s and beyond, according to those who saw him, Wimb electrified crowds with precision shooting, whopping scoring totals, and defenses.
Today, Wimb is helping to give back to what makes one a playground legend – lots of neighbors and visitors still remember or know your name, support spending hundreds of volunteer hours each year at the playground, being recognized by political leaders, support strong ongoing education and recreation, community development, organizing street basketball and street tennis programming and leagues, music and gardening activity, and/or organizing spiritual awareness.
“I had to go through both systems of street ball and school ball and that helped my attitude and personality. If a Lee Playground and a Council leader like Jannie Blackwell wasn’t there for me it would be very difficult to understand how good someone’s based on their performance in the playgrounds and in spirituality.” says Wimberly.
“Having the stuff that legends are made of,” James “Wimb” Wimberly enjoys fellowship and being motivated at Embracing Truth Ministries 544-48 North 52nd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19131.
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