<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">He is staying in California, in Newport Beach. He is playing for the Miami Heat in the L.A. Pro Summer League. He is meeting Pat Riley and the Heat coaches, is now part of the NBA world. It all seems a long way from Pawtucket. "A long way," laughs T.J. Sorrentine. When last we saw Sorrentine he was draining jump shots in Worcester against Michigan State, one of the best stories in the NCAA Tournament, ending one of the best college basketball careers a Rhode Island kid has had in a long time. Two nights earlier he had hit one of the most dramatic shots of the tournament, a long bomb with a minute left in overtime that sent heavily favored Syracuse home, one of those shots played over and over on television throughout the tournament, a shot from a million playground fantasies. He was the kid from St. Ray's, the coach's son who had gone to Vermont after both Providence College and the University of Rhode Island had passed on him. The kid who had to go to Vermont to chase his basketball dreams. The kid who once had been called too small and too slow to ever be a real player in Division I, a kid who always had to prove it every step of the way. Then he came home to Pawtucket and went back to work. Getting ready for the next chapter in his improbable story. Getting ready to keep chasing new dreams the same way he once chased the old ones. He already had enough credits to graduate from Vermont so he essentially spent the spring working out here. Running the steps at Brown Stadium. Shooting endless jumpers. Looking for competition. The workout routine he made an article of his faith back when he was a high school senior, back when former St. Ray's star Curtis McCants showed him how to do it. Back when he learned that getting better as a player was all about hard work, all the hours spent in lonely gyms far away from the cheers and the games, all the hours people never see. "Now I live for it," Sorrentine says.</div> Source
