A couple of days ago, I talked to Sadiki’s mother, Brenda Orr, who told me about his childhood in Houston, Texas. “His first love was gymnastics. He loved to flip, and do acrobatic things,” Orr told me. “He would teach all the kids in the neighborhood. He had his own gymnastics class on my front lawn; we could never grow grass because he was always flipping on it!"

On the conference call, including his two sisters, Aiisha and Jari, they told me story after story exemplifying Sadiki’s charisma and leadership.

“A couple of years ago, I had my 40th birthday. He showed up, and I was outside socializing,” said Aiisha. “By the time I realized he was there, all my friends were charmed by him. He told everyone he was hugger, and he went around and hugged each and every one of them.”

That charisma, charm and urge to uplift others is what made him standout, both socially and professionally. Jerry Burrell, former mascot for the Houston Rockets, says he first met Sadiki in 1994, when he was looking for guys to be a part of a dunk team—not just any dunk team, but a team of superheroes.

“He was tall and skinny, and didn't look like a superhero, so I blew him off,” Burrell told me. “But he kept calling me.”

Burrell kept Sadiki as a backup dunker, but Sadiki soon got his time to shine. One day, as the team packed their belongings after a show at a high school, a crowd of people gathered to compliment them on their performance. Next thing Burrell knew, “(Sadiki) was making little kids balloon animals, and at one point he did a flip. He was tying it all together with funny anecdotes and references. He had them eating out of his hand,” said Burrell.

“I realized that I had gotten him wrong,” said Burrell, who quickly brought Sadiki onto his High Impact Squad. “It didn’t matter that he didn’t have the 'superhero look.' He had a gift.”

The Warriors discovered Sadiki's gift two years later, after the team abandoned a failed experiment with a mascot by the name of Berserker. A Warriors rep had caught wind of Sadiki’s talents, and brought him on board to play a new, more acrobatic mascot, named Thunder.

Sadiki would go on to dunk, flip and fly through the air at Warriors games, in schools and at social events for the next five years—a particularly downtrodden era for Warriors fandom. (As a New York Times piece on Sadiki notes, the Warriors went 97-281 during his tenure.) But that didn’t matter to Sadiki. When he performed, he’d go all in. He'd breakdance at center court. He’d hit handstands, and while inverted, he’d kick his legs in rhythm to the music on the stadium’s PA system. Solely by using body language—his face shrouded by a mask—he’d convey excitement.

And of course, when it was time, he’d hit a trampoline that was held in place by his young assistant, Zeus, take to the sky like a rocket, and then come down while slamming the ball with the power of Shango—lighting up the Oracle with wild cheers.