Orlando recently (and surprisingly) surpassed New York City as the most visited city in the United States. Orlando International Airport welcomes approximately 50,000 passengers each day. Getting there is easy, but for some, escaping is another matter, altogether.

Orlando also bears the distinction of being the most crime-ridden city in Florida, and the Callahan neighborhood, 17 miles northwest of Disney World, is one of its most dangerous. It’s a tough place that produces tough people. Generally, when someone gets out, they have earned enough credibility for people to listen.

Maybe that’s why the people of Callahan listen when Willie Anderson talks hoops. Anderson escaped the neighborhood in 1998 for LSU, starting a successful basketball career that continued overseas after he graduated. “In our neighborhood, with a lot of us, it’s either you really prosper with athletics or you don’t do anything,” Anderson says. “That’s just how it is.”

Anderson ended up coming back to Callahan, at least in part to help the next generation of basketball players follow in his footsteps, and out of the ‘hood. He was coaching at Boone High School in Orlando when he came across a 17-year-old Griffin. A friend of his had seen him play pick-up ball and called the coach saying, “You gotta see this kid.” Eventually, another of Anderson’s friends organized a basketball camp in the area.

“Eric attended the camp and I saw him right away,” Anderson remembers. “I talked to him and said ‘Who do you play for?’”

His answer: no one.

Griffin was about to enter his senior year and despite AAU teams — traveling basketball teams that develop and showcase young players — constantly mining the state of Florida for talent, Griffin inexplicably remained overlooked.

“I didn’t even know what AAU was until my 11th- and 12th-grade year,” Griffin says. “It was too late by then. In middle school, they had most of the AAU team already put together.”

Griffin, whose father was incarcerated, was raised by a single mother who supported her son as best she could. She was grateful for every opportunity afforded to him, but she was also completely unaware of the infrastructure out there for developing and marketing basketball talents. In youth athletics, there’s a game outside of the game and if you want to get noticed, you better know how to play it.

What Anderson saw that day was a talented but raw player; a freak athlete thriving in games without referees or coaches. “Man, you could see it, though,” Anderson remembers. “His leaping ability and how hard he would go sometimes. You know how sometimes you can just see it in a player right away?”

The coach saw more than just athleticism in Griffin. He saw fight and hustle. He saw a quiet kid who played loud, almost as if he had years of rejection bottled up inside of him ready to unleash on … somebody.

Griffin’s senior year, his first year of organized hoops, he grew five inches — putting him close to the 6–foot-8 he now stands. His lack of experience was a test in patience for Anderson, but it didn’t take long for the Orlando community to realize what an athlete Griffin was. Unfortunately, despite his quick development and obvious upside, colleges were too focused on the same players that had taken Griffin’s roster spot over the previous six years.

“No Florida schools recruited him,” Anderson remembers.

Unable to obtain a scholarship from a Division I school, he was eventually asked (after an assist by Anderson) to attend a tryout for a spot with Hiwassee Community College in Tennessee.

He was offered a scholarship on the spot.