Overton, then a Dobbins freshman, first met Gathers at basketball tryouts. He really was trying out. Gathers, a junior, was already on his way.

"He kind of took me under his wing," Overton said. "I used to stay at his house. We used to play everywhere."

Hank was always ready to ball.

"If we were in a car and he had slacks on, he would get out of the car if he saw a court," Overton said. "He had to drive with five guys so he could be ready to play at all times anywhere against anybody. He could have a dress shirt and hard shoes on. He didn't care. He just played ball. He would be dribbling down the middle of the street, stop traffic, people honking their horns. He was a nut about basketball and that's how we became so passionate about it."

Overton, who grew up in Germantown, remembers Gathers living that first year in the high rises at the Raymond Rosen Projects, the low rises the next year.

"It was rough," Overton said.

Kimble, who grew up at 26th and Clearfield, met Gathers at 25th and Diamond before they went to high school.

"I was a lot shorter than Hank and I was dunking the ball with ease," Kimble remembered. "He probably couldn't believe that I was jumping like that."

Six months later, they were on the JV team together at Dobbins as freshmen.

"Hank wasn't really that good," Kimble said. "He wasn't that coordinated. After his sophomore year at Dobbins, he was playing every day, everywhere. He came back 11th-grade year as a whole different person. He became a monster. He was the Hank Gathers that we all got to know...He came back cut up; he was very coordinated, dunking on everybody, getting every rebound. He was just so determined he was going to get a scholarship and make it out of Philly. He just lived and breathed basketball."

After they played a school practice or game, Kimble said, "we'd go out and play another game. We just were crazy."

Overton was a sophomore on those city champs that played for the title against Southern with eventual La Salle teammates Lionel Simmons and Bobby Johnson. He started alongside Hank, Bo, Hank's brother Derrick and Darrell "Heat" Gates, with Randy Slade coming off the bench.

"I think the only person that wasn't nervous was Hank," Overton said of the title game. "We spent the night before at Randy Slade's house. He was up all night. I don't know how we won that game because we didn't get any sleep. All we talked about was the championship game, how many people were going to be there, how big it was, North Philly and South Philly. He kept saying, 'It ain't going to be no game, we're going to blow them out.'"

The game, played at Temple's McGonigle Hall, had North Philly on one side of the gym, South Philly on the other. Hank called it. His final high school game was Dobbins 86, Southern 62. Hank had 27 points and 14 rebounds, Bo 27 and 12. Overton scored 12 points. The L-Train had 18 and 11.

Hank and Bo went to USC mostly because of assistant David Spencer who, according to Kimble, was at 18 Dobbins games their senior year. Overton was heavily recruited by USC, but he chose La Salle. Hank and Bo ended up transferring to Loyola Marymount. They wanted Overton to come, too, but he told them he "would rather play with Lionel and pass him the ball 20 times than pass it to you all 40 times." Overton stayed close with Hank the whole time, never dreaming they would be on the same court again.

Then, on Jan. 6, 1990, La Salle and Loyola Marymount staged one of the epic games in city history. Barely a month before on Dec. 9, 1989, Gathers had fainted while at the free-throw line during a game against UC-Santa Barbara. The season before, he had become just the second player to lead college basketball in scoring and rebounding during the same season — 32.7 points and 13.7 boards — as Paul Westhead's team was setting scoring records and playing the game at a speed that most could not comprehend.

After he collapsed, Gathers underwent a series of tests. He missed the next two games. Kimble had 53 points when the Lions won at Oregon State. Gathers returned 21 days after his collapse when Loyola played on Dec. 30 against Niagara, but, now on medication for a heart condition, he was not the same player.

Loyola, working its way east for games against Saint Joseph's and then, 2 days later against La Salle, stopped at the Cincinnati Gardens on Jan. 2 to play Xavier, with its big men Tyrone Hill and Derek Strong. Hill had 38 points and 20 rebounds. Strong had 24 and 24. Gathers shot just 7-for-23 and had 20 points. Xavier won, 115-113.

Kimble put on one of the great shows in history two nights later on Hawk Hill. He shot 17-for-33 from the field, 5-for-8 from three and 15-for-16 from the line. He had 54 points in 33 minutes and capped it off with the game-winner — a nice, relaxed, running 40-footer at the buzzer. Hawks coach Jim Boyle was proud his team had held Loyola under 100 in the 99-96 loss. The subplot was Hank. He scored just 11 points in 26 minutes. Something was wrong.

Next came La Salle, which had not lost a game that season. Simmons was on his way to 3,000 points and national player of the year. Overton, the junior point guard, was on his way to the school record for assists and steals.

"It wasn't the game that I remember the most," Overton said. "It was the night before. It was at the [Penn Tower Hotel]. I went to see Hank because he was having troubles against St. Joe's. There was a lot going on. He really wanted to play in that game [against La Salle] more than St. Joe's."

Overton went to make sure his friend was all right. Gathers was a sculpted 6-7, an athletic marvel who never seemed to get tired.

"I knew he wasn't himself, but nobody ever thought that would happen to him," Overton said. "Hank was invincible, his body, his spirit. We just thought, 'It was Hank, he's just got a little something going on, he's Superman.' We just didn't know how serious it was."

That night in the hotel was for talking about what was going to happen the next night.

"We just talked smack that whole night," Overton said. "He was like, 'We're going to run you all out of that gym, you all going to be tired.' I was like 'Come on man, we play on the streets too; we can run with you all.' And we did — up until 2 minutes to go...I've never been that tired in my life."

That Saturday night, they played at the Civic Center, across the street from Loyola's hotel. Hank was no longer sluggish from the medication he was taking. What happened with his diagnosis and the medication was the subject of several lawsuits that were eventually settled for nearly $2.5 million.

The joint was jammed with 10,254 fans. Hank was Hank, with 27 points and 12 rebounds. Bo had 32 and 10. Simmons had 34 and 19, Overton 23 points, 10 assists and seven steals. There has never been a more entertaining game played in this city. It was Loyola Marymount 121, La Salle 116. Hank, a notoriously bad free-throw shooter, clinched the game with two foul shots, both shot lefthanded as he had earlier abandoned his righthanded shot.

Four Saturdays later on Feb.3, in a now-legendary game played on CBS at LSU, Bo remembers Hank, with NBA scouts all over the building wondering if he could play against taller players, getting his first seven shots blocked by Shaquille O'Neal. Hank was so intimidated by Shaq and fellow 7-footer Stanley Roberts that he finished with 48 points and 13 rebounds. Bo had 32 points. Shaq had 20 points, 24 rebounds and 12 blocks. LSU won, 148-141, in overtime.

"I can't imagine anybody ever scored 48 points on Shaq," Kimble said. "Hank Gathers did."

That February, Loyola scored 150, 141, 157, 137, 139, 131, 123, 131 and 117. Bo was leading the country in scoring. Hank was playing like Hank always played. There was no obvious indication anything was wrong, at least not on the court.