The kids just want to see the ring, though it's hard to miss, this heavy, shiny thing made of white and yellow gold and more than 200 tiny diamonds and decorated with the NBA championship trophy, the Miami Heat logo and, in all capital letters, the words "World Champions." Soaked in sweat after a late afternoon spent shooting hoops on a concrete court tucked beneath a metal cover, the young boys — most around 10 or 11 — crowd around the former pro baller, gawking at the jewelry and peppering him with questions about his career and whether he stays in touch with former teammate LeBron James.

Terrel Harris' pro career didn't last long — a swim through the NBA's Development League, a couple of seasons with the Heat (including the 2012 title team) and a quick trip to New Orleans, all bookended by stints in France and Israel. That's a long way from Hamilton Park, the neighborhood white Dallas built in the 1950s to keep black Dallas quiet, and where Harris' grandparents were among the first homeowners.

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The 29-year-old lives near The Colony and pays the bills giving private lessons; the ring's a good advertisement. During off-hours, he's in the old neighborhood up near the High Five or down at Dallas City Hall, begging officials to do what they didn't back in 1983 — give the Hamilton Park kids an indoor gym at their tiny neighborhood rec center, as opposed to the fenced-in, slippery concrete slab that sits outside the center built decades ago with a low-ball bid.

"He has inspired me," said Adam McGough, the council member whose East Dallas district includes Hamilton Park. "He has inspired a number of kids. He's not riding in fancy cars and flaunting his ring. He's trying to improve the lives of kids similarly situated as he was and give them a chance."

Harris is part of the neighborhood's vocal civic league and resurrected the neighborhood's vaunted Juneteenth parade. And for two years, he's been asking city officials to build the kids an indoor gym so they'd have a protected place to play.

The court's easy to see when you turn into the neighborhood: "It looks like a penitentiary when you come down the hill," said 34-year-old Xavier Hannah, once one of the taller, faster kids pushing little Terrel up and down this court.

"They gave us a little something to keep the neighborhood quiet, but I don't think it was enough," Harris said last week. We sat on the court surrounded by a chain link fence that's locked every night at 6:30 and off-limits during weekends to keep out the homeless.

"We deserve more," Harris said.

Building a gym and a senior center at the Willie B. Johnson Recreation Center is but a tiny sliver of the maybes contained in the coming bond package, $800 million of borrowed money voters will be asked to approve in November. More than half of that pile will go toward repairing Dallas' broken streets; the rest will be spread across projects aimed at controlling flooding, repairing city buildings and giving residents slightly nicer places to do things.

Terrel Harris, former Miami Heat guard, grew up playing on the very court he hopes the city will replace with an indoor gym. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

The enclosed gym is expected to cost around $7.8 million; the senior center, close to $4 million. Whether they survive the cut is up to the City Council, which, beginning next Wednesday, has one week to decide how to divvy up those bond dollars before a monthlong summer vacation. So let the tussling begin, over zoo deck parks and libraries and car-service centers and Bachman Lake skate parks and this city's numerous other wants and needs.

A week ago, it looked like the Willie B. Johnson Recreation Center, so named for the Parkland nurse who spent years crusading for the community center, was likely to get a cut of the $175 million some members of the council-appointed task force wanted for parks. But on Saturday morning, a few members of that task force trimmed more than $30 million from that tentative parks promise, deferring to the folks who came to City Hall last week demanding more dollars toward "critical needs" — new roofs for old buildings, for instance. And city staffers desperately want $12 million for a place to repair city-owned cars.

Kids took to the court last week at the Willie B. Johnson Recreation Center in the Hamilton Park neighborhood. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

After Harris and other Hamilton Park elders trekked to City Hall on May 22 to plead their case, council member Rickey Callahan's appointee Jim Birdsong drove to the rec center and emailed his colleagues that everything's just fine — "exemplary," even. "Sounds a lot like romanticized memories of youth were what we heard." A livid McGough posted the missive to his Facebook page.

"A gym for this neighborhood is not a bright and shiny thing," McGough said later.

One could make a pretty good case that an indoor gym is the very definition of a critical need in a low-income neighborhood besieged by violence, vandalism and drugs, much of it brought by the homeless wandering up from the nearby creek and woods and DART light-rail line. The kids who crowd this fenced-in court worn slick by wear and weather need a safe place to congregate for more than just a few hours every weekday afternoon.

Harris wishes he could afford to pay for the gym himself. But his wasn't that kind of NBA career. Instead, all he can do is ask. Over and over. He said he was a little nervous, a little excited when he went to City Hall last week — the same feeling you get before stepping onto the court before a big game.

"You're not trying to convince these people we need a gym," Harris said. "I just want you to feel what I feel."