Gang members would leave their guns at home and come play, Wood said. If anybody created trouble, they wouldn’t be allowed back. The hoop, Wood said, “saved my ass.”

It was a much more serious brush with the wrong side of the law that led Wood to comedy. A student at Florida A&M University, he stole credit cards while working at the post office and used them to buy jeans. “There was no real agenda other than making money and looking fly,” Wood said, adding, “Most crime comes with little logic.”

He was arrested in his junior year. Suspended from college and facing incarceration, “I spent every week on the Greyhound bus, riding around the South just doing stand-up to deal with the depression of knowing I had to go to prison,” Wood said.

Except he didn’t end up behind bars.

A judge took pity and sentenced him to probation. His probation officer encouraged him to keep doing comedy — so Wood fit in shows around classes. A few years after graduating in 2001, Wood sent him one of his comedy albums as a thank you. The officer returned it, saying he couldn’t accept gifts. It was the last time they communicated. But the officer’s influence inspired Wood to pitch Comedy Central on a pilot, now in development, about two probation officers in the South.

“Getting arrested was the best thing that ever happened to me because it literally gave me the shock to the system,” Wood said.