Native New Yorkers, Iliyas Rahman and Lorenzo Hall, have teamed-up using their sports knowledge and work experience to create T3i Sports, LLC, a company that provides athletes with strength and conditioning programing, testing and assessment of their skills. The first basketball clinic, held Aug. 2 and 3 at Uncommon Charter High School in Crown Heights, offered a NBA draft-like experience for high school and middle school age basketball players with professional and collegiate level ambitions. “It helps with the development, knowing where your score is now,” said Hall. “Then you’ll know what you need to work on to get your numbers up, to get to that elite score.”
The basketball clinics serve to evaluate players’ skillset to determine their potential for playing “elite” basketball. “We interact, we help, we mentor, we train high level athletes that are leaving high school going to college, Division 1, or The NBA G League,” Rahman said. “Some of them go overseas to play basketball and some of them become NBA Draft picks.”
Rahman said they use equipment used in the NBA combine to test and score athletic ability. He said he is knowledgeable of the testing through his work with BAM Testing. BAM, which stands for Basic Athletic Measurements, is the standardized testing company consulted by the NBA for the annual NBA Draft Combine. BAM conducts electronic timed strength and agility testing, under the direction of the National Basketball Strength & Conditioning Association. “I had the idea to come up with our own company,” Hill said. “I saw a need and a void also in a modern place to be able to provide that same NBA Combine testing to middle school and high school athletes.”
Hill said understanding analytics can help children become better overall athletes, as some recruiters look at middle school basketball players, and help them in future career decisions. Rahman and Hill met over 20 years ago through work and kept in touch. Their interests brought them back together to create T3i Sports last April. Rahman said he has a background in exercise science and sports medicine, while Hall contributed knowledge from playing professional basketball overseas and experience in marketing and advertising. They plan to have upcoming clinics throughout the U.S. including events in New York.
Jeremiah Van De Cruize, who has dreams of playing college and professional basketball, attended the clinic in August. The freshman high school student originally from Brooklyn attends Burgin Independent School in Kentucky. “I feel like it was a great overall experience for me to see other kids there my age doing the stuff that the pros do before they get drafted,” said Van De Cruize.
The 2-day clinic, called “Grind & Shine Basketball Combine” involved workout sessions, games, testing and guest speakers. He said afterwards participants were given scoring indicating their level of play for example, varsity, junior varsity, or D1 or D2 college level basketball. “Well they actually gave us a folder with all the scoring in it and it kind of look like SAT scores of like all our stats,” Van De Cruize said.
His mother Sarita Nader looks forward to the next clinic. “For one I thought it was very well organized,” she said. “The guest speakers they had were very professional. The trainers were very professional and they made sure that all of the kids were doing the drills properly and participating.”
One guest speaker was Coach Ted Gustus who said was appointed as the Borough of Brooklyn Boys Basketball Commissioner for the NYC Public School Athletic League (PSAL) in 2011. He knows Hall’s family through their basketball experiences. “This is a very viable concept that he put together that is going to be very beneficial to our young people,” Gustus said.
Gustus hopes the program will encourage students to improve athletic ability, but also provide them with realistic expectations and help them consider other passions in life. He plans to share the program with schools and coaches in his basketball network. “Hopefully they’re influenced to say ‘hey, you know what, we want to bring this into our school and get our kids evaluated as well,’ ” Gustus said.
According to estimates released by the NCAA in 2020, only 3.5% of nearly 540,769 high school men’s basketball players in the United States between 2018-2019 continued to compete at NCAA schools (Division I, II, or III). Van De Cruize said being tested and knowing his analytics and statistics, will place him a step ahead of kids in other parts of the country. The motto of is T3I Sports is “The challenge only begins when you test your ability to be elite, and timing is everything”.
Rahman thinks the program creates opportunities for students not attending schools with high focus on athletics and children without parents involved in professional sports. “I think it does level the playing field and it gives them the opportunity to actually become more than what they are at that stage of their lives as young student athletes,” he said.
More information on programs and pricing can be found at https://www.t3isports.ml/
