City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
--

For the past few years, Nasir Bell has had the weight of four people on his shoulders every time he took the court.

Whether it was with his high school team, Martin Luther King, or with Team Final Black on the AAU circuit, the 18-year-old from South Philadelphia was playing not just for his own future but for his mother, Sabriya Blair, and his two sisters: Sabirah, 14, and Suhaylah, 6.

The King senior--whose father has been out of the picture for most of his life--was determined to earn a college scholarship, to provide for his family in a different way than his usual duties of helping cook, clean and doing a little bit of everything else around the house.

In accepting a scholarship offer from D-II Chestnut Hill College (Pa.) this week, he’s taking a big step towards removing some of that weight.

“That was always the goal, get to college,” Bell told CoBL on the phone Tuesday morning. “It was not really about after college, playing in the NBA, that was never my dream. It was always as long as I can get to school and play for free, then this is all worth it.

“If I graduate, I’ll be the first one to graduate (college), so I can provide for everybody. Hopefully my sisters will follow after me and can do the same thing.”

Bell, a 6-foot-2, 175-pound wing guard, is a two-year varsity starter at King, where he’s been after transferring from Boys Latin following two years of JV ball there. He averaged just under five points per game in a supporting role last year but is above 12 ppg as a senior, chipping in admirably in the rebound and assist columns night in and night out for the Cougars.

Recently, Bell was featured by Comcast SportsNet after the King athletic director selected him personally for his background, his work in the classroom--he has a 3.6 GPA--and his prowess on the court.

“I wanted to see what I sounded like on camera, and then I watched it like 25 times after that...it was great, I was on TV,” he said, then laughed “I didn’t think my voice was that high-pitched.”

Calvin Gilbert, Bell’s AAU coach with Team Final Black over the last four summers, first met Bell as an eighth grader in 2012 (“he was a 5-foot-10 center,” Gilbert remembers). He’s coached Bell every summer since then, looking upon his charge as a younger brother, a feeling reciprocated by Bell.

Family means a lot to the young man, that much is clear.

“Just being around him and his mannerisms and stuff like that, it made me want to be a better father to my kids and a better brother to my sisters, the way he treats his family,” Gilbert said.

“I credit a lot of it to his mom, she’s his rock behind him,” he continued. “I always say to the kids like I know you’re going to make it to the next level, but when it actually happens...it’s like wow, it’s really happening for a kid that works so hard, and he deserves it.”

At Chestnut Hill, Bell is hoping to jump right into the rotation on a Griffins squad currently in the middle of a 9-13 season, with a 6-8 record in Central Athletic Collegiate Conference (CACC) play. That’s already a significant improvement from a 6-20 (5-14 CACC) 2014-15 season, as 13th-year head coach Jesse Balcer tries to build a program to one that can compete with local league powerhouses Holy Family and Philly U.

Bell joins a team that already has some promising young players like sophomores Eddie McWade (13.5 ppg, 4.8 rpg) out of Wildwood Catholic and Demetrius Isaac (12.5 ppg, 3.7 rpg) from Penn Charter. But there are five graduating seniors from this year’s team, including four guards, so the opportunity for minutes will be there.

“They were the first school to reach out to me and they were the first to offer, they weren’t scared,” he said. “I knew I would have a role once I went there, I wouldn’t have to wait three years to play, I’d either start or be the sixth or seventh man and be productive.”

A planned criminal justice major, Bell is also considering following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Taalib Ansair, and becoming an architect, though Chestnut Hill doesn’t have an architecture major.

First, though, there’s plenty of basketball left to be played.

“It would be great to go overseas or play in the NBA,” he said. “But if it doesn’t happen, lawyer or architect, that would probably be it.”