Felipe Lopez Essay, Research Paper

Felipe Lopez

There are a lot of Latin Americans in the United States. Most just blend in with everyone else and get normal jobs, and live a normal American life. On the other hand, there are sometimes those special people that make it big and become famous because of a talent of theirs.

Felipe Lopez is a professional basketball player who plays for the Vancouver Grizzlies. He has had a very successful life. He started out as a small Dominican Republic boy who loved basketball, and he has now transformed his life into becoming a pro basketball superstar.

Felipe was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on December 19th, 1974. As a young boy, he grew up in a big family. His parents were Carmen Maria Lopez Alix and Luis Felipe Lopez Garcia. He was in a family of four children. He had two brothers and one sister. His brothers are Anderson and Anthony. His sister is Sayunara. He has many nicknames such as Lipe, Tinaja, La Manquina, and El Senor. He got these names as a kid, and they have stuck with him ever since. When he was 13, his family moved to Manhattan, New York, where he continued to play basketball for Rice High School. By his senior year in high school, he was the number 1 high school player in the nation, and was named High school player of the year.

When his high school years were up, his basketball life was well from being over. Even before he started his freshmen year in college, he was put on the cover of Sports Illustrated as the top freshmen

in the country. He was recruited by St. John s in 1993. He was one of the best players in St. John s history. He has a huge list of what he succeeded in college, for example, he holds St. John s record for the most three pointers made in a single season, and he is the sixth highest scorer in Big East history

with 1,222 career conference points. In his four years at St. John s, he averaged 17.6 points per game, 6 rebounds, and 2.5 assists. As a senior, he led his team to the NCAA tournament.

After his college success, he still had a huge career ahead of him. He was drafter 24th in the 1998 NBA Draft to the San Antonio Spurs. Soon after the draft, and before any games, he was quickly traded to the Vancouver Grizzlies. He was quiet in his first years in the pro s while he s still adjusting. Then he got traded to the Washington Wizards over this summer on August 22nd. Now, Felipe is playing under arguably the best basketball player ever, Michael Jordan. Jordan is one of the Wizard s managers, and he also helps out the team. Felipe will have a great experience practicing side by side with Jordan.

Felipe really likes to help in his community. He helps people that are more unfortunate than himself. He helped collect food, water, building supplies and money to aid victims of Hurricane George in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Haiti. He also traveled to the Dominican Republicthis summer to deliver goods and to raise funds. He has singed a shoe contract with A.D.I.D.A.S., this is a major leap for him because it shows that he has made it big now. Usually only the top elite players sign shoe contracts to have a shoe made for them. In my opinion, he is the best foreign basketball player in the league. He has made it really far in his career, starting out as just a young boy in the Dominican Republic.