Hoops and dreams of ‘gentle giant’ TJ
Mother of talented basketball player killed in car crash takes a fond look back on her son's life
Friday, 14th August
LIKE many young people with dreams, Anthony Hibbert – known as TJ to his friends and family – had set his heart on making it as a professional basketball player.
But unlike most he was actually well on his way, playing top level basketball for the Essex Rebels.
He died in February last year, aged 24, in a horrifying car crash in Colchester that also claimed the lives of three other university friends.
His mother Florence Reid spoke to the New Journal this week about how basketball gave her “gentle giant” a grounding that helped him overcome adversities.
She said that despite leaving school with no qualifications, after being written-off due to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and being targeted as a potential recruit for drug dealing gangs on the Regent’s Park Estate, he stayed focused and got himself to university.
She said: “Basketball saved him from what the streets would beckon and call him to get into.
“TJ was big, and I worried about gangs getting him night and day. And they did try to recruit him.”
Ms Reid said that she once spoke to her son about social media messages he had received from other young people saying they would get him whatever trainers and tracksuits he wanted.
TJ was raised in Stanhope Street as the youngest of three children.
“I knew immediately, they wanted to get him involved,” she said. “I knew this was drugs. Because I was a single mum I wasn’t making a lot of money.
“I had to cover the bills and look after TJ. He didn’t have the latest clothes and they are not stupid, they see this in school, and look for the ones that can be coerced.”
She added: “Even though you are lovely and nice, if you are vulnerable and your peers are doing it … what do you do?
“But it didn’t happen. Because basketball and the Argyle Kings became his life. It steered him away from gang culture.”
Florence Reid
TJ went to Regent High but struggled with formal education. He had been told he was “hyperactive” for a long time before receiving a diagnosis of ADHD.
His mother said he was unable to get an Educational Health and Care Social Plan – a legal framework for extra support in school – due to a lack of funding.
She said: “From the womb, TJ couldn’t keep still. I used to think this child was playing football in my belly, later we found out it was maybe basketball.
“It was hard for him growing up, people constantly expected more from him, and on top of that he was neurodiverse.
“He didn’t process things in the same way others do.”
PE teacher Robin Fox, who worked at Regent High and coached the Argyle Kings, helped change his life, she said.
“It gave him purpose,” Ms Reid said. “He so wanted to play, he wanted to go to the NBA, he just wanted to do well.”
After Regent High, he would wake up at the crack of dawn to catch the train to a sports sixth form in Kent.
And he would go to south London in the evenings to train with top level players in the capital.
TJ for the Essex Rebels
At 18, he left school without any GCSEs or qualifications, but he decided to go back to his studies and got what he needed for a place at Essex University. He went on to become the star player of the university’s team, the Essex Rebels.
Ms Reid said: “For all the adversity he went through, to get to university, I thought that was such an achievement. Mentally, he was so strong.”
She said that when he came home from university he liked to play piano and had lessons from a close friend, Danie Rodriguez.
The pair spent a lot of time together in the studio making music, playing basketball in Argyle Square or meeting up with friends at Woody Grill in Camden Town.
TJ was learning jiu- jitsu, was enjoying going out with his mates to house parties, watching films with friends or sharing phone call conversations that his mother said went on for hours and were laced with inside jokes.
Then came the tragedy of the car crash in which he died along with his friends.
Ms Reid said: “It was the worst day of my life when I found out, there can never be another day like that and there was never a day like that before.
“He was only 24, he had so much to live for so many dreams. When people wrote him off, he raised and he achieved.”
Ms Reid hopes to set up a foundation in the near future in TJ’s memory to help those in need.
Last week NBA superstar OG Anunoby from the New York Knicks appeared at the basketball court in Argyle Square where a renovation is expected to include a memorial to TJ.
