Epic Nostalgia: The ’98 McDonald’s All-American Game (VIDEO)

It’s not every day that you stumble upon extensive, reasonably-good-quality footage of your favorite player tearing sh!t up in high school.  Especially not when your favorite player happens to be Stromile Swift.

Although he’s been gone from professional basketball (even the Chinese kind) for multiple seasons now, I still take a moment every so often to enter “Stromile Swift” into Youtube’s search bar and sort the results by upload date.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, my searches yield nothing.  This evening, though, I conducted my search and discovered the “holy grail,” if you will: nearly NINE minutes of clips from the ’98 McDonald’s All-American game, in which the Stro Show was a headlining participant.

Unfortunately, the original commentary has been replaced by music, so it’s a little hard to tell who’s who.  Don’t worry, though; I’ve got your back!

  • Stro is wearing 00 for the West (red).  This becomes quite obvious immediately after his first slam dunk.
  • Number 50 for the East (white) is Dan Gadzuric, who consistently displays ridiculous athleticism/absolutely wrecks Joel Przybilla off of an offensive rebound.
  • Corey Maggette is rocking his familiar number 50 for the West.  Watch out for his streetball handles.  Hot sizzle!
  • Other participants who went on to have notable pro careers include Quentin Richardson (34, West), Mike Miller (13, East), Richard Jefferson (44, West), Al Harrington (42, East), Tayshaun Prince (22, West), and Rashard Lewis (43, West).

This obviously means absolutely nothing, but it’s kind of funny that the East took this game.  The West featured the majority of the players who went on to experience NBA success.

It’s also pretty funny that Ronald Curry won MVP (and beat Stromile Swift in the dunk contest).  He ended up a professional athlete, but not a basketball player.  Curry actually played wide receiver for the Oakland Raiders for a couple of years, accumulating 13 touchdowns.

How ’bout that block Stro had on Mike Miller, though?  Yeah, that was one of the better highlights of the day!

The BIGGEST of ups to Youtuber MrDeBary for making these clips available.  Check out the rest of his videos.

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