As recently as two years ago, he was found guilty of yet another misdemeanor assault charge after arguing with a parking lot attendant who had his car towed.
Naclerio talks about drugs and violence in Alston's old neighborhood and says, "The kids think the world is like that. They're insulated in insanity, so they think the insanity's normal."
Alston says simply, "As I got older, I started to understand."
But as he struggled in other parts of life, his game was coming into focus.
Go back to 1995 and his days at Ventura College. Coach Phil Mathews had heard about "Skip to My Lou" and suspected he was getting a hot dog.
"The players who come from the playground, you wonder: Do they have a high enough basketball IQ to make the transition?" asked Mathews, now a Nebraska assistant coach.
The coach got his answer when Alston scored only two points but passed for 13 assists in the first game. Ventura's new floor leader guided his team to a state championship.
"Rafer is an intelligent guy," Mathews said. "He knew what he had to do to get to the next level."
But he wasn't quite done with the playground.
A star is born
It seemed as if Alston was leading two lives. On the pro basketball side, he toiled in the minor leagues, looking for a chance. In "streetball," his legend only grew.
In 1998, a small Philadelphia sneaker company called And1 needed a way to compete with Nike and Adidas. Executives decided to focus on a hipper vibe, which meant signing a few young NBA players and scouring the playgrounds.
"If you were scanning the parks of New York, you didn't have to look far," said Rob Purvy, now the company's executive director. "Rafer's skip move was legendary."
The company signed Alston to an endorsement contract and got hold of grainy videotapes from his Rucker days. The footage sat around for a while, no one quite sure what to do with it.
Then, at a photo shoot for And1 endorsers, they played the tape. The NBA players gathered around the television, watching over and over.
That's when And1 decided to compile a greatest hits -- called a "mixtape," similar to hip-hop music tapes -- and give a copy to anyone who bought a pair of shoes.
The "Skip Mixtape" became a hit, with more than 200,000 copies distributed nationwide. In Southern California, players from Venice Beach to the Drew League in South L.A. to Victory Park in Pasadena came to know "Skip to My Lou" as the father of a new generation.
