Nearly 10 years ago, Jason James crossed paths with a talented yet troubled teenager at Central High School in Memphis. Poor academics and attendance had kept the sophomore off of the basketball team, but he had raw potential that needed polishing. James decided to keep an eye on him. This week he watched the same teen become the newest member of the Boston Celtics.
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Jason James wouldn’t give up on Lester Hudson.
He knew Hudson had made mistakes and didn’t graduate from the high school where they had first met. He was aware Hudson didn’t receive his GED until his first semester at Southwest Tennessee Community College. He also knew Hudson failed to graduate from that school as well.
But in spite of his shortcomings, James, then an assistant coach for the University of Tennessee-Martin’s men’s basketball team, strongly believed Hudson could change if presented with the right opportunity.
“It was his heart. He’s got a really, really good heart,” James, now the head coach at UTM, said in a phone interview. “He’s a good kid. He’s a good person. He wants to make people happy. Sometimes at a young age he did not know how to go about doing that.
“But the thing that I saw through all the rough exterior, I saw through to his heart and I saw that not only was he a great player, but he’s a good kid and he wants to be successful.”
James sold then-head coach Bret Campbell on the powerful guard with the physical game and team-first mentality. Hudson came to UTM without a scholarship and without playing time. He enrolled on his own dime and watched from the bench as he redshirted his first season.
While he waited for his chance, Hudson hit the gym with a strict regimen of a 1,000 jumpshots a day. It was a humbling experience that forced him to grow up on and off the court.
“He didn’t complain, didn’t whine,” James said. “He just got in the gym everyday and made himself a better player, and that’s just kind of how he is. I think the year he sat out really kind of helped him grow up. It matured him because he knew there were things he had to do to play basketball and he knew there were things he had to get better at.”
The following season Hudson prepared to make his mark on the Skyhawks. At a kick-off potluck dinner, UTM Athletic Communications Director Joe Lofaro handed Hudson a flip card of the team’s roster. He had never met Hudson before and asked him to pick out the best player. Hudson pointed to himself.
“He can do everything,” he told Lofaro.
Three games later, Hudson recorded the first quadruple-double in NCAA Division 1 history with 25 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists, and 10 steals against Central Baptist College. It was Lofaro who realized Hudson was closing in and prompted him to snag the final two steals -- not necessarily because he wanted UTM to win but because he wanted Hudson to succeed.
Lofaro, like so many members of the UTM community, was sold on Hudson. It was easy when Hudson embraced the Skyhawks staff and fans with open arms.
Chris Brinkley had been calling UTM men’s basketball games on WCMT for years before Hudson joined the team. He had never seen a player make such an impact on the school – and the entire Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) – like Hudson did in just two years.
“Off the court he was a class act,” Brinkley said. “One of the things that impressed me the most was my seven-year-old son had gone to a University of Tennessee-Martin event and I glanced over and Lester was teaching him how to shoot a bank shot off the corner of the block off the backboard. He was paying as much attention to him and the little details with a seven-year-old shooting a shot as anybody I’ve seen.
“And he was like that with everybody. We’re a small town and he would go to Walmart and people would ask questions and want to know if he was going to the NBA after that first season. Lester would always just give them his utmost attention.”
While Hudson
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