Inside The Huskies

Husky Basketball Offers Son of New York City Playground Legend

Reese "Lil Skip" Alston is the playmaking offspring of Rafer "Skip 2 my Lou" Alston.
Dan Raley|
Reese Alston, left, has a UW basketball offer. He's shown with his father Rafer at the NYC outdoor courts.
Reese Alston, left, has a UW basketball offer. He's shown with his father Rafer at the NYC outdoor courts. | Alston

He is the son of Rafer “Skip 2 my Lou” Alston, who made the jump from legendary New York City playground creation to NBA player.

Reese Alston similarly has his own catchy nickname -- Lil Skip -- and his own flashy court moves yet he's taking a more conventional route to making his basketball opportunity happen.

The younger Alston, a 6-foot-2 point guard and a 2027 recruit from Houston's Second Baptist High School, has received a flurry of recent offers from Florida, Purdue, Texas and Washington, and before that had heard from Kelvin Sampson's hometown Houston staff and others.

The Huskies, with Quincy Pondexter serving as the point man, extended a scholarship proposal to Alston on Sunday at the peak of the national camp season, with players coming off the NBPA Top 100 Camp in Rock Hill, S.C.,

Alston is a fairly advanced player who as a sophomore at Second Baptist averaged 21.2 points, 5.2 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 2.4 steals per contest. He shot 57 percent from the floor, 42 percent from behind the 3-point line.

Scouts say he has the ability to aggressively push the ball up court and distribute it around in a disciplined manner. One analyst also said he has a "mean hop step."

Alston's father Rafer, 48, emerged in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens and quickly developed a reputation for uncanny playground basketball moves that involved an abrupt crossover, fast dribble and trademark skipping dribble, hence his nickname.

This eventually led to him making his way through the junior-college ranks and then to Fresno State, where Alston played for Jerry Tarkanian.

He was an NBA player in 1999-2010 for the Milwaukee Bucks, Toronto Raptors, Miami Heat, New York Nets, Houston Rockets and Orlando Magic.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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