Suffield Academy in nearby Connecticut was just 12 miles way, close enough for Peg to visit Vinny at least every weekend.īut still … “That was my baby boy,” she said. “My daughters would laugh at me telling me to go back to my own room,” Peg Del Negro said. “I don’t think she was real happy with me,” said Suffield Academy coach Dennis Kinne, who noticed the rail-thin Del Negro as a ninth-grader and invited him to play at his school.ĭel Negros sisters, Theresa and Nina, would just roll their eyes. Like his devoted mother, who was so sad when 14-year-old Vinny left home to attend a private boarding school, she slept in his bed for nearly a month afterward. “I’m very fortunate, not just for the surroundings I grew up in but the people who have helped me along the way.” “And in this kind of life, you appreciate that, you’re grateful for it,” Del Negro said. It’s a loyal, close-knit group that saw Del Negro sprout from a 5-foot-4 ninth-grader to a 6-6 college All-American and a first-round NBA pick.Ī support system that pushed and encouraged Del Negro through every crowded intersection of his journey, including the frustration of sitting on the bench at North Carolina State his first two years and the falling out with management that cost him his job as the head coach of the Chicago Bulls.īut mostly, it’s a group of family and friends that have had Del Negro’s back for as long as he can remember. Many of whom will be at Boston’s TD Bank Garden today when the Clippers play the Boston Celtics – at least 30 deep at last count – as his mom and dad lead a crew of aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and former coaches to support Del Negro and the Clippers. “The people and surroundings that molded me,” Del Negro said. It’s a constant reminder just how far he’s come, but more important a keepsake of a place and time he holds close to his heart. “I guess he never stopped,” he father said, laughing.īut no matter how far Vinny Del Negro travels, a piece of his old Springfield neighborhood remains with him. Needless to say, Vinny Del Negro kept dribbling and dribbling on a basketball journey that’s taken him from that skinny kid in Springfield to an All-American at North Carolina State to a 12-year NBA career all the way to his current job with the Clippers overseeing one of the best young teams in the NBA. “I told the Misses, ‘We’re gonna let him dribble that basketball as far as it will take him.” One day his mother, Peg, had enough and ordered her husband Vin to do something about it. “And on my way home I’d dribble with my left hand.” “I’d dribble with my right hand to school,” Del Negro remembers. And residents always knew when school was out, because the same thumping sound echoed through the neighborhood as Del Negro made his way back home. The thump, thump, thump sound of a basketball hitting concrete as Del Negro dribbled his way to parochial school every morning was enough to wake the whole street up. Alarm clocks weren’t required in the working-class Forrest Hills neighborhood where Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro grew up in Springfield, Mass.
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