Why is newport news bad news

Along with her husband, Butch, a lawyer, the Lambiottes were steeped in sports. All four kids had grown up playing. Clay Lambiotte, Sue's youngest, played in Boo Williams' Summer League with a year-old Iverson, which is how Sue came to be on Williams' board of directors, which is how she first came across Bubbachuck. Boo Williams is well known and widely respected in basketball circles. In , Williams came back home to the Peninsula area after starring at St.

Joseph's University in Philadelphia. Over the years, it has grown into one of the premier summer programs in the country, and Williams has earned accolades as one of the nation's great barnstorming Amateur Athletic Union coaches. AAU coaches often come under fire as the scourge of college sports; unregulated and operating in the shadows, they have been accused of steering their high-school ballplayers to sneaker companies and college coaches with whom they have forged under-the-table deals.

Williams, though, enjoys a stellar reputation compared to most. And he has coached some of the most talented basketball players in the country. Alonzo Mourning, J. Reid, Joe Smith, and Bryant Stith have all passed through his program.

The and-under team that went to a national tournament in Kansas with Sue Lambiotte as a chaperon was no exception.

During that trip, Lambiotte was taken by the happy-go-lucky class clown that was Allen Iverson. In Kansas for a week, Lambiotte insisted on taking the team to local museums. There was no need for a tour guide, however, as Iverson -- a talker, when he gets going, right out of the mold of his mother -- kept his teammates in stitches with his own running commentary. When he wasn't cutting up on his teammates, he was breaking into dead-on impersonations of them or quickly drawing their caricatures on loose-leaf paper.

Lambiotte was amazed at the frequency and depth of his artistic expression. He'd find the one distinguishing characteristic in his subject's makeup -- later, in Shaquille O'Neal's case, it would be his slightly crossed eyes -- and he'd exaggerate the detail to uproarious proportions.

During practice at the University of Kansas during that trip, the then head coach of the Kansas Jayhawks walked into the gym. There he saw the shortest player on the court, chirping loudly and goofing off while his coach tried to capture his frantic, easily diverted attention.

This Bubbachuck was not what Lambiotte had expected. She had been warned about him. She knew how, already, he was well on his way to becoming one of the most truant students in the history of his school district. She had heard the stories of how, when he didn't show for a practice or tournament, Boo and his coaches would fan out across town, inevitably finding the kid on a dimly lit playground court, shooting around by himself -- sometimes well past midnight.

Iverson's lack of reliability was one of the reasons Williams hadn't already brought him up to play on the main barnstorming team. In the spring of Iverson's eighth-grade year, Williams and his coaching staff debated whether to give the high-maintenance Iverson a chance. Coach Carroll Williams lobbied against Iverson. Bethel High coach Mike Bailey had experience in dealing with inner-city black kids. The hardest thing to combat was their fatalism, the sense that they were doomed, that no one was there for them.

Hearing Iverson talk about how he just had to make it to the NBA, how he wanted to use sports to help his family, Bailey sensed that, unlike so many of his generation, he lived for the next day.

Lived for his family. The kid was fixated on the possible while others around him were succumbing to hopelessness.

Coach Bill Tose was the lone dissenter. He'd heard that the kid was a problem and he'd listened to other coaches insist that Iverson was a great playground player who would never amount to anything. Basketball lore was full of such flameouts, guys who never realized their potential, either because of their inability to tame their improvisational styles to conform to team play or because they succumbed to bad grades, drugs, or crime.

But when Tose had worked with Iverson one-on-one -- when the kid showed, that is -- Iverson had always been immensely coachable. In fact, he had always helped him coach, like that time when Tose got on Antwain Smith during a time-out for being passive; when Smith responded with a ferocious alley-oop dunk on the inbounds play, there was Iverson right up in his teammate's face -- Tose didn't even know the kid had been listening in the huddle!

That's what he's talking 'bout! Williams, noting that Tose was often the softest touch among the group, opted to elevate Rutland instead, in part because his game -- as an outside shooter -- would mesh better with that of Michael Evans, an older kid out of Norfolk.

Williams was convinced Evans would be the program's next superstar -- following in the sneaker prints of Reid and Mourning. But then Evans couldn't make a tournament in Memphis, so Iverson was picked to go in his place. During the hour drive to Memphis, Williams started to regret it: he'd never heard someone talk for 14 consecutive hours.

Often, it was just Bubba bitching. One favorite complaint was the beat-up rental van: "Coach, why don't Alonzo buy you a damned real van, man? He didn't regret having Iverson on the court, though. The team went on to capture second place, losing in the finals to the Arkansas Wings, led by future NBA star Corliss Williamson, a behemoth even then.

Iverson wasn't cowed; he challenged Williamson at every turn. He earned all-tournament honors and the team took home the runner-up trophy. During the long van ride back home, he cracked everybody up by opening his window and flinging the trophy onto the side of the road.

Newport News projects of the Marshall Courts. North of the Marshall Courts was the once all-black complex of Newsome Park and the once all-white complex of Copeland Park. By the s, the Copeland Park housing projects were demolished and became a memory of Newport News as white families moved further Uptown, while Newsome Park was eventually rebuilt with its own reputation.

The original city center of Newport News, before the relocation to Oyster Point, that was located around Huntington Avenue, west of I, is rebuilding and slowly bringing more life into an area that had been on a decline for years.

Newport News is one of the most Black to White integrated areas of the U. The East End and many areas of Denbigh are exclusively African American, while there are virtially no exclusively White parts of the city. Bottom line, this place is probably quite different from where you live, anywhere else in America. Newport News is such an inigma, both urban and suburban! Newport News began as a boom town and is again a boom town. The weirdest named city on the East Coast is Newport News.

Lets hit downtown Bad News after dark and get mugged! Worst City in America. Hands Down. That being said, we both make a good amount of money - so the prices of places are not a huge deal. We are "savers" so we are always looking for a bargain. My wife is interested in Newport News since it is closer to many more jobs for her and I don't mind driving minutes. I've seen a lot of negatives about Newport News.

Is the crime bad? I'm not as concerned about a social scene or things like that. Mostly concerned with safety of the area.

Can anyone help me out with this question? Last edited by goofy; at AM.. Downtown NN, in particular the Southeast East End community, is where the largest amount of crime occurs, mostly intra-shootings between gangs. The northern end of the city, Denbigh, was thrown up in the 60's's with acre upon acre of cheaply built 3 bed 2 bath starter homes that have now become section 8 havens.

The area boomed after these suburban bungalows were built but rapidly deteriorated because of lousy construction and the advent of newer, leafier neighborhoods in York and James City counties.

The aforementioned midtown district of NN has been reinventing itself over the decade we've lived in the area and although becoming increasingly congested the development has been quality. This new development coincides with the rise of the CNU campus and as mentioned the growth of Jefferson Lab and Ferguson.

I don't live in Newport News but I am there often and really do like the city, I just stay away from the East End and the north end Denbigh. Originally Posted by goofy Newport News has a lot of potential, but then again so does Portsmouth.