As Mustapha Heron stands in Taffner Fieldhouse at St. John’s-—87 miles from Waterbury, Conn. home—and around nine months since he committed to St. John’s, he casually describes the two places where many of his counterparts have ended up in his hometown.
The county jailhouse and the graveyard.
“Inner city things, losing friends, jail, death. I want to make sure the next generation doesn’t have to deal with the same things that I had to deal with,” Heron said.
Heron has used his closer proximity to Connecticut in order to get further involved in his community in a way that can’t be measured in any number of points, rebounds or assists.