“He was nothing but joy,” said his friend Daja, 15, who declined to give her surname.
Aamir liked to dance and play video games. But he defined himself through basketball.
He had been a chubby child, round cheeks, short stature. It didn’t matter. He played as if he were tall and lithe, always working drills, challenging friends, entering tournaments. He walked around with a basketball tucked in the crook of his arm, and passers-by knew to ask him about his game. He idolized Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Stephen Curry.
The love of the sport had come from his father. The fire that drove him was all his.
“He was more determined than all of us,” his friend Billy Jeanfrancois, 14, said. “He was like, ‘I’m going to lose and come back stronger.’”
Aamir was thrilled to make his middle school team. When they lost their first game, he cried. At a matchup later in the season, the team was again close to defeat.
“Then Aamir started draining threes,” recalled Shamel McCallum, 14, who lives in the same public housing complex as Aamir did. “He was the clutch player.”
By then, Aamir had slimmed down and sprouted to nearly six feet.
He applied and got into Benjamin N. Cardozo High School, wanting to learn from its storied coach, Ron Naclerio.
“He was a sponge, he wanted to work.,” Mr. Naclerio said. “He really had no ego. Kids today that are good, you can see a bravado like, ‘I’m the bomb, I’m the best.’ They’ll put stuff on Facebook or their social media like they’re the next LeBron. He was not like that at all.”
