Nets rookie Rondae Hollis-Jefferson will be providing a recurring diary to The Post as he begins his NBA career. This week he discusses buying his mother, Rylanda Hollis, a house and surprising her with it Friday night for her birthday. As told to Tim Bontemps.
We were searching for the house for a while. My brother, the realtor, my uncle and a couple others were looking at houses and telling me about it, and I thought this one was the perfect fit.
When I told the woman who owned the house why we were buying it, she cried. Being a mom, she understood what it meant more than us guys do. It was an emotional moment, and then she said, “We can make this happen.” They even bought my mom a cake!
We had a lot of our close family and friends and relatives at the house to surprise her. My sister was driving my mom to the house, and we told her to just knock on the door and ask for one of your friends.
The realtor opened the door and said, “Oh, who are you looking for?” When my mom said the name, the realtor said, “Oh, OK, come in.” Then everyone popped out and said, “Surprise!” and me and my brother had the cake, and she just started crying. To actually be able to show her the house and stuff on her birthday, it was a dream come true. It was a blessing.
She said it was her best birthday ever. That’s huge for me and my brother, and my uncle, who is like a brother to us. … That’s big in our eyes, to be able to do that. Being able to change your mom’s life, to be able to put her in a comfortable situation. … It makes that feeling in your heart go to ease.
Instead of worrying about where your mom is going, what she’s doing, it puts you at ease knowing she has a place of her own, and that she has somewhere to lay her head at night. It’s pretty special.
I’ve gotten a chance to meet a lot of cool people over the past few months, and it’s an amazing feeling. You get to be around great people, and a lot of people that find athletes interesting. They want to see if they do know more, and what their plans are outside of basketball. I’ve picked up on a lot of things from them. We have to grind and hustle on the basketball court, and they have to grind and hustle on the business side of things.
What stood out from talking to them is a lot of them want to be the greatest. So the biggest thing for me that I learned was their drive to want to learn more and finding new levels to get themselves higher to a position where they want to be to be successful.
I haven’t really thought about the season starting. I say that because I still have to grind on here, we still have more practices to go through before then. I don’t know how things are going to go. I don’t know if I’m going to play against Chicago. But I know I’m working every day to have a chance to compete out there. I’m just taking it one day at a time, and when that day comes wish for the best.
I think the people who get rewarded are the people who grind around this time. You grind hard now, and then you have to keep that mentality throughout the season. Work hard, work hard, work hard, and when everyone is starting to hit their maximum, and then peak and start to fall, you keep rising. So now, when people are tired and don’t want to practice, we just keep grinding and grinding we’ll get over that hump of adversity and we’ll be able to march through and get that extra win, that extra game that we need.