The tiny hometown of Brandon Ingram and other NBA stars has faced biblical floods, economic devastation, gang ... - ESPN

LEGEND HOLDS THAT in the early 1990s, back when Stackhouse starred for Kinston High, more than 2,000 people packed a gym with a capacity of about 1,750 -- and a bit above that mark constitutes a fire-code violation, so the fire marshal attended most of Stackhouse's games too. Lines snaked around the gym hours before tipoff; tickets sold as if the Beatles were in town.

KHS operated in Class 4A, reserved for the state's biggest high schools. But around that same time, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the local economy began to wither. Jobs shifted overseas, factories downsized or shuttered outright. DuPont shrank from 3,600 jobs to 13 at one point. In all, Kinston would lose close to 8,000 jobs. As the town's population dwindled, the school dropped to Class 3A, then 2A. And in a small way, the fallout revealed itself in what became Kinston's last great source of civic pride: KHS basketball games.

Even when Brandon Ingram's teams won four consecutive state titles, the stands had plenty of empty seats. Sellouts were rare. "We haven't had any fire marshal issues in a while, not the way it was," says Perry Tyndall, the KHS boys basketball coach.

The problem, he and many others say: Tickets today are $6, double the price when Stackhouse played. "For a family of four," Tyndall says, "that's expensive." Indeed, for as much tragedy that has visited Kinston in myriad forms, including hurricane-fueled floods in 1996 and 1999 that swelled the Neuse River and destroyed hundreds of homes, and the West Pharmaceutical Services Plant explosion in 2003 that killed six and injured more than a dozen, perhaps the greatest blow came when the middle class that once drove Kinston bottomed out.

"Back when I was growing up, we had all these factories," says Ronnie Ingram, the sheriff. "Everything was booming. All that is gone."

Also gone: the Magic Mile. On a late summer day, Whitfield walks along an empty sidewalk past a parade of empty storefronts, tombstones to a glorious past that grows ever more distant. "This is the only store that's left from when I was a boy," he says, walking into H. Stadiem, a 20,000-square-foot men's clothing store along Queen Street that's been open since 1903. Whitfield looks around, the area so quiet you can hear the cicadas sing. "This breaks my heart," he says.

According to data from the Census Bureau, Kinston's poverty level (32.8 percent) is 110 percent higher than the national average, and its unemployment rate is 70 percent higher than the national average. Its Vernon Park Mall has 61 retail spaces, but Mark Pope, Lenoir County's economic development executive director, reports that, as of this summer, only one is occupied: Belk, a North Carolina-based department store.

Ronnie Ingram recalls the turning point. Working narcotics for the Kinston Police Department from 1988 to 1992, he saw older drug dealers recruiting 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds by giving them $100 -- and no matter what the police officers told those kids about doing what's right, their words were no match for $100 cash in hand during increasingly desperate times.

"There ain't no jobs," says Bullock, who starred for KHS, then UNC, was drafted in the NBA's first round in 2013 and is now a Detroit Pistons guard. "People ain't got nothing to do."

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"I don't know what the solution is," says Brandon Ingram's uncle Ronnie. "I really don't." Stacy Kranitz for ESPN

IT'S LATE AUGUST, and Brandon Ingram's uncle Ronnie is lingering in a conference room at the Woodmen Community Center, another one of Kinston's recreation centers. An event to honor Whitfield just ended. Half an hour earlier, a former local star athlete, Vernon "Poo" Rochelle, stood at the lectern, praised Whitfield, his childhood friend, then went off topic.

"This town," Rochelle told the room with a hard stare, "is worth saving."

Ronnie attended the event, along with 100-plus others, many of them community leaders. Ronnie is well-built, a few inches above 6 feet, with more salt than pepper in his close-cropped hair and goatee. He's 57 and has been sheriff for a year and a half after 30 years with the Kinston police, working in just about every division there is. Still, the rise in local crime baffles him.

"I don't know what the solution is," Ronnie says. "I really don't."

He shares story after story about what was and what is. Then he tells a story about his 30-year-old son, Brandon Ingram's cousin Jamie, a police officer in Kinston.

"He was telling me, they had a weekend and they had a vehicle chase and the guy they were chasing, he ends up going down the wrong way on Highway 70 into oncoming traffic," Ronnie Ingram says. "He jumps out and he runs onto the overpass, and my son says he's yelling, 'I'm going to jump!'

"He gets right there [on the edge] and throws his leg over. My son was able to get there and grab him before he was able to jump. And my son, he tells me, he says, 'I told [the man], "Not on my watch."' But see, my son, he's only been in it now for four months. It's like I told him, 'Son, you have to understand. You did the right thing, but you can't blame yourself if that person would've jumped.' Because, unfortunately, you can't save everybody."

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IT'S LESS THAN a week before the Lakers introduce Ingram, and police in his hometown respond to a shots-fired call. It's a frequent occurrence in a town where, according to the FBI, the violent crime rate in 2016 was 213 percent higher than the national average.

That itself is a sharp turn, given that the National Civic League in 2009 declared Kinston to be an "All-America City," an honor it annually grants to just 10 U.S. communities. Road signs touting that award greet visitors on Kinston's outskirts, a tempting invite for someone aiming for something better, which is exactly what Kinston resident Stephanie White had sought for her five children back when she was living in Washington, D.C.

An aunt had first mentioned Kinston to Stephanie, and it seemed nice, safe, with strong athletics and other programs perfect for her three sons and two daughters. She settled in East Kinston in 2010, keeping her children active in gymnastics, football and basketball, which her oldest son, Antonio Hines, played in the many local recreation centers and playgrounds. He grew to 6-1, and, like the residents of Kinston, he was not immune to the game's many charms.

"That boy just loved basketball," Stephanie says of Antonio, who at 3 years old would bounce the ball all over their D.C. apartment, then at the basketball court out back and at neighborhood parks where his mother brought him, even though he wasn't yet big enough to shoot. As he grew, he joined friends and his brothers on the playground courts, playing before school, after school, into the evenings -- and he took that routine to Kinston. "He would play whenever he had a chance," Stephanie says.

It wasn't his only love. Starting at 4 years old, he would also bang drumsticks on anything he could -- the floor, the table, books -- and went on to play drums for Kinston High School's marching band. He played piano and electric keyboard too. "Incredibly talented, musically," Tyndall says. After graduating, Hines aspired to be an engineer, to join the Marines. He also wanted to help his family leave Kinston, because in their short time there, it had changed.

Stephanie first saw the signs in 2012: more sirens, shootings, killings. Gangs prevailed.

Still, she trusted her kids, and especially Antonio. She was a single mother, unable to work since 2007 because of multiple sclerosis, with her spine leaking fluid, blurring her vision, causing headaches, leaving her unable to balance. Still, Antonio supported her, helping raise his two younger brothers and two younger sisters.

And then, on a warm, sticky Sunday afternoon in late June 2016, during the kiln of a Southern summer, Antonio walked out the door and climbed into a car with people he believed were his friends. He whiled away many summer afternoons in similar fashion, playing music or basketball with friends, and he believed this day to be like all those that came before it.

About two hours later, police found Hines between a church and Bill Fay Park, where he'd often play, felled by six gunshots-one gang's message to a rival, authorities allege. "They took him to the church and executed him," says Ronnie Ingram, the county sheriff. "They shot him in the back of the head right there in a church parking lot on a Sunday evening."

Today, Stephanie grieves with her children at night, telling them that they'll get through the loss of their brother, her son, somehow, but then she lies down and sleep comes harder and later than it ever has. When she closes her eyes, she swears she can still see Antonio, can still hear his music. She believes he is with his grandmother and cousin now, and that provides some comfort but not enough.

She has no faith the town will change. She regrets ever moving here. She says she wants to leave. As for her son, he lies 14 miles north, where the owner of a cemetery offered to bury him for free because Stephanie couldn't afford a headstone. Antonio Hines rests in an unmarked grave.

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Trophies fill Kinston High, where decades of basketball supremacy has lifted the town from near-constant struggle. Stacy Kranitz for ESPN

OUTSIDE KINSTON HIGH School's gym, a local police officer keeps watch from his parked cruiser while the high school football team practices on a nearby field. Ronnie never thought he'd see the day when they'd need to place police officers at not only the high school but even the middle school. Yet here they are. Unfamiliar faces are stopped, questioned about their business. Without hassle, Coach Tyndall parks on the grass in front of the gym and walks in, past the team photos of recent state finalists and state champions gracing one wall along a hallway.

Tyndall had hair once. The photos prove it. Today he's 38, with a kind smile and a patient ear, born and raised here, an unspectacular point guard for the Vikings in the late 1990s, a

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