Dean Prator is the creator of this site and has made a personal commitment to preserve the awesome legacy of Raymond Lewis, one of the greatest basketball players that ever lived and certainly without question, the best ever to come out of California. He especially likes talking to teens about the great accomplishments achieved by Lewis.

"I fondly remember one day strolling along the sidewalk of Venice Beach in 2004 with my niece Amber," says Prator and saw a couple of young men about 17 and 19 years old shooting hoops on the asphalt basketball courts at Venice Beach and I decided to play each of them one-on-one. After playing both games in which I was victorious (barely), I then decided to tell them about the legend.

I could hear Amber in the background saying to herself, "Oh No, not again, not the Raymond Lewis story." In any event I continued with my lecture and the young men took great interest into what I was telling them and wanted to know more. Once you begin to inform people about his great accomplishments they seemed to be mesmerized with the mythical-like status of Lewis.

I have interviewed numerous street ballers, coaches and personal friends of Raymond's who all tell me basically the same thing, that Raymond Lewis was the greatest basketball player that they had ever seen. I spoke with a long-time friend of Lewis, Eddie Williams, who at one time was a team mate of Raymond's at Verbum Dei high school during the championship years.

In the early eighties during my years as an employee at the frozen food warehouse, Certified Grocers, (Now Unified) in Santa Fe Springs, Calif. I had the pleasure of meeting Eddie Williams, a co-worker who I recruited for our company basketball team. Eddie was by far one of the top basketball players at Certified along with Leon Weaver, Greg Hunter, Kenny Coleman, Charles Alexander,  Dion Barrazza and Clyde "Big Daddy" Walton.

At that time I had no Idea that in high school Williams was actually a teammate of Raymond's. I found out when he was being interviewed by a journalist doing a "where-are- they-now"- type interview of the Verbum Dei basketball CIF Championship years. I had already heard so much about the legend of Raymond Lewis when I was a student at Dominguez High School in the early seventies, which to date produced several NBA players such as Dennis Johnson of the Seattle Supersonics/Phoenix Suns/Boston Celtics, Cedric Ceballos-Phoenix Suns/L.A. Lakers, Tayshaun Prince-Detroit Pistons, and Tyson Chandler of the Chicago Bulls. 

When I learned that Eddie was a teammate of Raymond's I decided to get as much information on the basketball legend as I could. The conversations that really stuck in my mind were those when Eddie, a very good basketball player himself, told me of his days playing Raymond one-on-one. He said, "If you were to play Raymond Lewis to a 15 by 1 point game and you had the ball first you had better not miss a shot. If you did, you would never get the ball back again, because Lewis could routinely hit 15 shots in a row to end the game. Eddie also told me that in his opinion, Lewis was also a better player than NBA (Hall Of Famer) Isaiah Tomas."  

One of my favorite Raymond Lewis Stories:
I recently spoke with James Pilcher, the brother-in-law of Raymond Lewis who reluctantly told me about the time when he had played against Lewis. Both men were traveling around town in Raymond's car in 1975 when the subject of basketball came up. Pilcher, a very good player himself and a member of the Manual Arts High School basketball team which won the city championship in 1968, was insulted when Lewis stated that he would spot him 40 points to a 50 point one-on-one game and still beat him.

Pilcher then say's to Lewis, "Raymond your good, but not good enough to give me forty points to a fifty point game. All I have to do is score ten buckets and you need to score fifty." The two men then head to a nearby basketball court and Lewis opens the trunk of his car where he always kept a basketball. Both men step onto the asphalt court. Plicher takes the ball out and scores the first two points now he only needs only eight more baskets to win the game. As Pilcher takes another shot he misses, Lewis grabs the rebound and scores 50 unanswered buckets. (GAME OVER!)  Lewis wins 50-42, spotting Pilcher 40 points!