WEST READING, Pa. – For Cour Thomas, basketball is about much more than wins and losses.<\/p>\n
Every week, he brings kids from across Berks County to the basketball courts in West Reading, teaching them the game and the value of hard work.<\/p>\n
“It’s a way to keep the kids out of trouble,” Thomas said. “What I try to instill into the kids is when you start something, you finish… work hard at everything that you put your mind to… like LeBron James.”<\/p>\n
So when the longtime coach heard LeBron James was coming to Philadelphia, he immediately thought about his players.<\/p>\n
“I couldn’t believe it,” Thomas said. “To see what LeBron James can bring here into the community… not only in Philadelphia but here in Berks County… is truly amazing.”<\/p>\n
Fourteen-year-old Josiah Swanson also dreams of playing in the NBA one day.<\/p>\n
“I really just want to see how far basketball would take me,” Swanson said. “Maybe… overseas… NBA.”<\/p>\n
Thomas says that’s what he hopes kids can take from having a superstar playing so close to home.<\/p>\n
“Kids from all over the area are being able to just believe in themselves even more because they’re excited to see their idol come to their hometown even closer than what they probably could maybe afford going to other arenas to see him play,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WEST READING, Pa. – For Cour Thomas, basketball is about much more than wins and losses. Every week,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5956,349,18831,128,130,129,707],"class_list":["post-251999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-basketball","tag-berks-county","tag-lebron-james","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-west-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}