“GREEEEEEN!” screams another blue-and-red clad player, leaping out of his chair in elation as the three-point shot falls.

Green, as commentator Scott Cole informs viewers, means it’s good for blue-and-red 76ers Gaming Club (GC). It is not good, however, for Grizz Gaming, seated in a parallel semicircle on the other side of the stage. The man in the middle, seated behind an Alienware monitor, shakes his head, and exclaims in frustration. With a HyperX headset on, he can’t hear Cole’s exclamation. But thousands of viewers watching on Twitch do hear Cole’s verdant verdict. They also know—as does Cole, as do the elated 76ers and the dispirited Grizz—that they’re watching history, courtesy of the head-shaking maestro at centre stage.

Although you wouldn’t believe it based on his reactions, Grizz Gaming’s star has written himself into the NBA 2K League record books in dominant fashion, sweeping away the previous scoring record and firmly entrenching himself at the top. It’s hard to tell from the disappointment, but Mehyar Ahmed-Hassan has just scored 84 points. 

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Ahmed-Hassan is one of 102 players in the inaugural season of the NBA 2K League. The joint venture between the NBA and Take-Two interactive, which produces the popular NBA 2K video game, is the first esports league partnered with a mainstream professional sports league. Seventeen NBA teams joined the league for its first season, and four more were recently accepted into the league as expansion teams for 2019. Each team drafted six players to compete in a special build of NBA 2K’s 5-on-5 mode. The league pays the player salaries: $35,000 for first-round picks and $32,000 for second-to-sixth rounders, but each team is responsible for housing, training, and developing their esports players.

Mehyar was one of five Canadians (nine international players overall) to qualify for the draft, after an in-game and interview qualification process narrowed the original field of 72,000 down to 102. He was one of several players not present at the draft, held in Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theatre, but his absence and international status didn’t stop the Grizzlies from making him the highest international pick at 20th overall, the third selection of the second round (the draft was conducted “snake” style).

“I had no idea I was going to Memphis until I heard my name on TV,” Mehyar said. “It’s such a big adjustment.”

But adjust he did, perhaps in part thanks to Memphis’s world-class barbecue. Due to a complicated US work approval visa, Mehyar didn’t make it to Memphis until several days before the first tournament of the season. The Grizz, put into the so-called “Group of Death,” went winless in the tournament. Then, after winning their first game, they struggled and were unceremoniously eliminated from the second tournament of the season, seemingly confirming pessimistic popular expectations.

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“One thing I knew for certain when [Mehyar] got into the draft pool, he was going to dominate,” Raptors Uprising coach Ognjen Micic, known as “OneThroughFive,” told TSN.ca. Micic teamed up with Ahmed-Hassan for several years in NBA 2K Pro-Am and knows him as well, if not better, as anyone else in the NBA 2K community.

Mehyar excelled from the beginning of the season. Playing at his draft position of centre, he scored 31 points in the team’s first game and posted a more-than-respectable stat-line throughout the disappointing first tournament.

Moves to small forward and then to point guard didn’t faze him. He averaged over 20 points per game during the early-season losing streak. After 76ers GC humiliated the Grizz in the opening round of the “Turn” tournament, taking a 48-21 lead at halftime, Mehyar elevated his game further. Over the course of weeks 5 to 7, he led the Grizz to a season-rehabilitating 2-1 record, scoring over 14 points and dishing out a remarkable 19 assists per game.

Then the patch came, and everything changed.

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You’ve probably heard the term video game numbers used to refer to impressive stats. ESPN even drew up a graphic in May, when LeBron was tearing up the playoffs, comparing the then-Cavs star to Cleveland’s high scoring NBA 2K Leaguer, Hood. The NBA 2K League patch, instituted for Week 8 of the regular season, allowed players to redefine that term and, in doing so, redefine what it meant to be a high scorer.

Before each game, teams decide which archetype each player will use. Each position has five choices of archetype, which determine every player’s skill, ratings, and attributes. The give-and-take of each makes deciding on an archetype lineup like a chess match. Among the changes that the patch made to the archetypes, it improved the skill of the small forward archetype “shot-creating slasher,” boosting its ability to dunk, make contact shots, and shoot from midrange.

The shot-creating slasher became really, really good, and teams consequently decided to put their best player on it and clear the runway for takeoff. A number of teams began to run a five-out offence, spacing the floor with shooters and letting the shot-creating slasher go to work. High-scoring marks became flimsy, then flat-out unstable as players hit 40 points consistently. The Grizz became one such team.

“I like to spread the ball around,” Mehyar said. He was able to do that more than most shot-creating slashers, still regularly posting double-doubles while increasing his scoring totals, but it was his defence that became his distinguishing feature as the Grizz made a late playoff push.

In Week 9, the Grizz faced Mavs Gaming. At that point, the Grizz essentially needed to win out to make the playoffs. The Mavs destroyed the Grizz in the opening tournament, and first overall pick Dimez, then at point guard, had set the league high-scoring mark of 50 (beaten by Week 9) in the 40-point win. Mehyar and the Grizz turned the tables, securing an upset on the strength of another Mehyar double-double. The win set up a crucial Week 10 matchup against 76ers GC, who had embarrassed the Grizz in the midseason “Turn” tournament.

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The most versatile player you’ve never heard of is from Toronto. He worked for the Toronto District School Board, helping out at schools here and there, fixing this and that, doing what needed to be done. When the Grizzlies drafted him, he knew that although the work would get more glamorous, he wanted to continue helping out.

Mehyar and Grizz Gaming embraced the tight-knit Memphis community, and in turn it has embraced them. The team was mooted for the league’s Community Engagement Award (which eventually went to the Raptors), volunteering in the community and hosting children from St. Jude’s hospital.

“I love to help people,” said Memphis’s newest honorary son.  “I love to see smiles on faces.”

He didn’t start helping people in Memphis.

Ahmed-Hassan’s gamer tag is “AuthenticAfrican” for a reason. Thirteen years ago, he went to Sudan and felt his heart break at a poverty level unimaginable back home in Toronto. He began to look for a way to help.

Opportunity came knocking, literally. World Vision Canada paid his house a visit, and Mehyar found what he had been looking for: the chance to make a direct impact. He sponsored several kids over the years and currently sponsors one in Ghana and one in Kenya.

His goal is hardly limited to sponsorship. Mehyar wants to build medical and educational facilities in Africa, giving kids a chance to learn and better their lives.

Mehyar made the connection with LeBron James, who had just recently opened a school in Akron, Ohio. It’s a smaller scale for the NBA 2K League star, of course, though Mehyar hopes his actions will be a model for others. But the humanitarian comparison with LeBron matters much more to Mehyar than a comparison of video game numbers.

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Week 10. Must-win game. 76ers GC deployed a different strategy from the first time they beat Grizz Gaming. Then, they hedged hard and doubled the Grizz star. In Week 10, knowing the ability of the shot-creating slasher, they decided to leave their defender on an island against Ahmed-Hassan. The other four defenders stuck tight to the four Grizz players arrayed along the three-point line. 76ers GC, who runs a balanced, three-point heavy attack, bet that their team could beat one man.

Four quarters and two overtimes later, that bet looked risky. The two teams were deadlocked, and Mehyar was doing it all.

“Once I figured out their strategy,” he said, “I just started to go for it.”

But in the third overtime, with AuthenticAfrican visibly tired, 76ers GC began to pull away, with each “GREEEN!” three-pointer hammering a nail in the coffin. All five 76ers scored in double digits, totaling nine three-pointers. The other four Grizz players combined to score just nine points, including one three, in four quarters and three overtimes.

Mehyar finished the game with 84 points on 40/55 shooting. The point total annihilated the previous record, held by another shot-creating slasher. It’s a mark unlikely to be matched for a long, long time. But with the record-setting performance came elimination from the playoffs, and it’s that disappointment that Ahmed-Hassan still remembers most vividly from that game.

“It still hurts,” he says. “We had that game. It was just so heartbreaking."

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The English poet John Donne famously declared that “no man is an island.” Clearly, he never played defence against Mehyar, especially on the shot-creating slasher.

But Donne was right, nonetheless, because Mehyar looks to transcend what it means to be an NBA 2K League star. He’s a lock to be retained for the league’s second season and beyond, and he hopes to continue helping the Memphis community and sponsoring kids. He and Micic have created a group called “Fear the North” that is designed to promote and help Canadians become involved with gaming. And more than anything else, he wants to continue working toward making the world a better place.

“It takes one to inspire many,” Mehyar said.

It’s clear that the man shaking his head in disappointment at the 76ers’ “GREEEN!” despite his record-setting night is that very one.