Growing up in Syracuse, Brandon Hanks is well aware of negative influences in the city, but he’s the first to say basketball was a way to avoid that.

“It's so easy to get peer-pressured into that type of lifestyle," the Henninger boy's basketball coach said. "So I had to use that round ball basketball to get to the basketball court or maybe some of those people weren't hanging out at or which got me into college where some of those people weren't going.”

Basketball saved him, he said, from a life of bad decisions and put him on a path to help others, particularly the youth of his alma mater at Henninger High School, where he serves as the school resource officer through the Syracuse Police Department.

He's also the school's head basketball coach.

“I never thought I'd be coaching at the same high school that I went to and I graduated from and I played basketball at," Hanks said. "As busy as I might be, these kids need me more than my schedule needs me, if that makes sense. I owe it to these kids to help them get on track and stay on track if they already are on track. I have to find a common medium to make sure that every one of these 15 guys that I have on my team, they come first. They're my first priority.”

“It's really good to have a mentor like that who's really helpful," junior forward Micah Stewart said of Hanks. "He pushes me to go to class, helps me do my work, gets me to class on time.”

In Hanks' eyes, success is helping his 15 players get an education by using basketball as a tool to keep them off the streets.

“The wins and losses do not matter to me," Hanks said. "And I'm going to show you [why] they don't matter. If a kid needs to be disciplined and he can't play and we unfortunately have to lose the game, we will lose that game because I see the longevity of it. I see the bigger picture. It's way bigger than basketball. It's very hard and difficult to get into the NBA. I never made it to the NBA. My NBA is here coaching these kids at my alma mater, giving them something that they probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to do had I not been here.

“I love to see that they could see something positive and say, I want to do that," Hanks continued. "If we can put more stuff out there like that, these kids, they have a bright future ahead of them. I love it. I do. I love it.”