Maurice O’Guinn stood just beyond the three-point line, dribbling the basketball and grinning as his son Jaylen pushed close, hands high to block the next shot. “How you want it — a three?” Maurice taunted. Jaylen nodded. Maurice’s hands darted up like pistons, and the shot was off before Jaylen could react.
Swish.
A play later, Jaylen grabbed the rebound, head-faked to the left and cut past his dad for a quick layup. “Yeah!” Maurice yelled. Now the big grin was on Jaylen’s face.
And that’s how the two-man game went on this recent sunny day, joy crackling between this 37-year-old dad and his 16-year-old son on an outside court in Alameda. Both wanted to win, and both were relentless.
Maurice has needed that relentlessness more than ever, in a very real-world way, this past year.
You could tell he wanted to get the work done on paying those bills, and then get moving on his next goals.
His job as a coach for the Golden State Warriors basketball youth camp ended when the pandemic tanked attendance in fall 2021. As he struggled to fill the gap with ride-hailing gigs, he fell four months behind on the rent and bills at his home in Oakland.
But with a financial assist from The Chronicle’s Season of Sharing Fund, which covered his overdue housing costs, Maurice is back in the game.
The fund works throughout the year to prevent homelessness and hunger in the Bay Area’s nine counties, and all donations directly help people in need, with administrative costs covered by The Chronicle and the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund.
Even before that relief came in late summer, Maurice — who as a younger man played college and pro basketball — was pushing to get his career back on the court. Today, he works for the East Bay Basketball Officials Association, refereeing games for middle school, high school and community college games. He also snagged a gig officiating scrimmages for the NBA’s Sacramento Kings and is in the second year of a three-year program to become a full-time ref in the NBA.
“You have to keep a competitive edge, and playing the game helped me with that,” he said. “The thing is, you have to keep moving forward. The Lord has brought me a long way, and I’ve got a lot to be thankful for.”
That long way traces back to a challenging childhood in San Leandro and Oakland, where he landed in a group home while his family overcame addiction struggles. After high school, Jaylen was born and Maurice worked warehouse jobs to support his son and Jaylen’s mother while also landing a spot as a guard on the Merritt Community College basketball team.
Some people get some assistance but just can’t dig out of a hole — not Maurice,” said caseworker Natalia Alvarez, who organized his aid. “Maurice has goals. He works hard.
His relationship with Jaylen’s mother ended more than a decade ago — they’ve split custody 50-50 ever since — and after two years at Merritt, Maurice played for the Oakland Townhawks pro-league team in 2017-18. When that team folded, he became a coach at the Dream Courts sports complex in Hayward.
It all culminated in that job coaching at the Warriors youth camp and starting training to become an NBA ref. Then the pandemic smacked him sideways. But through it all, he never gave up.
Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron