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Learn more at vertexinck.com. Yo, yo, welcome to stargazing, a show about the figures and influencers that surround

the superstars in

NBA culture. I'm Yovon Buha, NBA reporter at The Athletic. Joining us now is Erica Ruiz.

Erica is an NBA agent for Clutch Sports. She entered the agency space eight years ago in the mail

room and worked her way up after playing college basketball at St.

Mary's and Cal State, Los Angeles, and then becoming a video coordinator at USC.

Her current NBA clients include Moses Moody, Wantsiscono Anderson, Jared Vanderbilt,

and Scotty Pippin Jr. Erica, how you doing?

I'm excellent. I'm really excited to be here with you today. Appreciate you.

Thanks for coming on. Welcome to the show. Let's start with this. This is always my first question

that I'm interested in. How and when did you fall in love with basketball? What's your,

what's your origin story with basketball? Yeah, I think about it and I have like many flashes.

But I think my earliest memory is third grade,

Kobe Bryant, my cousin used to actually bet on the games.

And so that was my first real exposure of being like locked in

and knowing who was playing like and who was playing well. Unfortunately for me, that was my first real exposure of being like locked in and knowing who was playing like and who was

playing well. Unfortunately for me that was around the time when the Lakers started winning championships,

you know, back to back back. But my earliest memory was I loved the game, but having an appreciation

...