There's an important thing you should know about NBA players.

It's a thing where, without proper alignment, their entire game could be

thrown off. I was looking super rough. I mean, technically like 18 days without a cut. That thing

is their hair. Yo, my boy came through, gave me one of those greatest. A cuts.

Ooh, right.

For most players, like LeBron James right there, having the right cut is more than vanity.

As Primetime himself, Dion Sanders said, look good, feel good, play good.

You have to look good, look good, you play good, play good, pay good, pay good, little good, live good.

You know, he good. And professional basketball players are willing to go to great lengths to ensure they look good and feel good before a big game. I had clients like Mike Connolly. I used to fly to Utah. When he got traded, I used to fly out there like once a month, sometimes once every other week. That is Vince the Barber, one of the best known barbers in the business.

He's got some of the most famous people in the world. Tyrese was one of my first music artists that I cut. Everyone was like, cut Tyrese, he's bald. I'm like, no, he's got hair. Vince's passion for cutting took him from Toronto to Los Angeles, where he hustled his way to the top of the barbershop game.

Vince's story kicks off our new limited series here at The Athletic.

Welcome to Stargazing.

Yo, yo, welcome to Stargazing, a show about the figures and influencers that surround

the superstars in NBA culture. I'm Yovon Buja, NBA reporter at The Athletic. Joining us now is

Vince Garcia, aka Vince the Barber. Vince is a celebrity barber for A-list entertainers and

athletes, cutting the hair of everyone from LeBron James to Drake to James Hardin to Devon Booker to Kid Cutty, the list goes on. He's worked on the set of HBO's The Shop, Fast and Furious 6 and 7, and Ellen, among several other movies and shows. Vince, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me, man. How's it going, man? Good, good. How are you? I like the OVO jacket.

Thanks, man.

So let's, let's start with that. So what's your relationship with basketball? You're from Toronto. Did you grow up a Raptors fan? Because I think around your teenage years where Vince Carter threw, you know, elbow in the rim and you know that 2000 dunk contest what what was your basketball relationship like growing up um i mean

i definitely basketball wasn't even like my main, you know, sport, favorite sport growing up. Uh, I actually grew up playing baseball, like a majority of my life. Basketball kind of came. Yeah, kind of like, you know, when the Raptors first came, started my Mighty Mouse. That was you know, that was everyone's favorite, obviously, and having an NBA team in Toronto and Canada in general was a big, you know, big deal. So, I mean, I definitely grew up as a Raptors fan. I'm till this day, I'm a diehard Raptors fan regardless. But no, I just love basketball. It was always like a hobby of mine, kind of like my little getaway, you know what I mean? Like it's like my happy place type of thing. So, you know, anytime I'm feeling down or just out,

like, you know, shooting around just kind of calms me down and eases everything off. So what about barbering? How did, how did you get into that? It started probably, yeah, seventh, eighth grade, same thing. I used to just do lineups and designs on all my homies.

That's back when, you know, like the Nike check mark and all the little things like that was in.

So my childhood barber, who used to cut me in the homies, actually, he would cut us once a week. We go to his house and my boys were like, bro, you should ask Kevin to teach out of fate. I was like, yeah, I guess. And then I sat down, got my cut and told him, you know, I want to learn how to cut. He kind of broke it down for me and, you know, started off as a hobby. And then it just became a lifestyle for me. And then how do you go from it being a hobby and turning it into a lifestyle and then eventually cutting Chris Bosch? I think that was your first athlete, right? Yeah. So, yeah, so I again, it started seventh, eighth grade, and then all throughout high school, I was cutting all my homies. I cut some of my teachers also, you know, cut them up in the boys' change room, and I was charging $5, $10. Were they giving you better grades for? I don't know. Maybe there was a perks of that, you know, but. You're like, if you don't move this to a... Yeah, to an A, I'm gonna... So, I mean, yeah, I never thought of it that way, but... Yeah, I mean, that was like my little hustle in high school, you know? I was known as, like, the barber, and everyone wanted to get cut up and side money and just, you know, lunch money or whatnot.

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