1979 Punahou basketball team

“The 1979 team may be the only Hawaii high school team that featured three guys who went on to play Division I basketball: Gabriel at Loyola Marymount, Dan Hale at Hawaii, and Darin Maurer at Stanford,” he says.

That team also had a future USC and NFL football star in John Kamana, who was so good he kept another pretty well-known hoopster out of the starting lineup.

That pretty-well-known hoopster was future President Barack Obama.

“Barry had the misfortune of playing behind Kamana,” Mello recalls. “But we all played together – I still remember the intense pickup games on the outdoor courts at Punahou.”