HOUSTON – There wasn’t a particular person Moses Moody had in mind when he began jotting down his words. Ambition was in his message. Judgment played a big role. Good and bad, the two sides to every story.
Moody stood in front of the crowd at San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora in February for a Black History Month event, their first in-person Open Mic Night since 2020, with his cell phone in his right hand and the microphone inches above his heart. The 22-year-old told the audience he wrote his poem with friends and family in mind, especially younger people full of potential. Not the kind of potential we all think about, needing to have a high profile and a heavy wallet, but the hope for everybody to be all right, in their own right.
His poem is named “Gimmy Got A Problem.”
Moody, like most young children, learned about Shakespeare in school. That wasn’t for him, it didn’t speak to him. He didn’t find his spark for the medium until he found the flow that hit something right inside him.
His father Kareem was a public speaker when Moses was growing up, and was talking to a group of high school kids one day. He showed them a poem called “I Can’t Read,” by Lamont Carey, a spoken word masterclass that inspired a new emotion within Moses.
“The dude looked different,” Moody told NBC Sports Bay Area, catching his breath after a practice at the University of Houston one day before the Warriors’ first playoff game against the Rockets. “The flow was different, and I like that type of poetry.”
Carey’s “I Can’t Read” spoken word poem was featured on Deaf Poetry Jam. The program became one of the most important outlets for Moody. He kept watching and watching, learning about voices that spoke to him and landed on Black Ice as his favorite poet.
Reading was the same way for Moody. People would recommend books to him in school, but his disinterest in them made him believe he didn’t like reading, until his older brother, Miles, came home with a book his teacher gave him titled “If I Grow Up,” a novel about a young teen named DeShawn navigating gang violence in the inner-city projects of Chicago. Moody didn’t read the book at first, but what it did was open his eyes to writing he can relate to.
He found The Bluford Series, which are books centered around an array of areas where Black kids are going through hard times in the hood. Moody looks back at those books being an integral turning point in his education, finally being exposed to stories that can be relevant to himself and people who look like him in situations that his friends and family members have experienced.
“I saw those books, and now I like reading,” Moody says. “Then I read that ‘If I Grow Up’ book, which is one of my favorites. That’s just the same kind of message that I got from poetry and learning what I like to read, what I like to see.”
Moses looks down at his phone, reads the title of his poem to the crowd, hears the anticipation and after a deep breath the words trickle out as easy as any 3-pointer the young Warriors wing has ever shot.
Let me tell you a story about a boy named Gimmy, he opens with.
“Everybody got some Gimmy in them,” Moody says. “A lot of ambitious people can’t forget about the other side. But ambition is good, that’s why I didn’t put a name on there or anything. It’s not like I’m saying any specific person is bad or any specific type of person, but it’s just something to think about.”
The rest of Moody’s words are an invitation into his world. Into how his father’s gift of gab was passed down to him. How family circumstances as a Black man growing up in the South have shaped him. The ways Deaf Poetry Jam still can echo in his ears.
Word by word, Moody paints his own picture of perspective.
Gimmy said gimmy this, gimmy that, gimmy everything
So that’s what Gimmy got, everything
But Gimmy ain’t know everything he got was from a boy named Lou
And Lou was losing this, losing that, losing everything
Lou lost so much that Lou got lost
But everybody got problems
You don’t got to help the man next to you just because he got less than you
That’s his problem
But if Lou lose enough, then he gonna take what Gimmy got
Now we got a few problems
So let’s come up with a plan to offer a helping hand to a boy,
Before we got to deal with a desperate man
The two lines that stick with Moody the most come near the end to wrap up his message.
“When I say ‘If Lou lose enough, then he gonna take what Gimmy got,’ that’s kind of like just saying that all bad guys aren’t bad guys,” Moody explains. “Everybody’s a good guy in their own story. And more towards the end when I say, ‘Let’s come up with a plan to offer a helping hand,’ it’s to say, when you do folks bad enough, when you take enough from them, now they’re desperate. Now you’re dealing with something different.
“Back when you’re taking it, that’s when you’re Gimmy and you can think about the other perspective and how it could eventually affect you if you’re ruthless in the pursuit of what you’re trying to get.”
Now Moody is the one offering a helping hand in his hometown with multiple events, especially through his Motivate One Foundation.
Poetic justice.
As he’s explaining the ins and outs of Gimmy, I have to remind myself that Moses has one month to go until he’s still just 23 years old. That he only went to college for one year but is in the constant pursuit of learning.
And also that for his senior speech in high school at Montverde Academy, a national basketball powerhouse, he chose to read an original poem titled “He Beat The Streets.” It’s rhyme and reason, using people like his own uncle’s incarceration and Trayvon Martin as examples of telling his own perspective of different Black experiences.
Moody’s talent as a basketball player made him a first-round draft pick that signed a $37.5 million contract last offseason. He calls his ability to write his words and have the comfort to present them a gift.
A personal gift he used as one to his classmates in 2019, circling them in the gymnasium and getting an ovation full of admiration.
“I can present a perspective that a lot of people don’t get to experience,” Moody tells me. “I’m from Little Rock, Arkansas. A lot of my family was growing up in the 1900s, so I’ve been hearing stories of all types of stuff from the bottom of the world, but from good people. It’s like a perspective I have that not a lot of people have – the ability to show a positive light, because that’s my thing.
“When I talk about poems I never try to make a poem complaining about how hard life is and with a negative connotation to it. It’s all just a good perspective on hard situations. Those two were. Gimmy is in my family, a lot of times. I got a lot of hard stories that I grew up hearing. That’s all that is. It’s really just insight into a perspective not too many people get to see.”
Poetic justice.
The connection that Moody has to poetry and storytelling is obvious in his favorite line from his senior speech.
“There was a lot of them,” Moody says. “Particularly one of them was, ‘My uncle had the heart of a soldier, the aggression of a prize fighter, just no one taught him what to fight for.’ And that’s so many kids. That’s so many that have the potential to be whatever, and they’re good at what they want to be good at. It’s just that things that they’re good at isn’t what they should be putting their attention towards.
“A couple of my uncles, they’re the coldest pool players, chess, cards, dominoes. Whatever you want to do, they’re the best at it. But what if they were good at finance, investing or whatever. They were going to be good at whatever they were going to try to be good at. They just didn’t try to be good at that stuff.”
Last summer Moody did a month-long internship for a real estate investment firm, the same summer he was part of Basketball Without Borders in Africa. Finding third buckets outside of family and work is very important to him. In the past year Moody tells me he has really ramped up learning about financing and investing, meeting founders and venture capitalists in the Bay Area.
Poetic justice.
“For one, as a man you can’t just spend 15 years becoming a basketball player and not putting any attention in the rest of your life,” Moody says. “Because then once you retire, you haven’t lived in 15 years. That’s been big for me and I encourage anybody in any other profession to, for one, figure out yourself. Figure out what you liked to do, what you like to learn about and then go learn about it, so you can build and become.
“I was 19 when I got drafted. If I didn’t learn anything other than basketball since I was 19, what type of 30-year-old would I be? I encourage that to anybody.”
Speaking in literal terms, Moody’s role on the Warriors has increased since he made his debut at 19. His minutes per game have gone up every season since he won a ring as a rookie. He also has found himself in and out of the rotation, being praised for his maturity while the team signed players that got in the way of bigger opportunities.
As a rookie, Moody started 11 games for the Warriors. He then only started 12 the next two seasons combined. His patience and perseverance were applauded, essentially earning him the nickname of “Stay Ready” by Warriors fans for taking advantage of his chances whenever they might come. Moody rarely shared frustrations in his journey, despite the three picks after him in the 2021 NBA Draft all playing more minutes than him, as well as only three of the 13 picks ahead of him getting fewer minutes from their respective teams.
While questions were constantly asked to Warriors coach Steve Kerr about Moody’s role and Moses himself spoke on the matter multiple times, he also reminded us he chose to develop as a man and basketball player in the real world of the NBA instead of being the big man on campus at Arkansas. He’s now entrenched as a key piece of the Warriors’ starting five, relied upon to guard the opposition’s best perimeter scorer and to knock down shots himself.
In the Warriors’ Game 1 win against the Rockets to open their first-round playoff series, Moody only scored seven points, but five of them came in the final six minutes and his two made shots were the biggest by someone not named Steph Curry or Jimmy Butler. Moody was the first person Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy greeted in the hallway, smiling bigger than the contract he gave him in the offseason. He wasn’t as impactful in the Warriors’ Game 2 loss and fell out of the starting lineup for Game 3 because of Butler’s injury changing combinations.
His response was coming off the bench and immediately giving the Warriors great minutes. Moody wasn’t as productive in the second and third quarters, but he’s earned enough trust from Kerr that he played him eight minutes in the fourth quarter, making a three in the first minute to break a tie, and being right in the action of Draymond Green’s steal leading to Gary Payton II’s dunk in the final minute to stamp Golden State’s Game 3 win, moving one game ahead in the series.
“My story is kind of allover with people my age,” Moody says. “You work in the beginning, that’s the hardest part. But when you can get through that, it gets easier. Not even to say that it’s easier now, but you just develop those habits and that foundation. That’s what I was always saying when y’all ask me about that. I’m developing that foundation that’s gonna take me for the long run.
“I wasn’t as good of a defender as I am now. But I learned how to do it through that time period. I wasn’t as good of a shooter back then. But I figured some stuff out while I wasn’t playing. Now that I get the opportunity, I am prepared.”
This is the poetic justice of Moses Moody.
