Streetball Sensation – John Bowne grad has thrived on blacktop, and success has followed

This September, Antoine Millien will become the first basketball player out of John Bowne High School to play professional basketball. In a few weeks he will leave Lefrak City, and lace up his high-tops in Turkey for the Konya Sports Management Group.
From Bowne, he experienced a veritable Odyssey - from Labette Community College in Parsons, KA to Trinidad State Junior College in Alamosa, CO, and then Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho, where he starred for the Division I Bengals in the Big Sky conference.
For all the miles he's traveled, Millien, 23, still evolved into the same inside-outside force on the same streets he spent the first 17 years of his life, and the last five summers thereafter. During those hot, sweaty days, Millien has traveled throughout the city with the Brooklyn-based X-Men and Coach Dytanya Mixson, playing in each and every blacktop streetball league he could find. &#8220When I wake up, I wait for somebody to call me to play,” he says. &#8220Usually, it's Dytanya.”
Mixson found Millien, a raw, rail-thin dunking machine, at the Nickelodeon Summer League five years ago, and immediately recruited and persuaded Millien to join his team. &#8220I saw his athletic ability and I realized he could play, but he didn't know the game,” says Mixson, the Coach of the Strong Island Sound of the ABA. &#8220I just thought I could teach him.”
It wasn't a smooth transition immediately. Several of the older, established X-Men stars, many who play professionally overseas, didn't like Millien's pronounced appetite for dunking or disinterest in defense and team play. &#8220At first they treated me like garbage,” Millien admits. &#8220They didn't put me in, they didn't pass me the ball; they were talking down to me.”
Yet after just one season, after listening and learning, he earned his teammates' confidence and had plays run for him. Nicknamed Miles High for his hang time and explosion, Millien is far more than just a dunker; he has a feathery touch around the basket, an awareness of when to back his man down or step back and shoot his ever-improving jumper, or go to his abundance of baseline drives. &#8220He's a scoring machine,” Mixson says. &#8220He can shoot. A lot of teams forget that he can shoot as good as he can dunk. … And he's a real nice guy. He's not one of those street idiots. He's just a big kid. He loves to play the game.”
At Bowne his senior year, he averaged a double-double, leading the Wildcats to the second round of the playoffs. Even then, he had that extension, a length that would enable him to strongly follow missed shots, and block shots many couldn't dream of reaching. &#8220It was only a matter of time,” said Rob Diaz, an assistant coach at John Bowne. &#8220I thought there were two things he was missing: getting a little stronger and gaining experience.”
After spending the last five seasons with X-Men, Millien recently signed a one-year, $60,000 deal with the Konya Sports Management Group to play overseas in Turkey.
In the chest-bumping, body grinding, no blood-no-foul world of streetball, the 6-foot-8 Millien can be pushed around. Wiry-strong, he still lacks the rippled arms and upper body of his opponents. Instead, Millien relies on agility, length, smarts and superior athleticism to get by. The results tell the story: one of the top scorers on X-Men, Millen is thriving in 14 different streetball leagues, including the famed Rucker Park and West 4th Street leagues.
In a recent come-from-behind victory at Rodney Park in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, he twice scored on follow-dunks, once jumping over his defender who looked to block him out and another time slithering baseline for a windmill slam. &#8220Watching him dunk is like watching a human-highlight film,” teammate Eric Thompson said.
How his game will translate in Turkey is anyone's guess. That they expressed interest in him as a combo forward, and not just a low-post player, as he was utilized at Idaho State, is a positive.
&#8220He's a beast,” Thompson says. &#8220He'll be all right [in Turkey], because you bring your game everywhere. It's like MasterCard; you travel with that.”
After leaving Queens following high school, this latest trip doesn't scare Millien, nor does the next step in his evolving career. &#8220I got used to playing in Kansas, in Colorado, in Idaho, everywhere else,” he said. &#8220So I just have to do the same thing there.”