Roshon Dwight was stunned when he heard the news. It was during his senior banquet with the Bloomfield Tech boys' basketball team last spring when Iona College assistant coach Vin Parise told him with a smile, "We got your guy."

Dwight's guy is Shaheen Holloway, the former St. Patrick High and Seton Hall University star who a year earlier had had been an assistant coach at Bloomfield Tech before joining Bobby Gonzalez's staff at Seton Hall.

"I was like, 'For real?'" Dwight recalled. "I was excited because I knew I was going to be able to learn a lot more stuff, because Coach is such a good teacher of the game. But I was also very shocked at that one. That surprised me, being that it was his alma mater." But even a beloved alma mater can't compete when a promotion with twice the money is thrown at you.

After only one year back with the Pirates in 2006-07, Holloway was lured away by new Iona head coach Kevin Willard, who asked the 31-year-old to make yet another move in a lifelong basketball tour of hardwood courts in places as far apart as Elizabeth, South Orange, Tel Aviv and Istanbul, barely touching the fringes of the NBA as he clung with the tips of his fingernails to the hope of one day playing at the highest level.

Although he played professionally around the world and had his NBA chances with several tryouts, including with the Nets and Knicks, Holloway never cracked an NBA roster. Two years ago, with family issues weighing on him, he decided it was enough and turned to coaching, the profession where he always knew he would end up.
One year at Bloomfield Tech, one at Seton Hall and now at Iona, where Holloway is helping rebuild the Gaels' once-proud tradition.

"I'd love to bring him back to Seton Hall one day," Gonzalez said, "not to steal him away from Iona; he's only been there a year. But I think he's a rising star in the coaching business."

Migrating from one team to the next is not new for Holloway, who first moved to Hillside from Queens in 1993 so he could attend St. Patrick in Elizabeth.

But eight years of stability in Jersey quickly dissolved into a nomadic six-year quest to fulfill his NBA dream -- one from which he kept jolting awake, over and over again, an instant before the happy ending.
Since finishing his playing career at Seton Hall in 2000, the 31-year-old Holloway has never spent more than a year in any one place, splitting his time between NBA camps in the summer and fall, then heading back to Europe to make a buck.

He has taken the long bus rides to play in the high school gyms of the ABA in Rosemont, Ill., Las Vegas and Newark, where he played for Darryl Dawkins' Express, but he has also played for good money in front of passionate crowds in Israel, Turkey, Italy and Germany, where the travel is first class and the perks (cars, apartments and cell phones) are enviable.

While playing for Hapoel Holon in Israel, Holloway experienced the beaches, the nightclubs, the adulation and the lifestyle any Miami Heat player might know. But it could also be rough. During one game against archrival Jerusalem, Hapoel Holon was losing, and its fans didn't like it.
Someone turned the lights out, a chair was thrown, then another and a riot broke out. "People were going crazy," Holloway said. "They start throwing chairs and coins around. It was scary. Being from the city and New York, you've got survival skills. I crawled out of there. I remember one of my teammates, he didn't play well on the road, and when we came back, his tires were slashed. It's very intense over there."

Holloway came home during the offseasons to play in NBA summer leagues, going one-on-one against Jason Kidd at Ramapo College and getting positive feedback. He would spend the summers and falls working out with NBA teams in their camps or summer-league teams until those painful cuts came, then make a decision: Say goodbye to family and friends and get on a plane back to Europe for the money, or stay closer to home in the cut-rate ABA.

Finally, two years ago, with his then-11-year-old daughter Shatanik (pronounced sha-ta-NEEK) struggling in school and showing some of the typical signs of adolescents who miss their fathers, Holloway says he concluded he had to do more. He wanted to take her to Germany with him, but the closest American school was two hours away.

"I decided I really needed to get a hold on this," he said. "Her mother did a great job, but it was time for me to step in. So what I did was, I took a year off just to spend time with her on academics and her behavior. During that time, (Bloomfield Tech coach) Nick Mariniello called me and asked to help coach his team.

"I could have gone back overseas, but I knew it wouldn't help my daughter's situation. The NBA wasn't calling, and I was tired of playing semipro ball in the minor leagues. After a while the money's not good, the travel sucks. So I said, 'You know what? Let me give this a try and see what happens.' It worked out pretty well, and that led to this.
After one year at Tech another call came, this one from Gonzalez. A year after that Willard called.

Today, Holloway is helping Iona recover from last year's disastrous 2-28 season. The Gaels (12-19) posted a respectable 8-10 mark in Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference play and are seeded seventh for the tournament, which starts tonight.

Shatanik, who has been living with her dad since he stopped playing three years ago, has moved with him from his home in Hillside to an apartment in Yonkers, closer to Iona's New Rochelle campus.
For the first time since his days as a Pirates point guard, Holloway is on the verge of spending two years in the same place. Some dreams do come true.

"People ask me all the time, 'Do you miss playing?'" Holloway says. "I say yes, but on the other hand, you only get one chance to be a father and one chance to make a difference. At the time I thought it was right. I'm not sure everyone would do that, but most real fathers would."