``Make him more of a legend than just a story,'' Ellerbee said as Gosley, now a 6-8 senior, worked out in Gratz's cherry and white colors last week.
Since Gosley's freshman season, though, the legend has been put on hold, and his life has become something of a saga, with more than a few chapters written far from the Gratz gym on Hunting Park Avenue.
He became the big man in the middle, not just on the court, but in a tug of war between adults. He spent a lot of time thinking about their motives, once asking a coach, ``Is it because I'm tall?''
A colorful cast of characters moved through his life. There was a great big bear of a minister who was once a Philly high school basketball star, but later became an addict playing ball for drugs before a religious conversion. He sought to become ``Tahric's spiritual father.'' For a year, Allen Iverson's high school coach became Gosley's on-court mentor.
Gosley spent two years in Williamsport, with an upstate basketball power called the Millionaires, before returning to Gratz this season.
He went to Williamsport initially because his mother had moved there. He stayed because he had become a father - his son, Nyric, was born in Williamsport just over a year ago. ``If I wasn't there, I wouldn't have felt right as a person,'' Gosley said. He returned to Philadelphia mostly because of basketball.
If he were going to have a big future in the sport, he felt he had to return to Philadelphia, so that he could go to Chicago and the other big national tournaments that Gratz travels to this season, so that he could work out in the heated competition of Gratz practices.
