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From the streets to the penitentiary thuglife and basketball collide. Creating a unique and emerging phenomenon in the Bureau of Prison - the prison basketball gangsta. A baller in all senses whose combines playground flava, street smarts, hood dynamics, and the rough-it-off, go-hard mentality which dominates life in the belly of the beast.

Enter the Abuser. A legend in the feds. Born Ronald Paul, this young Harlem cat took his knocks in the game. Trying to come up and get his, he ran afoul of the law. First doing time at Rykers and eventually ending up in the feds.

From the chaos of a streetlife gone wrong this uptown hustler started building. His foundation was built on the game he loved and grew up playing on the courts of the five boroughs. But it was in the raging, burning battles of prison basketball that he forged his alter-ego and the legend of Ron Jordan aka The Abuser.

The Abuser was first featured in the hustler's bible, Don Diva magazine. His legend escaped the confines of prison. His game was that big. Too big for the compound. For the BOP. For the feds. It had to go nationwide.

The kid was dropping 60 on the regular. Collecting chips and accolades like other prisoners collect shots. He had it all- the rainbow threes, the wicked handles, and the And one moves. Couldn't nobody stop him.

All the haters on the pound though claimed that the Diva piece was his 15 minutes, but they were wrong. SLAM, the NY city basketball magazine that brought Skip to my Lou to the masses, picked up the story. Profiling the Abuser in their pages next to NBA greats like Jason Kidd and Chris Webber. Further spreading the legend far and beyond the double hurricane, razor-wire fences of the correctional facility.

And from there the story took on a life of its own as the Abuser went international. Spanish journalist Enrique Peinado did a story and interview, for Gigantes del Basket as did Liberation, a French sports daily. Articles popped up on the internet at prisonerlife.com and other sites.

The Abuser legend was snowballing.

Then came the French TV proposals and the movie interest from a Hollywood producer. Crazy hype for a prison basketball gangsta. But the media recognize a star and the best is yet to come. The Abuser gets out in 2005. he'll be down at Rucker park or maybe he'll even go for that European contract. The Andone tour is also a definite possibility. You never know. So when the movie comes out and The Abuser in dropping 30 in Spain don't be jumping on the bandwagon. Remember you hear it hear first. The Abuser. A straight basketball gangsta. Ain't no faking it.

Seth M. Ferranti's book Prison Stories comes out this fall.