Born at Sibley Hospital in Washington, D.C. and given up for adoption at birth, Ian McCarthy grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland — right on the D.C. line along Western Avenue. Every summer, his family escaped to Nantucket Island. He attended Gonzaga College High School, the prestigious Jesuit prep school where he first fell in love with basketball watching the #1-ranked team in the nation.

From Georgetown basketball camp as a teenager, to pickup games at the University of Maryland, to a business degree from Champlain College in Vermont — basketball was always the through-line. He married his wife Tiffany, built careers in accounting and landscaping on Cape Cod, and raised two sons, Payton and Connor. Then, without any of the standard prerequisites, he launched a professional basketball team.

He was named General Manager of the Year, signed everyone from NBA veterans like Jamario Moon to YouTube sensation Aquille Carr, and navigated the wild world of startup professional basketball. Now he’s telling the whole story in a multi-part book series that starts where it all began — as a 15-year-old kid booing Paul Mokeski at the Capital Centre, never imagining he’d one day co-found a league where Mokeski would coach.