Locals On Fox Sports 1

    Several former local athletes will begin their stints at the new national sports channel Fox Sports 1 on Saturday. It will include basketball player Gary Payton as an NBA expert and tennis player Andy Roddick as a professional tennis expert.
    Payton, known as The Glove, played 17 years in the NBA and missed only 25 games. He had a long tenure of 13 seasons with the Seattle Supersonics from 1990 until 2003 and led them to a Western Conference title in 1996. They lost in six games to the Chicago Bulls in the NBA Finals. He was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks for Ray Allen and was with them for 28 games to end the 2002-03 season.
    He signed as a free agent with the Los Angeles Lakers for the 2003-04 season where he joined Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and Karl Malone. The team made up of all-stars and future basketball hall-of-famers won the Western Conference title, but they were upset by the Detroit Pistons during the 2004 NBA Finals in five games.
    After a brief stop with the Boston Celtics and the Atlanta Hawks in 2004-05, he joined the Miami Heat for the last two years of his NBA career. He finally captured an NBA championship in the 2005-06 season with Shaquille O'Neal and Dwyane Wade as they beat the Dallas Mavericks in six games.
    Roddick grew up in Boca Raton and graduated from Boca Prep International School in 2000. He would win 32 singles titles in his 12-year career and was ranked the number-one player in the world back in 2003. He won his only Grand Slam major tournament in September 2003 as he picked up the U.S. Open Championship over Juan Carlos Ferrero at Flushing Meadows, New York. He is the last American male to capture a Grand Slam major singles title.