(Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Monday, 7/20/2009
It seems shameful to admit that I had never been to the Deveroes Summer Basketball League until yesterday, but it’s true.
All I’d been missing every summer at Woodward High School, is a three-dollar sneak-peek at Cincinnati’s best hoopsters playing on different teams with different coaches, learning to adjust to new roles and new referees, and, perhaps more importantly, trying not to get dunked on.
The level of competition is slightly better than I suspected. The big names playing at the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University obviously showcase the event, but it’s the obscure players that climb out of the woodwork and light up the scoreboard that make the league legitimate.
I was also surprised at the extent of the season; 10 teams play a nine-game season, and the top eight teams play in a single-loss tournament. College coaches are not allowed to attend the games, so players like Yancy Gates can fire up three-pointers all they want without worrying about being benched and screamed at for a week.
Yancy spent the day hovering around the outside, testing his range without success. No one said a word about it.
Live action.
Former Xavier legend, Jamal Walker is the MC for the event, and although he at times nearly damages his microphone from his vocal enthusiasm on breakaway dunks and big three-pointers, the man is pure comedy who could eventually make Dick Cheney crack a smile.
He was fantastic with his nicknames (Steven Toyloy was “Muscles”, Jamal Warren was “Grimey”, Sean Kilpatrick was “Killa”) and impressed me with his anecdotal tidbits about each player. He called the game well, and would at times do something else entirely, leaving the spectator to silently take in the moving poetry of the game on their own.
However, when he did eventually return to his post as public announcer, he began with, “Live action” every time, and resumed his play-by-play hilarity. The basketball makes the event, but laughing at Jamal all day is worth the three bucks to get in.
Teams are named after their sponsor which results in intriguing match-ups like Superior Cars.com versus S.I. Pool Care. Each team wears a different color of the same t-shirt which features Wolverine brandishing his metallic claws and has a dialogue bubble that reads, “Come get some Bud!”.
It seems the designer of the shirt overlooked the facts that Wolverine typically refers to his villains as “Bub”, and that a comma is necessary to indicate that he is calling someone Bud. Luckily, the confusion did not cause hordes of shaggy people to turn up hoping to procure available Wolverine bud.
Live action.
New Xavier sensation, Jordan Crawford, showed up for the season finale and dropped an effortless 31 points in 28 minutes, including a ferocious dunk on another XU newcomer, Jeff Robinson. Crawford’s style is mellow and controlled, but freakishly athletic and all-in-all deadly; players like Glen Robinson and James Harden spring to mind as comparisons.
He doesn’t appear to have a smooth, natural shooting stroke, but at the same time, he went three for six from three, highlighted by a deep fade-away as the shot-clock ran out.
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