NBA player charities are not models of efficiency.
To draw a parallel, imagine Shaq stepping up to the charity stripe for a pair of freebies (horrible pun, I know). For every free throw that goes in the basket, another one to one-and-a-half caroms off the iron awkwardly.
Now substitute round balls for square bills. Result? Not the best way to redistribute resources for the needy.
The thought is noble, but the results are anything but...
"They face a wide range of problems, from meager funding and high administrative costs to a lack of professional staffing and oversight. Tax records indicate these 89 charities together raised at least $31 million between 2005 and 2007, but only about $14 million of that actually reached the needy causes."
Bethlehem Shoals is the pen name of Nathaniel Friedman, a popular American journalist and sports blogger, specializing in U.S. and international basketball. He covers the NBA as the primary contributor to the blog Free Darko, which he co-founded in 2005. Additionally, Shoals has written regularly on the NBA for the following notable publications: the website of the literary journal McSweeney's; AOL Fanhouse and Deadspin, the world's two most trafficked sports blog sites; and the online edition of SLAM Magazine, among others. Shoals has recently begun contributing, alongside Dan Shanoff, to The Sporting Blog, part of Sporting News (Wikipedia bio).
Before we get into the book, I have a quick question about the early history of Free Darko. While digging into the archives of your site, I noticed your first post was published on 1/1/05. Was this a calculated move or the improvising effects of NYE alcohol?
We actually started the blog in February, but that post—the second, I think—ended up dated 1/1 because of our incompetence at the time. We ended up keeping it there so it kept as much of a Plymouth Rock feel to it.
Your 4th anniversary on the WWW is upon us. Are there any special plans to commemorate the experience, in addition to book? Perhaps a silk FD leisure suit added to the online store?
These anniversaries keep sneaking up on us. If anything, this year I'm thinking we should shut the site down for the occasion, or go into hibernation. If society/sports/art cycle through a generation every five years, than we're just about irrelevant. Why not go out with some of our dignity intact? I'm sorry, I'm still adjusting to the fact that Devin Harris is a superstar.
I would say "we'll make an FD anniversry hoodie," but really, for how many people does that anniversary really mean anything? So it's more an internal issue or pressure.
Tell us a little bit about the FD team and your collective vision for the book. How did you tackle the project using your complementary skill sets?
At the risk of stroking my own ego, I'm kind of the brains/ego/visionary behind the whole operation, and I write and edit a bunch. Big Baby Belafonte does all the art and design. Silverbird5000 handles graphs and stats. Dr. Lawyer IndianChief and Brown Recluse, Esq. do writing. How we work together depends on what we're doing. There are almost always some general discussions about format between BBB, myself, and anyone else involved. But mostly it's a lot of trickle-down, or trickle-sideways, collaboration, with hijacking and interference kept to a minimum once a direction's been decided.
Gilbert Arenas was rightfully included in the chapter titled 'Uncanny Peacocks.' He was also selected to pen the foreward to the book. Is there any Lord of the Flies symbolism here? How was Agent Zero chosen amongst the collective cast of NBA characters?
Arenas has always been the patron saint, or muse, or chief model, for FreeDarko, in the same way that the 2004-05 Suns or 2006-07 Warriors are for teams. He's far from perfect, and hasn't played in ages, but when he was on, no one came close to his ability to be weird and unique on and off the court while still being an extremel productive player. He made the whole team, maybe even the whole league, change their perspective just a little.
I swear that Kareem's jacket - "the jacket" - recently turned up in our Columbia University coat drive. Some lucky homeless person will soon receive this fringed benefit. Describe the inherent benefits of picking up a copy of the Macrophenomenal?
Wait, are you serious? I would love to own that thing, or make it the cornerstone of a museum. I would say that the inherent benefits of buying the book would be similar to those of having looked at photos of THE JACKET repeatedly, hoped to find more of them out there, and written at least 1,000 words in your head about what this garment means to Kareem and Andrew Bynum's development. Also you can help keep our Amazon ranking up, which is really all I have left in this world.
Was I disappointed? Of course. But, Deron's departure is not reason enough to abandon the trendy micro-blogging platform. In fact, there are a bunch of basketball heads using the social networking tool to add value to the greater hoops community.
Here are the 10 people in the basketball circle whose tweets you should be following:
Aghhh, holiday break. The perfect excuse to catch up on leisure reading.
My book of choice has been The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, by John Battelle.
As a newbie to the 'world of blogging' (I refuse to use that other word), I thought it would serve me well to learn more about the topic of search. And so far, it has...with a surprise twist.
Little did I know, Yahoo's founders, Jerry Yang and David Filo, fell upon the concept of web crawling while participating in a fantasy basketball league. The competitive pair actually:
"hacked up an Internet crawler that pulled data from basketball sites via protocols like FTP and Gopher--at the time, the Mosaic browser had not burst onto the scene, and the World Wide Web was still an academic experiment (early 1990s). Filo then compiled the data--statistics on players' performance, trade information, and the like--and together the duo analyzed it to determine their picks. They ended up winning the league."
I'm wondering if they could help me regain credibility in my NBA Stock Exchange league?
"Kevin Laue, 18, was a 6-foot-10-inch college basketball prospect from California who was born with a left arm that ended at the elbow. He had recently enrolled at Fork Union Military Academy, about 50 miles from Richmond, in hopes of being noticed by an Ivy League team, but not for the reason he was most often noticed."
As a kid, the anticipation of Christmas is focused on presents; waking up at the crack of day to tear through wrapping paper in hopes that that your annual wish list becomes concrete.
As you age and grow less selfish, the holiday's emphasis shifts more towards presence--of family, friends and other loved ones.
Texas Longhorns Junior Damion James could attest to this fact.
Hom⋅o⋅phone: "Two or more words that are pronounced the same but differ in meaning, origin, and often spelling" (about.com).
Example: The beat, Thabeet, and The Beet.
Okay, I know I'm stretching the definition here; but just play along, will you?
The beat is relevant nomenclature to disc jockeys, rookie cops, and dancers alike. For the sake of our conversation, we're going to intentionally bench this inanimate noun and focus on two living, breathing characters. And I emphasize that lattermost word pointedly.
Onto our polling subjects:
(Hasheem) Thabeet is a 7"3" Junior center for the UConn Huskies that has NBA lottery pick potential written all over him. Thabeet hails from the United Republic of Tanzania and possesses a wingspan that would spark envy in a wandering albatross. While most of the gangly giant's celebrity has been created in the rectangular box where he alters shots like a Photoshop specialist, Thabeet's off-the-court personality is front page material. Do you recall his assertion in The Mag's season preview: “I played Luke Harangody and he was not tough. Tyler Hansbrough? I don’t see nothing.” Thabeet is pure entertainment.
Finally, there's The Beet (origins unknown); a Howard Stern Show fixture that spouts impetous and unrelenting banter at all comers. He might not make an effective post presence, but the man singlehandedly made Bubble Boy and Scary Movie 2 both watchable. Not a tall enough feat for you? The Beet has also laid down vocals for a Smut Peddlers album, has been covered by the rock band Staind, and he charges $20 for a personal phone call through his website, jolly dwarf. When The Beat goes on, you will scratch your head and pat your tummy simulaneously...from utter confusion and sheer laughter that directly hits the breadbasket.
Now it's time to cast your vote. Who do you prefer?
If you stopped by the EBC site recently, you probably noticed (1) a lengthy Chris Brown introduction and (2) that we're still under construction. While our webmaster continues to develop the finished product, we'd like to aware you of a special event that we're producing at MSG to kick off the '09 summer.
As you may know, Chris Brown owned a team in the '08 EBC men's tournament. He even made a guest appearance on the court during his teams' playoff run. Well, Chris liked the experience so much that he asked us to coordinate a special celebrity birthday game at The World's Most Famous on May 9th.
Complete details - including time, ticket costs, and team rosters - will be released later. In the meantime, please save the date.
I'm always intrigued when I come across a person or group of people that use basketball as a lever for affecting positive change...especially when it works. For that simple reason, I'd like to share with you an MSNBC article about Rob and Amy Casteneda, founders of Beyond the Ball, a Chicago non-profit that brings rival gangs together on the basketball court.
After echoing the inspiring story of Scott Odom, I decided to reach out to the young man to learn more about him and the mission of Amp 1—an awareness movement and developing brand, deriving its name off the word play of an edgy basketball shoe company (And 1) and the sobriquet for an amputee.
Scott, talk to us about your diagnosis and the tough decision to amputate your leg.
On my first day of high school I was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a malignant bone cancer. I had been having chronic knee problems for about four years leading up to that day and several trips to the doctor produced diagnoses of over activity and growing pains. These diagnoses, of course, were made without the aid of an X-ray.
When the tumors were discovered I underwent chemotherapy treatment for two months. Unfortunately, the tumors continued to spread up my leg and consequently forced me to make a tough decision. I could have chosen to surgically replace the bones with metal rods, thus salvaging the limbs; however, as I grew taller this approach would require numerous surgeries.
The alternative solution was to amputate the leg above the knee. As you could imagine, I was experiencing all of these different emotions while making this decision. As an aspiring athlete, I just wanted to get back on the field and court as soon as possible. I ultimately decided to go through with the amputation.
After surgery, it took a good year with a cane and intense physical and occupational therapy to just regain my balance, let alone start running and playing sports actively. When I first put the prosthetic on, I couldn’t pivot or do most things that playing competitive basketball would require. But, I did make sure to work on my jump shot so I wouldn’t lose it.
When did you start participating in high school sports again?
During the spring of my sophomore year I made our high school’s baseball team. I played three years of high school baseball.
What was your fondest memory playing baseball?
The highlight of my prep career was striking out 11 batters in one game as a junior.
And your most challenging moment as an athlete?
During my senior season, we had an entirely new coaching staff and I didn’t see much action on the field at all. We lost most of our games that year. I was working hard in practice every day, but it didn’t translate to spending time on the field. I knew it was because of my leg and they were judging me on that. So with two games left in the season, I approached our coach to speak about my frustration. He ended up selecting me as the starter for our last game of the season. I honestly struggled that game, but the opposing team took things a little bit too far. They had the audacity to bunt four times in a row in an attempt to take advantage of me having to run in toward home plate. Anyway, I didn’t play well at all and I came to the realization that I would not be taking my game to a higher level.
Tell us about your passion for basketball.
I’ve always loved basketball. After high school, I took a year off because I went through so much in such a short time. I asked my prosthetic doctor what was out there in the sports world for amputees. He informed me of the Paralympic Games. I initially decided to pursue the Games, trained for a month and then had a change of plans. I respected what the athletes did, but in my heart of hearts it wasn’t for me.
Basketball in the Paralympics is played in a wheelchair, which is great—but I can run standing up. I asked the organization’s officials if there were any stand up basketball leagues out there for me and they all said “No. It’s too hard to start.”
It sounds like you found a void needed to be filled.
Exactly. I even tried contacting the manufacturers of prosthetic legs that advertised their products as “safe for basketball.” They also pointed out the wheelchair leagues. In my mind that doesn’t make sense. If the prosthetic allows you play basketball standing up, why would I play in a wheelchair, in a seated position, where I’m not even using my legs?
You’re spot on. How did you start Amp 1?
As a cancer survivor, I knew that I could bring hope to people and spread the idea of stand up basketball for amputees. With that idea in mind, I started filming myself playing basketball and put it on YouTube. I even posted videos playing against able-bodied athletes to promote the fact that I’m doing what I love to do and that I could compete at a high level.
As you pointed out in your last post, the mission of Amp 1 is to “provide financial relief of medical bills for cancer patients and amputees in need. In addition we provide a new outlet for amputee athletes to have the same competitive freedoms as able-bodied individuals. We feel that amputee athletes should have the same opportunities as others. The vision of Amp 1 is for amputees to be viewed not by their disability, but their capability. Along with these goals we hope to inspire and encourage others in difficult times of their lives.”
How do you plan on carrying out this powerful mission?
Next month, I will be meeting with 6 or 7 other amputee basketball players in San Diego. We’ve been talking on the phone a lot and we’re now set to meet to get some professional footage of us playing to share online with the world. Through sponsorships, we plan to tour the country to play charity basketball games to raise additional funds for financial support.
The goal is to be seen playing basketball at a high and intense level. We want to showcase the best of the best among amputee athletes. Raising money for charity is important; we also want our tour to become mainstream and viewed on professional level, just as other professional basketball tours are seen. We do not want to be perceived as the "nice guys," if that makes sense. Yes, we want to inspire and motivate amputees, but we work just as hard and deserve the same opportunities as able-bodied athletes.
The guys I have recruited to play with me are the most self-driven and motivated people that I know. We are out to prove a point. We know that we have to work 100 times harder to been seen in that light of an able-bodied athlete. We are out to get respect, have those same opportunities that they have and we are going to break down that door if it won't open.
Funds for Amp 1 will be raised by, but not limited to, ticket sales, Amp 1 merchandise, donations, and fundraisers. While visiting a city, we also plan to visit clinics and hospitals to help raise spirits, educate and bring awareness.
Our first big gig is in June of ’09 at the Endeavor Games in Oklahoma. While wheelchair basketball will be the featured sport, we will be given gymnasium access to provide an exhibition of standup amputee basketball. There will be 400 amputee athletes present at those Games. Hopefully, after that newfound visibility and our continued internet campaign, this tour will become a reality.
Forget Spider, Hot Sauce, and The Professor; Scott Odom and company will soon be barnstorming near you!
Dick Vitale - love him or hate him - feeds off the infectious energy that the college game exudes, especially when calling the shots for his beloved Dookies.
But, a Heat and Nuggets showdown?
It looks like Wife Swap's ugly side effects are trickling down into the hoops world. The NYT published this AP news brief:
"ESPN’s N.B.A. and college basketball commentators will switch roles during a Jan. 7 doubleheader. Mike Tirico and the analysts Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy will call Davidson at Duke at 7 p.m. Eastern, followed by Dan Shulman and Dick Vitale providing commentary when the Denver Nuggets host the Miami Heat at 9 p.m. “It’s been over two decades since I’ve worked an N.B.A. game, but basketball is basketball at all levels and a free throw is still worth a point,” Vitale said."
I may be a bit biased toward the college game, but the NBA trio is clearly getting a better deal out of this situation: Steph Curry at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Thanks to my good friendJoseph Finley (Hamilton '03), I was able to connect with Michael Evans,a venerable young man who once torched RPI for nine threes in a single contest and later co-founded the life changing not-for-profit, Full Court Peace.
Evans grew up in Weston, Connecticut and attended Hamilton College until graduating in 2005. While at Hamilton, Evans played in two NCAA tournaments, reaching the Sweet 16 in 2003, under legendary coach Tom Murphy. He moved to Belfast after graduation, and worked in several of Belfast’s most segregated communities for two years. Today, he lives in Connecticut, but travels often to Northern Ireland.
As a basketball player at Hamilton College, you were well known for your ability to successfully connect from long distances. It seems that this basketball metaphor is still holding true in your professional life. Tell us a bit about the organization you founded - Full Court Peace - and how it serves the youth of Northern Ireland?
Full Court Peace is a registered nonprofit organization that uses team basketball to cultivate and inspire enduring friendships between teenagers from rivaling communities in war-torn regions of the world.
Currently, we're working in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where basketball is the only sport that doesn't have an affinity to either the Catholic or Protestant religion.
Before I get into what exactly we do, allow me to paint a quick picture of Belfast. It's totally ripped apart. The Troubles, or the thirty-year war that "ended" in 1998, has left the entire city split down the middle according to the two forms of Christianity. Schools, bars, pubs, stores, streets, sidewalks and more are labeled one or the other. There are "Peace Lines," which were erected in the 1970's that stand 50 feet high and run for miles, solely to keep rivaling neighborhoods apart.
Sports are segregated, too; Catholics play Gaelic football and hurling, while Protestants play rugby and cricket. Soccer, or "football," while played by both sides, is far too contentious, in that even professional teams in Northern Ireland get labeled based on their geographical location in the city.
Basically, we form travel basketball teams from select members of high schools that are located on opposite sides of these large, physical dividing walls that keep Protestants and Catholics apart in Belfast. Typically, our players are at-risk, male teens that live in lower-socioeconomic conditions and neighborhoods where sectarianism thrives.
These teams practice twice and play one game per week. Our practices are competitive, fun and very serious, so as to ensure a hardcore and unforgettable integration for the two rivaling groups. We believe the formation of a team is the ultimate way to open a teenagers mind and to shape him into being a leader in his community.
What inspired you to get this project off the ground?
I co-founded Full Court Peace with ESPN ESPY winner, Dave Cullen, recipient of the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage. Dave, a native of Belfast, is a Catholic, who is married to a Protestant and who has dedicated many years of his life using basketball to unite youth in his home city.
In 2005, I coached basketball in elementary schools in Belfast, bringing groups of Protestant and Catholic children together for only weeks at a time, and teaching them the fundamentals of the game. But, I saw very few results that age group, and didn't get the sense that any friendships were being formed. Hence, my desire to move to an older age group and to change up the formula a little bit.
In 2006, I returned to Belfast with a plan. I coached basketball in two intensely segregated high schools, which would make the Duke/UNC rivalry and the Bird/Rambis fight look like episodes of the Golden Girls.
Eventually, through a lot of convincing and controversy, I was able to unite two groups of 16-year old boys from each school to form one travel team. After several months of practice and games and their year-end trip to New York, the at-risk boys, who had expressed much sectarianism to me before, showed sincere, undeniable signs of friendship with players of the opposite religion. It was literally like a Disney story happening in front of me, and I knew it could be replicated elsewhere.
I heard you just got back from a trip to Belfast. Tell us how it went.
It's amazing to return to Belfast and see how much progress Full Court Peace has made. Our two coaches, TJ Reynolds and Colin Powers, both natives of New York's Westchester County, have done an unbelievable job in organizing and running the program over there. Of course, they couldn't be doing it so well without the guidance of Dave Cullen, and our newly appointed Principal Benefactor, John Toland, a Belfast native. Finally, they've been getting some great local help from Dave Tierney, a basketball player from Belfast who provides the necessary smile when practices get rough, and who possesses an unlimited amount of knowledge about the conflict and its current status.
I watched TJ and Colin work separately in all four high schools that we are currently working in. At each location, they had supreme command over the kids in that each kid looked up to the positive example and excellent basketball instruction that is being provided to them. These kids rarely even show up for school. Now, they know in order to practice for the team, they have to attend classes. It's really unbelievable to watch.
Colin and TJ are showing these kids loyalty and the kids are reciprocating in a big way. My biggest highlight of the trip was to see the integration of a new FCP team. I watched as the select group of Catholic boys walked into a Protestant neighborhood, school and gym all for the first time. They were timid, yet you could feel their excitement. The gym was quiet at first as Colin led them through drills and maintained a loud, commanding voice the entire time. When he finally had them playing in a scrimmage, it was amazing to hear the boys start to shout and even slap each other five. TJ and Colin plan to integrate another team in early January. I wish I could go and see that.
How active and cooperative have the players' parents been since you started bringing the children together? Have any relationships been forged across rival communities with the parents?
Just to be sure here, we don't work with children. In fact, we are sure that our players are at least 14 years old when they join our teams. Our theory is that the teenage males from the neighborhoods in Belfast where we work are neglected in many ways and have both very few male role models in their lives and few social outlets. In addition to lacking role models, some of our players come from homes where they govern themselves. This could be a result of a broken home, or merely because their parents are forced to work several jobs. That being the case, we have received little to no interruption from parents, but also very little feedback at all.
In 2006, at a fundraiser for the first Integrated Team under Full Court Peace, the Belfast Blazers, parents from both sides of the communities attended a team fundraiser together; however, it's difficult for us to say whether or not those parents remain in touch today.
In 2009, your integrated travel teams are planning to hop over the pond to New York and Connecticut. This should be a great opportunity to strengthen the bonds that are developing between the players.
This is truly the culmination of the teams' bonding experiences. In Belfast, our players can only interact with each other while they are on the court and under their coaches’ guidance. When they return home to their segregated neighborhoods, we sometimes worry that the messages they hear and see at home could rival the message we're trying to send. Here in America, and especially in New York City, though, we accept everyone and we live in harmony; a fact many tend to overlook. During the trip, the players will stay paired up, one Catholic and one Protestant in host family homes in Connecticut. They'll try new food together, meet new people together, share a room and relax together, among other things. In Belfast, they claim they have vastly different accents from one another, despite living only miles apart. But in Connecticut, they're all equally hard to understand, which puts them in a mutual situation of comical awkwardness.
In terms of hoops, these kids are going to be at a disadvantage together as they play American teams. Basketball is our sport; our kids learn to play when they're very young. Many players on the FCP Integrated Teams have only been playing for nine months. But, we know our kids will work hard together to play competitively - that's the essence of a team.
So, in sport and in culture, the U.S. provides a sharp opportunity for FCP to seal the deal in terms of achieving our mission.
What's your vision for Full Court Peace? What does ultimate success look like?
Everyday my vision changes to a more vast and dream-like picture. But, I'll tame it down to reality for moment. In Belfast, Full Court Peace aims to set up the Integrated Teams League, which prospectively would include 8 teams, made up of 16 schools (8 Catholic, 8 Protestant). Given this cap on our numbers, we know we can be consistently successful with our mission in this location. We do want our annual tournament in New York City (which will take place in July) to grow and to include a diverse array of teams. Once these goals are achieved, we'd like to expand onto another region or county, and we have major contacts in Colombia and Beirut, Lebanon.
After a necessary leg amputation 11 years ago, the twenty-five year old Texan is making ACL surgery seem so passe. When society norms point amputated athletes toward a wheel chair to compete in basketball, Scott crosses over and takes the system in a different direction...upright and standing.
As reported by CBS11tv.com, Scott "is starting his own stand up basketball team and is recruiting players on the internet." His organization "Amp 1," seeks to "help provide financial relief of medical bills for cancer patients and amputees in need. In addition, they provide a new outlet for amputee athletes to have the same competitive freedoms as able bodied individuals."
Check out the article and site for complete details. Scott cannot be contained.
Some well-to-do chap just doled out $114,000 to acquire Michael Jordan's sophomore year ('83) road threads at a Grey Flannel auction held at the Naismith International Basketball HOF.
And 1983 was the year after the rangy freshman sank a 17-footer that befuddled Fred Brown into relinquishing any opportunity for a last second Hoya redemption.
Soccer is sincerely not our thing, never has been and never will be. We're better off conceding to that fact and just letting it go.
But the other roundball game that aims for an overhead net, that we can claim some level of achievement for on a global scale.
The popularity of the sport has grown exponentially since the Dream Team laced them up in the '92 Barcelona games. We all know that the world has caught up to us in the talent department and no longer wilts over in awe of our overly marketed superstars; hence the Redeem Team moniker attached to our latest Olympians.
In any event, basketball in the U.S. now has support from the top...well above Stern's grayed dome. We all know Obama's penchant for playing on election days, but how about his administrative draft picks? It looks like the only things missing here are a David Stern introduction and an international tournament for political administrations.
While blatantly obvious, I never really pondered the lack of Asians playing D-1 college basketball. That was until I read this piece in the SFgate.
Before you check out the table below, consider this fact from the article: "Of 4,814 Division I men's basketball players in 2006-07, there were 19 Asian Americans (including Pacific Islanders and ethnically mixed), according to the most recent NCAA Student-Athlete Race and Ethnicity Report. That's 0.4 percent."
For better or for worse, CBS launched it's college basketball season yesterday - a Memphis vs. Georgetown showdown - without Billy Packer leading the analysis. CBS' face of college basketball for the last 34 years was replaced by Clark Kellogg, a much less domineering personality with on-the-court credentials (HS & College All-American).
Cleveland.com put together a nice tribute for "The Chosen One." If it's too long for you, just take a look at Kellogg's witty food analogies that add spice to his technical knowledge of the game:
"He's like Chinese food. He's good, but you want more." Or, "He's versatile like a potato. You can get him baked or fried, mashed or hashed." Or a player who contributes is a pizza-like "stat-sheet stuffer," but a player who can do it all is a "stat-sheet stuffer supreme."
In 2007, the NBA established a brick-and-mortar office in "The Old Smoke." Now, there's increased conversation around the possibility of launching an NBA franchise in British capital of London. The Washington Post reports on the League's plan to leverage the 2012 Olympic Games as a way to cull interest in the third most popular round-balled game (yes, cricket prevails here) in the country.
As far as the Commish is concerned, "The UK is one of the most important markets in the world. So we're out there. I think the NBA, coming out of 2012, is going to take a huge leap with the recognition of our game." The Brits haven't participated in an Olympics hoops tournament in over 60 years, so I'll be excited to see how the host fans receive the game.
The Wizards could certainly use an Eastern Conference expansion team right about now to cast an 'L' on. But, just like the NFL's dabbling with European expansion, even that's not a guarantee.
(Howard Garfinkel, Mike Fratello, Will Klein, Leigh Klein)
For the past fourteen years, Leigh Klein has been responsible for the development of the world’s leading basketball instructional brand, Five-Star Basketball Camp. He has served as President of the Five-Star Basketball Camp for the past four years.
Coach Klein has directed Five-Star’s Instructional Video/DVD Series and has edited five books.
He cofounded the Five-Star Foundation where he remains the Vice-President. The Five-Star Foundation has provided life skills and basketball instruction through the Five-Star Development Program to more than 2500 participants. The Five-Star Foundation has provided the opportunity to attend summer camp to financially disadvantaged students from twenty-eight states in excess of $100,000 in grant assistance.
He started Five-Star International in 1994 and has taken the same Five-Star program and techniques abroad having run events across the globe working with more than 4,000 players and coaches. Coach Klein has consulted for numerous basketball facilities and organizations, e.g., IMG Academies and the Turkish Basketball Federation. Coach Klein is on the selection committee of the Washington DC Basketball Hall of Fame. Coach Klein is on the advisory board for the Latino Coaching Association and GBOA (Grass Roots Basketball Organization of America).
Coach Klein, Give us a high level overview of the history of Five-Star Basketball Camp.
Five-Star Basketball Camp was founded in the summer of 1966. At the time, my father Will Klein was a teacher and coach (JV Head Coach/Varsity Asst.) at Columbus High School in NYC along with Roy Rubin (Varsity Head Coach). While spending a typical summer upstate as a head camp counselor, my dad asked the owner if he could rent the premise for a week after camp had ended to invite his players up to work on their games and to get a head start on the season. Back in those days, there wasn’t any structured basketball in the off-season.
After a few phone calls, the owner of the camp was able to secure usage of Camp Orin Sekwa in Niverville, NY, for a week. This is where the first Five-Star Basketball Camp was held.
Roy Rubin suggested that they should enlist the support of an up-and-coming talent evaluator, better known in those days as a “bird dogger,” Howard Garfinkel. Garfinkel apparently knew everybody in the hoops world and he was just starting his HSBI service at the time. In his write-ups Garfinkel would rate high school players on a scale of one to five stars, with five stars being the highest—an on the court equivalent of a Division 1 starter/impact player. That’s how the name Five-Star was born.
What about those bright orange shirts?
Garfinkel had spent a year as a student at Syracuse University and he brought the bright orange idea back with him.
Out of the 61 original campers, Hubie Brown brought 29 of them; and two of those 61 went on to play in the NBA. The Most Outstanding Player that first year was Ronnie Johnson from Van Buren High School. Ronnie was one of the best players to ever come out of NYC, but was unfortunately caught in a hold-up situation and was shot several times. He was supposed to go play for Gardner Webb University in North Carolina.
I remember hearing Ronnie’s lecture at camp and the importance of staying on the right track. That’s a shame. Who were some of the original coaches at Five-Star?
There was Hubie Brown, Chuck Daly and Danny Buckley (LaSalle Academy). Bob Knight came on board in our third year after Roy Rubin accepted a head coaching position at LIU.
It was Bob Knight (then head coach at West Point) that implemented “stations” at Five-Star. Stations have since been adopted by almost every basketball camp around the globe.
Hubie Brown also brought along Mike Fratello, who was an assistant basketball and football coach at Hackensack HS in New Jersey back in the late ‘60s.
That sounds like the “Who’s who list in the basketball coaching fraternity. Tell us a bit about the top players that have come through Five-Star’s doors.
Moses Malone was easily the most dominant player at Five-Star for the first thirty years of camp. He was literally a man amongst boys and he proved it by jumping straight to the pros (ABA first and then the NBA). He went on to have a Hall of Fame career.
Many greats have attended Five-Star: Dominique Wilkins, Isiah Thomas, Patrick Ewing…the list goes on.
One of the great stories, of course, is about Michael Jordan. When Jordan came to Five-Star in 1980 as a rising senior, nobody outside of Roy Williams knew much about him. He wasn’t on anybody’s top 100 list that summer.
As you know, Five-Star coaches conduct a player draft on the opening night of camp. Well, Brendan Malone was a coach that week and he happened to be running late in getting to camp. Malone decided to call in and provide strict draft instructions in his absence: “You have to select Aubrey Sherrod for me (a future McDonald’s All-American and star at Wichita State).”
Filling in for Malone that night was Tom Konchalski, the renowned talent evaluator and current owner of the HSBI Report. Tom decided to ignore Malone’s request and he drafted an unknown guy by the name of Mike Jordan from Wilmington, NC.
Jordan quickly rose from obscurity and became a full-fledged star at the camp and that was during a highly competitive week. By the second night, Garfinkel called Dave Krider from Street & Smith’s and declared that he had the #1 player in the country at his camp.
Unbelievable. And how would you describe the youth basketball landscape and Five-Star today?
Unlike back then, exposure is not a difficult thing to come by today. If you have talent, people will know about you. It’s tough for kids today. At every event a player’s reputation is on the line. If someone’s weakness is exposed in a game or a drill, it will be written about negatively somewhere in the paper or on the internet.
This is one of the biggest challenges for basketball today. Players are under such intense scrutiny that the pressure hinders their development. These are just kids. They need to understand that it’s okay not to be great at everything. And they shouldn’t be afraid to work on in their weaknesses.
Five-Star is one of the last places you can go to really get better. Not only will you face excellent competition, you will receive quality instruction and you can incorporate something to your game.
It’s also a great place for coaches to develop their skills and build their network. Guys like Pitino, Calapari, Donovan and Hewitt all started out here.
We’ve grown quite a bit from the four or five sessions that we used to host each summer. We are no longer just a northeast regionally-located camp. We now have camps in Florida, Chicago, Texas, California and New Orleans.
When did you start working full-time with Five-Star and what big changes have you made?
I’ve been around the camp since I was in a carriage. I helped run the office throughout my high school years. In college, I was a student-assistant coach at URI and UT-Austin and I came back home after graduation and took a job with GMAC.
In 1994, I started to run all of the day-to-day operations as the CEO of Five-Star and in 2006, I bought Howard Garfinkel’s stake in the business and took an ownership position.
My largest contribution to the Five-Star legacy has been the addition of the Five-Star Foundation. This not-for-profit entity strives to make Five-Star more community-minded and focuses on three things:
Grant Assistance - Provide financially needy youth with grant assistance to attend camp.
Youth Development Clinics - Provides participants an opportunity to learn fundamentals of basketball and life.
Community Coaching Clinics - Clinics are provided to area organizations that help youth coaches learn the fundamentals and principles of coaching.
I’ve also launched Five-Star internationally by running camps in Turkey, China, Serbia and Italy. Additionally, I have started related programs such as the Five-Star Coaching Academy and the Five-Star Broadcasting Program.
It was only a matter of time...and conference choice.
If you had access to an internet connection last March, then you also had the liberty to stream between the scope of live NCAA tourney games on CBSSports.com.
Well, life just got even better.
Marketwatch shared a CBS Sports press release this morning announcing that select games from the 2008-09 SEC College Basketball schedule will stream live on CBSSports.com.
The NBA has seen 3-D before. Do you recall the goateed-gunner who would line up three balls as neatly as his Magic pinstripes?
While many have witnessed D-Scott's long range launches on a two dimensional (and grainy) tube back in the day, nobody - outside of a selective few Sternbots - has seen the NBA in 3-D before.
Want to be romantic, historical and get your hoops fix all in one night?
Take your lady (or whatever your fancy) to the "slam dunk contest, three-point shooting contest and skills challenge in a three-dimensional format at one of 80 movie theaters around the country on February 14th."
Remember playing in those AAU tournaments against the high flying 14- and-under teams with advanced facial hair?
Suspect? You bet.
There's news out of China that a similar practice of "age shaving" is permeating and plaguing youth basketball in the state-run sports system. With the goal of "bringing their coaches glory, trophies and funding," 36 Chinese basketball players were found guilty of falsifying their ages to play against (and dominate) their younger peers.
Just look at all of the good publicity that Ken Mink is getting for certifying his accurate age on the court. Then again, shaving his age would jeopardize his Medicare. Poor comparison.
The lure of complaining after a bimodal commute home on a cold, darkened December Tuesday seems particularly inviting; but, when I flipped on the HD-tube tonight to watch the Jimmy V Classic doubleheader, I was quickly reminded how inconsiderable my temptations were.
Jimmy V's indelible '93 ESPY speech is a cure to any maligned perspective:
While on the topic of cures, we all well know that cancer has not yet been eliminated. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial that we continue to fund research to find cures for cancer. Lest you forget Jimmy's closing words, "It may not save my life. It may save my children's lives. It may save someone you love."
Click here to go directly to the Jimmy V Foundation website.
I recently had the opportunity to correspond with Gabriel Zippenfenig, Manager of the Face Team Show based out of Budapest, Hungary. The Face Team Show provides a very unique and innovative display of basketball and acrobatic talent. If you want to talk about taking dunking to new heights or ball handling to new depths, get a hold of these guys (and lady). The Face Team Show currently performs all around Europe and is seeking to take their act to the States in '09. The videos below bring Gabriel's words to life.
Gabriel, tell us a little bit about the Face Team Show. How did you assemble such a talented mix of acrodunkers (acrobatic dunkers) to form a team?
Face Team was founded in January 2004 by Aron Takacs in Tata, Hungary after he won the Hungarian "Nike It's Right Freestyle" contest. The first performance was at Aron's high school after the headmaster asked him to perform. He did not want to perform alone, so he invited his friends that he played basketball with to join him and that way include acrobatic dunks in the performance. Actually, Aron used to be a professional basketball player in Hungary, but he gave it up because of the Face Team.
The team started to train with gymnasts from the University of Physical Education in Budapest, Hungary to learn more acrobatic moves on trampolines. We also worked on choreographing a routine that would include music to enhance the performance. We train hard to learn new tricks and variations to ensure that the show is unforgettable each time it is seen.
What venues have you performed in so far? And what venues are you trying to secure in the near future?
We have performed at some huge arenas around Europe such as O.A.K.A Olympic Arena in Athens, Greece; in Palalottomatica Arena in Rome, Italy at the NBA Europe Live Tour in 2007; outside of Luzhniki Olympic Arena in Moscow, Russia during the adidas NBA 5ive Tour 2008; in Jako Arena in Bamberg, Germany, etc...
We are planning to conquer the USA and perform halftime shows at NBA and NCAA games. I think it will happen in the near future!
How many of the acrodunkers had basketball backgrounds prior to joining the team? What are the keys to becoming a successful acrodunker?
3 acrodunkers had basketball backgrounds prior to joining Face Team. However, they do not really have the time to play for a professional team anymore.
What does a typical practice session look like for the dunkers and the dribblers?
The athletic intensity of acrobatic dunking is comparable to sports like soccer, football and basketball. Your body needs to be fit and therefore our practices can include running, swimming and weight training.
The gymnasts have an advantage because they could perform advanced tricks: double flips holding a basketball, twists and many other variations of jumps. The typical practice session of acrodunking starts with a warm up (of course) and then progresses into vertical jumps, flips and twists.
Our dribblers work on performing new and existing movements and then put together the choreography around it to coordinate and synchronize the act. The do this repetitiously until it looks exceptionally well.
When should we expect to see the DVD and how could fans purchase a copy?
The new DVD (Lords of Gravity) will be released on December 14, 2008 and it can be purchased from www.faceteamshow.com. It includes many cool videos of our performances at FIBA, NBA and other sponsored events.
Michael Jordan is often regarded as the greatest basketball player of all time. Is there an acrodunker that carries the same level of authority as MJ does?
Michael Jordan is the best basketball player ever of all time. There is an acrobatic dunker who could be named as "The Michael Jordan of Acrodunking". His name is Jerry Burrel who used to be the mascot of Houston Rockets and has been involved in acrodunking for more than 15 years. He is a very professional gymnast with unbelievable acrobatic skills. But don’t sleep on the Face Team. We have some amazing acrodunkers as well!
