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The AND 1 Tour Stop - Denver Represents |
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Written by Administrator
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Saturday, 24 June 2006 |
 Usually, the And1 Mixtape Tour is about high flying dunks and flashy passes. However, last night in Denver, it evolved into a battle of civic pride. You see, Denver is often not looked at as a city that produces top shelf basketball talent. Just don't tell that to the AND1 squad which took their first loss of the tour in front of thousands of fans at the Denver Coliseum -- including one very well known fan who goes by the name of Melo, who just happened to be sitting courtside with his boy, Memphis Grizzlies forward Hakim Warrick. Needless to say, any event in which Melo is in attendance, is an event not to be missed.
For those that don't know, the way the tour works is that there is an "And1 Team" which includes household streetball names such as "The Professor," "The Air Up There," etc. who have already earned a contract. In each tour stop, the And1 team plays against five or six guys who travel with the tour hoping to earn an And1 contract, as well as four guys who are chosen from what's called an "Open Run" in each city.
Essentially, the idea is to let each city feel like they are a part of the tour by allowing some of their best ballers to come out and play against the AND1 squad. As one would expect, Team AND1 is almost always victorious, and they were 5-0 on the tour coming into play Thursday night in Denver.
But in The Mile High City, something weird happened. Team Denver not only won the game, but they actually dominated play for most of the evening. Not only that, but one of Denver's finest, Ron "Park Hill" Ray, won the MVP award with 30 points and a plethora of silky three-point baskets to his credit. Ray, along with fellow Open Run teammate Chris Copeland, looked at this game as a chance to put Denver on the streetball map. But Ray was quick to point out that his game is not about style over substance like the perception a lot of folks have about streetballers.
"You've got to understand, first off with Open Run, there's a lot of kids out there who are just hungry to play," Ray energetically stated after the contest. "But I didn't go out there . . . I don't have a lot of tricks. I don't play a lot of trick basketball. You know, I'm a spot up shooter, I can get to the hole, I rebound, and I play defense. That's what I focus on. So going out in the Open Run, if they was looking for a trick player, they wouldn't have chose me. I went out, I had a couple of dunks and just got lucky. Really, I just got lucky. I was at the right place at the right time."
Not bad for a guy who got "lucky" to even get into the game, to ultimately go on and win the MVP, huh? Of course most of the people watching Ray's dynamic performance felt like the word skill might have been a better word choice than luck to describe Ray's night.
"Circus," AKA Jerome Holden, a teammate of Ray's last night who travels with the tour, stated, "Yo, he's a great shooter. I'm politicking him now to try and get him on the bus, because I think he could really help us. He's a no nonsense guy, like he's not taking nothing from nobody. And that's what And1 likes and needs, cause that's what draws the fans. I'm about to go in the back and tell the coaches to pick him, because I could use him as a teammate."
Ray offered this assessment of his own performance, "Coming into this game, I just felt good from the beginning, you know a streetball game. I'm a big And1 fan, a huge And1 fan. Been watching And1, I think since the beginning. It's just a beautiful opportunity just to be here. Playing the game, it was really just like I got caught up in the moment. That's pretty much it. After the nerves shut down and everything else, it was just basketball. And once I was playing basketball, it was just like me by myself out there."
What about that nasty J you were shooting in cats' mugs all night, Ron?
"Yeah, that's what I do," Ray emphatically answered. "I'm overseas shooting that thing. That's what I do. I mean, good thing tonight it was going, so I really didn't have to get to the hole. It opens so much of your game. It's a part of your game that you don't need nobody with. You can just practice shooting by yourself, and if you love basketball, just go shoot the thing. If you miss, keep shooting again."
Ray, as his nickname of "Park Hill" for last night's game clearly indicated, grew up in the Park Hill neighborhood of Denver. Park Hill, where Detroit Pistons guard Chauncey Billups grew up, has long been a hot spot for premiere ballers in Denver, and Ray said his greatest thrill Thursday night was getting to represent Park Hill and "Smooth" Billups by winning the MVP trophy in his home city.
"Oh man, just hearing you say Park Hill and MVP in the same words, and Chauncey . . . it just sends shivers down my spine," Ray stated. "I was always told if you came in with your own nickname, you was fugazy. They were supposed to give you a nickname. So when they was like nickname, I'm like . . . I don't have one. But Park Hill stuck out. That's where I'm from, that's where I'm representing. You guys had no losses on the tour. You took your first one in Denver, in my home city. Chaunce, big ups Smooth. That's "Smooth" Billups to everybody who doesn't know. Skyline recreation center, that's where we play at. Chauncey, I just watch him. Every summer I'm with him. I love the dude. If you from Park Hill, you're always going to have love."
It's clear that the city of Denver earned the only seven letters that matter in streetball Thursday night -- R E S P E C T.
"Circus" had this to say about his experience playing in Denver and the talent of the players in the city.
"It was great man. It was the first win of the tour for me so far man, coming in 0-5. A lot of other cities didn't have the talent that Denver had. We got like four great players from Denver to help us out, and if we get talent like that in each city, it's going to be a lot tougher for the And1 guys."
Copeland, also an Open Run winner and former University of Colorado standout, indicated that he and Ray were on a mission to put Denver on the basketball map.
"We just wanted to work hard, and get on the court somehow," Copeland stated. "We just wanted to show people what kind of talent is around here."
And "Circus" had plenty of praise for Copeland's game, too.
"Chris Copeland, I played against him yesterday down at the little rec center, we went down there and crashed the court," Circus said with a smile. "You know, he played so well. He's the type of player that didn't let nobody punk him or nothing. You know, Baby Shack and them guys tried to get in his ear, and he just played tough. He hit some big shots, rebounded, they were pushing him in the back. You know, he just held in down. He said he was going to hold it down for Denver, and he did."
Copeland went on to say that streetball and his time as a player in the Big 12 were more similar than most folks probably realized.
"They are very similar," he asserted. "The essence of streetball is heart, hunger, and playing hard. You see that every night in the Big 12 as well, so I wouldn't want to differentiate the two. They are very similar in that everybody comes and brings it every night, plays hard, real physical. You've got to fight for every possession to win, and that's what we did tonight. It wasn't dirty. It was just playing hard. They hit you. They're not trying to hurt you. People sometimes get that mixed up. They just came out here to play hard and win, and we hit 'em back."
Hit 'em back, indeed. And the MVP hopes that he and his teammates were able to send a message to AND1 and the rest of the basketball world that Denver is a major player now in the basketball universe.
"We a diamond in the rough," Ray said about his fellow Denver ballers. "They didn't expect nothing. They didn't expect us to beat them. They didn't come out here expecting us to even compete with them. You know, all the high flying dunks. There's some cats who can high fly dunk in Denver, there's some cats who can do that. But what we doing, is we playing basketball. We get down, and we play basketball. And the thing about Denver is, nobody knows nothing about us, so we coming to get you. It don't matter where you at. This is not the first time somebody came here and got it handed to them. We just come out here and play hard, and Denver's on the map. And if you don't know, come get it. And we will travel. There's no bums out here, we'll come to your city."
And there's little doubt that AND1 will again be traveling back to the Mile High City for a competitive rematch in the very near future.
Travis Heath
HOOPSWORLD.com
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