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Streetball is big business |
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Written by Administrator
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Saturday, 08 July 2006 |
 In the middle of a layup drill Wednesday, players from the AND1 Mix Tape Tour ran off the floor to get a glimpse of a video highlight from a game last week in Houston. One by one, they huddled up to the team's general manager, Lisa Fusco, who replayed a 720-degree fast-break dunk by their newest teammate, Taurian "Air Up There" Fontenette. It's a dunk that you had to see a few times to believe.
"That's crazy," said Phillip "Hot Sauce" Champion, who is among the AND1 streetball legends in town this week to match their skills tonight against a group of local players at Target Center. "I missed that dunk on ESPN. Hey, can you send it to my e-mail?"...
In the past, this type of play became the stuff of legend. It wasn't captured on video. There were no pictures. Only a few players and spectators claimed to be witnesses.
But that was before streetball gained worldwide exposure.
Fontenette, who recently was afforded his own AND1 commercial despite joining the tour just last summer, once would have been the talk of the town. Now, he has an endorsement deal and will soon become one of the most popular streetballers on the planet.
That's how powerful the AND1 Mix Tape Tour has become since its debut in the summer of 2000.
"I used to watch it back in the day and wanted to be a part of it," said Fontenette, 23, who played one season at Paul Quinn College, an NAIA school in Dallas. "I'd like to try out for an NBA team, but I want to work as hard as possible on getting my face out and my game out there this year with AND1."
That was the same philosophy the team's six original members had when they signed an endorsement contract with AND1 in 1999. The first Mix Tape Tour game was a huge hit in Los Angeles a year later.
After barely earning enough to support their families while they were on the road for a few months, Shane "the Dribbling Machine" Woney said many of the players are making better money than pro basketball players not in the NBA.
"When we first started we were only making $7,000 a year — guys at McDonald's were making more money," said Woney, a 33-year-old Bronx native. "Then they realized how big it was. We didn't invent streetball, but we made streetball a business.
"For me growing up, a playground legend was a guy that never made it. A playground legend was a guy I looked down on, because most of the legends I knew were on drugs or in jail. We made it so you could be a positive figure."
New Jersey native Waliyy Dixon, who got his nickname "Main Event" at Rucker Park in Harlem, said he doesn't think streetball's popularity will fade. The 25-city tour averages nearly 7,000 fans a game and has been featured on an ESPN television show called "Street Ball" for the past five years.
"We started the AND1 book with Half Man, Shane, Preacher and Aircraft," Dixon said. "When the new guys come, they just add a chapter. We don't want to see the end. The book should be infinite."
The next big step for streetballers will be feature films. Grayson "The Professor" Boucher is working on a movie based on the book "Ball Don't Lie" by Matt de la Pena. Champion, the most recognized AND1 player on the tour, will star in a Sony Pictures movie coming to theaters in September called "Crossover."
"I guess acting is like my NBA," said Champion, who reunited with AND1 this summer after a one-year hiatus. "That's something big coming from streetball, because not of lot of NBA guys get movie roles."
MARCUS R. FULLER
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