The town with a history of loving fundamental basketball is taking the game to the streets. The city where Stockton and Malone perfected the pick-and-roll is producing a group of players who prefer no-look passes and alley-oop dunks. With little more than an attitude and a desire to have fun, players around Salt Lake City are gathering to play a free-flowing version of the game called “streetball†that would probably send Jerry Sloan into a conniption fit.
The growing popularity of streetball was manifest recently when more than 50 players showed up to play in the parking lot of the E Center on a weekday afternoon when the And1 Mixtape Tour rolled into town in June. Malcolm Russell showed up because it was a reminder of home. Jeff Gramse wouldn’t have missed it because he had always wanted to see what it was like to play somewhere besides an LDS wardhouse. Abouk Deng dropped by because it was one of the first things he learned about when he came to America. Randall Henderson ended up there when he found regular basketball too confining...
We can’t seem to keep Taurian Fontenette, aka "Air Up There" from the AND 1 Mix Tape Tour, off of our Dimemag website. A couple months ago we posted a video of Air Up There pulling off a between-the-legs 360, a dunk that ESPN "City Slam" finalist High Rizer told us only two people in the world can do (Rizer being the other). Then last week we got our hands on a video of Air Up There rocking a 720 dunk from the Mix Tape Tour’s recent stop in Houston. You can check out the video for yourself right here.
As a new member of the AND 1 team, Air Up There is still somewhat of an unknown. Born in Galveston, Texas, the 6-2 Fontenette played ball at Hitchcock (Texas) High School, where he was an all-conference forward. He attended UTEP for a year as a redshirt, and also made stops at Richland Junior College and Paul Quinn College. At Richland, Fontenette put up 14 points and 10 boards a game, leading his squad to a third-place national finish.
When the AND 1 tour rolled through Texas last summer, Fontenette was working as a security guard at a chemical plant. He gave AND 1 a shot, and stuck on the tour long enough to win a contract going into this year. We caught up with the 23-year-old rising star earlier this week while he was in New York City, starting out on what would be an onslaught of interviews and appearances due to his newfound fame...
The boy's effort began when his father set up a Nerf hoop in his room, a self-imposed daily diet of jump shots and dunks, spins and struts.
The effort continued at courts near Lake Michigan and at playgrounds on his native South Side, through high school at Chicago Vocational Tech and junior college basketball in Arizona, through his playing days at Chicago State and his workouts with Michael Jordan's Washington Wizards.The effort intensified just more than three years ago when Tony Jones, now a young man trying desperately to hold on to a childhood dream, followed eight-hour days working in a warehouse with several more hours of basketball at night—skills drills, pickup games and sprints.
Saturday, the fruit of those efforts will be on display at the United Center when Jones, now carrying the nickname "Go Get It," returns to his hometown as part of the 30-city And1 Mix Tape tour. A potent mixture of playground artistry and entertainment wizardry, And1's product is not just a live summer tour; it's also an ESPN2 reality series "Streetball"...
On a recent Saturday afternoon in Harlem, a bus stopped at 155th Street and Eighth Avenue, dropping off dozens of tourists at what is perhaps the world's most famous asphalt arena.
Gregory Marius, the chief executive of the Entertainers Basketball Classic, was soon holding court at Rucker Park, regaling visitors with stories of the great games and colourful names that have filled his summer tournament the past 25 years.
"We've come a long way," he told the crowd. Many were taking pictures of the magical, windswept stage located across the street from the site of the Polo Grounds, where a housing complex now covers the same ground that Willie Mays once did for the New York Giants...
Has an Entertainers’ Basketball Classic player ever been nicknamed “The King of Poland� Not terribly likely – but, if he keeps this up, Chudney Gray might soon be wearing the royal moniker.
“I’ve been playing for AZS Koszavin in the Polish Elite Division,†the 6-4 St. John’s swing man of not-so-long-ago related at halftime of the Certified-Long Island’s Finest game at Rucker Park. “Last year I led the league in scoring with 24.6 points per game, was second in assists, first in steals, and MVP of the All-Star Game. It’s fun to be there -- the money is good -- experiencing a different culture and everything that goes along with that. The money is good, too. But I haven’t given up my NBA dream – I’ve played for four teams, including the Grizzlies and the Bulls, in Summer Leagues. And I plan to play for some team again this year.â€
Gray is an amazing story in that he was no more than the quintessential journeyman- reserve at St. John’s for the longest time. Though he always was a world-class athlete – he owns high-jumper hops – the bench always beckoned because couldn’t shoot a lick. Until his senior year that is, when his stroke finally clicked to the point where the NBA was a real possibility...
The main goal for a player showing up for the AND1 Mix Tape Tour tryout Thursday afternoon in downtown Minneapolis was to get a pink bracelet.
Forget about being fashionable. That was the only way you could get a shot at playing the AND1 streetball legends that night in Target Center.
AND1, a sports shoe and apparel company, began endorsing playground basketball nearly a decade ago, and now these streetball players have their own video games, shoe commercials and movies, and they travel the world like the Harlem Globetrotters.
But becoming the next AND1 streetball legend might be as difficult as becoming the next LeBron James.
As the tour travels to 25 cities entertaining fans across the country every summer, it also is on the lookout for one player who can make the team.
The Mix Tape Tour has come to Minneapolis for three straight summers, but no player had made it onto the bus until Thursday night...
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?"...
"Ball Don’t Lie" is the story of Sticky, a foster kid from Southern California whose life has been anything but easy. But his great equalizer is that he can ball - you can’t help but immediately compare Sticky to B-Rabbit, Eminem’s character in in “8 Mile.†And like Rabbit, Sticky’s gift is the only thing that can potentially give him a better life. But it’s up to Sticky to make it happen.
"Let me say it for the record: we’re working day and night to make the movie version of BDL come to life. Man, how cool. Sticky on the big screen. Grayson (The Professor) turned leading man. Brin Hill, one of the most talented young directors in LA, doing hoops in a brand new way, casting Venice in a whole new light. Ball Don’t Lie. The movie. At the same time it’s such a roller coaster. Some days the squad is super up — we hear Common’s in, we get a rough cut of the teaser. Other days we’re down in the dumps. A Hollywood head says there are too many flashbacks or that black people don’t equate to foreign dollars."
Download page Ball Don't Lie
The Movie Trailer starring Professor
Quicktime Movie File
The Notic: Uncut & Unreleased
And1 vs. ATL All-Stars
The town with a history of loving fundamental basketball is taking the game to the streets. The city where Stockton and Malone perfected the pick-and-roll is producing a group of players who prefer no-look passes and alley-oop dunks. With little more than an attitude and a desire to have fun, players around Salt Lake City are gathering to play a free-flowing version of the game called “streetball†that would probably send Jerry Sloan into a conniption fit.
We can’t seem to keep Taurian Fontenette, aka "Air Up There" from the AND 1 Mix Tape Tour, off of our Dimemag website. A couple months ago we posted a video of Air Up There pulling off a between-the-legs 360, a dunk that ESPN "City Slam" finalist High Rizer told us only two people in the world can do (Rizer being the other). Then last week we got our hands on a video of Air Up There rocking a 720 dunk from the Mix Tape Tour’s recent stop in Houston. You can check out the video for yourself 
The boy's effort began when his father set up a Nerf hoop in his room, a self-imposed daily diet of jump shots and dunks, spins and struts.
On a recent Saturday afternoon in Harlem, a bus stopped at 155th Street and Eighth Avenue, dropping off dozens of tourists at what is perhaps the world's most famous asphalt arena.
Gregory Marius, the chief executive of the Entertainers Basketball Classic, was soon holding court at Rucker Park, regaling visitors with stories of the great games and colourful names that have filled his summer tournament the past 25 years.
"Ball Don’t Lie" is the story of Sticky, a foster kid from Southern California whose life has been anything but easy. But his great equalizer is that he can ball - you can’t help but immediately compare Sticky to B-Rabbit, Eminem’s character in in “8 Mile.†And like Rabbit, Sticky’s gift is the only thing that can potentially give him a better life. But it’s up to Sticky to make it happen. 
"Let me say it for the record: we’re working day and night to make the movie version of BDL come to life. Man, how cool. Sticky on the big screen. Grayson (The Professor) turned leading man. Brin Hill, one of the most talented young directors in LA, doing hoops in a brand new way, casting Venice in a whole new light. Ball Don’t Lie. The movie. At the same time it’s such a roller coaster. Some days the squad is super up — we hear Common’s in, we get a rough cut of the teaser. Other days we’re down in the dumps. A Hollywood head says there are too many flashbacks or that black people don’t equate to foreign dollars."
