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Last weekend I drove to Harrisburg to meet a streetball team called Team Hollywood.

The team’s founder, Peter Adams, invited me there for two reasons: first, to discuss blogs. After reading TrueHoop, Team Hollywood is thinking about hiring our blogging agency, Gekko Blogs, to create and run a streetball blog to promote Team Hollywood. So this was serious business.

But Peter heard that I play basketball too, so he also asked me to suit up and play with the team.

Like any basketball squad, Team Hollywood has a rotating cast of characters. One of the mainstays is 1982 NBA champion, and former Laker Clay Johnson. There’s a fellow named Brandon “Seldom Seen” who will DUNK ON YOUR ASS. The rapper and producer C-NUT is tight with a lot of NBA players. He often leads the team in scoring. They have played with Willie Smith, a former first-round pick of the Bulls. On D.C. playgrounds everybody knows Tony "the One." Everyone has some credentials—whether they’ve played on the And1 Mixed Tape tour, in the CBA, or Division One of the NCAA. Jeff “Windchill” Coffman was the Washington state dunk champion. At one point, Pete dangles the idea that Eddie Robinson, who is recovering from an injury and expects to return to the NBA, might show up.

I love to play basketball, and I’ve been playing my whole life—but (do I have to explain?)—this is not the crowd I normally run with. If you invite me down to your local gym for a Thursday night run, I will thread the needle with some passes to the open man, I may well hit the game-winner, and I won’t get pushed around. But I’m 31, a shade under six feet, and not someone who plays at this level. I drive to Harrisburg expecting to be embarrassed, horribly embarrassed, but I can’t say no. This will be an experience.

It crosses my mind that I should practice lobbing if off the glass, or bounce lobs. Plays like these are about the only chance I have of being involved in a highlight of a game like this. Then I decide that the smarter approach is just to play my game and try not to hurt anyone.


It’s three hours to tip-off.
There is a banquet in the basement of a Methodist Church in one of Harrisburg’s many bad neighborhoods. The folding tables are out—with white tablecloths, flowers, and a spread of food that includes more than one kind of macaroni and cheese, and some greens with a little but of turkey in them.

Pete has a microphone and is explaining the mission of Team Hollywood to a crowd that includes union leaders, city council members, church officials, probation officers, and at least one local detective (who I will later guard for a period on the court). These people are all involved, in one way or another, in Knight Basketball, which is both the team we will be facing tonight, and a vibrant faith-based mentoring, counseling, and jobs program serving a population that needs it.

I sit down next to Clay, whom I have never met before. He’s smiley, relaxed. This is his environment. Except for one thing: he’s a vegetarian in a meat-lovers world. He will play this game on cornbread and macaroni.

Knight basketball has organized this game—with support from a lot of the people in the audience—as the highlight of the season for the guys in the program. Some of the young men we will be playing against take the microphone and tell us their stories. Leaving behind the drug-addled neighborhood, one is now training to be an electrician, and just got a job. Another is on his way back to school. I am thrilled to hear about their success. Although when I hear that their basketball team was undefeated this season, I feel just a little hesitant. As someone who will play against them in a few hours, I’d rather they be really good, but not incredible.

It’s hard to figure out exactly how the finances of the game work out. Tickets are not expensive, $7 with a two-dollar discount for children. Maybe 400 people show up at the gym. You do the math, and factor in that Team Hollywood has bought tickets to fly six people in from Washington state, Texas, and Kansas City. Everyone is staying in a $120/night hotel. The players all get paid a little bit. There must be some other fundraising going on.

No one from Team Hollywood knows how to get from the church to the elementary school where the game will take place, so we leave in a caravan—everyone following the blue church van that carries most of the team.

There is an art to making it easy to being followed. It involves announcing turns long in advance with signals, making sure everyone knows the overall plan, not gunning it to make green lights, looking for extra-large gaps when turning across traffic to keep the group together, and pulling over if the group gets split up.

The demon behind the wheel of the church van does none of these things, ditching the rest of us repeatedly. I catch up only because I happen to spot the van at an unannounced gas station stop as I was rushing to catch up.


As we enter the gym, a man who later proved to be a hilarious PA announcer calls out to the group:
“Clay Johnson? Which one of you is Clay Johnson?”
“Hey, how are you doing,” says Clay, mild-mannered and approachable as ever.
“I am a HUGE L.A. Lakers fan. Like the biggest ever, from way back, and… I don’t remember you. Did you really play for the Lakers?”
Clay extends his hand, showing his championship ring. “How about that?”
“Yeah, but you could have bought that on Ebay.”
“Not with my name engraved on it…”


We are in the locker room before the game, and Pete is handing out uniforms.
He tosses me one and I put it on. It’s 3XL.

I’m L.

I feel like I’m wearing my big brother’s uniform. Jeff “Windchill” Kauffman notices my predicament, and offers to switch, reaching into his collar to get the tag so I can see what size his uni is. It’s 3XL too. They’re all 3XL. I’ll go baggy.

In the third quarter, for the first time in a lifetime of playing basketball, as I’m dribbling, part of my uniform sneaks in between my hand and the ball, damn near causing a turnover.


Peter Adams’ started working in the NBA when he was ten years old, as a ball boy for the Sacramento Kings.
He got fifty dollars a game, which was insane money at the time. But he made vastly more than that by acting as an unwitting pimp.

“The players would spot some woman in the stands. They called me Little Man. They’d say ‘hey Little Man’ go tell the woman in section 205, row 6 that I’m staying in room 312.” Or ‘go give that woman this room key.’ Or ‘make sure that she’s in the hallway after the game.’ I was ten years old. I had no idea what it was about. But they’d give me at least five dollars every time. Sometimes, if they didn’t have change, I’d get as much as twenty dollars. And it happened several times, every single game. I’d come home and go to sleep, and in the morning my mom would see this stack of money on my dresser. She’d ask what I was doing to get all that money, and at least I had the sense not to tell her the truth. I told her the players tipped me like that for getting nicely folded towels.”


The regular coach is not here.
His name is Newt. By all reports, he’s a real character—someone who will say anything to anyone and is scared of nothing. In a pinch, Pete can coach instead.

This is not the real coach. And this is streetball. The players have a complex understanding of
the game, but the coaching is unbelievably simple. This is an actual quote from Pete’s pre-game talk:

Rebounds, gentlemen. Defense.

Here’s another one:

Listen up: rebounds… defense… blocked shots.

And one more:

REEEEEEEBOOUNDS. Ok? Can you get some rebounds, and play some defense?

We are shooting around before the game.
Brandon and Chill are peering up at the bottom of the backboard, muttering something about the rims.

I ask what it’s about. They are wondering whether or not the breakaway rims lock in place—not something you have to worry about at all unless you dunk extremely freaking hard. “Wow,” I say. “When I play basketball, I never worry about that.”

Everyone laughs.

Our random shoot-around turns into an actual warm-up, with layup lines and everything. It feels good to move around. Jog from one side, lay it in or take a little jump shot, get a rhythm. Dawdle in line for a second, then grab a rebound and toss it out to the next shooter. Repeat. It’s enough to get a little sweat going, to start feeling like an athlete after sitting--in meetings, at my desk, or in the car—all day.
The local drum corps is hammering out some beats on the bleachers behind our basket. It’s loud as hell, but sounds great. I can’t hear myself think, and it doesn’t matter. The school gymnasium is starting to fill with people of all ages. It’s Friday night.

The way the layup line works, I am rebounding for Chill. I have learned to give him plenty of room, because every now and again he’ll storm in for a vicious dunk. He is, after all, a former Washington state dunk champion. He’s the big man on the team, but he’s agile, shoots pretty well from all over, and can definitely throw it down.

Brandon starts getting in the act, and he’s a bona fide athletic freak. He looks like he’s about 6-4, but his body would be right at home in the NBA. When he dunks, the arena gets tense with excitement.

Something changes.

Suddenly, our layup line becomes a showpiece. Chill goes one-handed. Brandon catches a ball off the glass, and reverses it home. The show is on. Tony hangs from the rim with one hand, taps the ball off the glass with his free hand, then switches hands at taps it again. He switches back and forth five, six, seven times. C-Nut, with shooting-clinic-pretty form, nails a three-pointer from eight or nine feet behind the three-point line. Latino Heat holds his own hand, and rolls a ball in a circle across his chest and around the inside of his arms, before nailing his own three-pointer. Clay Johnson, whose body is long and skinny, goes full extension with a graceful finger roll that plops in gracefully.

Me? I get crazy with a reverse layup, and pray it goes in. The next time I make it a ten-foot jumper—just to keep it interesting.

It’s late in the third quarter, and I have not played since early in the second.
With a super-long halftime, that seems like hours. I remember my freshman year of high school, dallying with soccer, and how much I hate sitting on the bench. As he still loves to remind me, I would follow my coach up and down the sidelines telling him he just had to put me in.

The game is going fairly well for Team Hollywood. Thanks to a big run to start the game, the team has essentially been up by at least eight for almost the whole game. But in the third things aren’t clicking. This is a streetball team. Players go one-on-one. When they go cold, things can get pretty ugly.

C-Nut is usually the leader of this team. Peter tells me more than once that “Nut got 50 in Cincinnati.” It’s not hard to believe. It was obvious in warm-ups that he a very solid player. But in the game there is a hitch in his shot, and his confidence is shot by halftime. A fair percentage of our timeouts are dedicated to everyone reassuring C-Nut that even though he’s two-for-a-whole bunch we want him to keep shooting.

Latino Heat has the flu and is tempered in what he can do. Clay is skilled and long, but even though he looks 25 he’s really 49, and is not having the game of his life—on one noticeable play he is wide open for a long time, but doesn’t get the ball. When it finally comes, he’s miffed and sends a lame pass back to Chill, which is easily picked off. Pete is not happy about that.

Brandon is throwing down spectacular dunks, but the defense knows what to expect and is keyed on him, so Chill and Tony are left more or less carrying the team.

The kid sitting behind me asks why I’m not playing. I tell him I’m not very good. “Yeah,” he says, “but you’re better than Clay Johnson, right?”

About then the PA guy sitting across the way realizes I have been glued to the bench for a long time. “Hey,” he says through the microphone, “what happened to Henry?” He gets the crowd to chant “We Want Henry, We Want Henry…” No doubt, it’s a ploy to help the local Knight Basketball team get back in the game, which they are trailing.

Pete looks down the bench at me. “Hey Henry,” he says “those people over there want you. Why don’t you run over there and see that they want?”

The Knight Basketball team has some special guests of its own.
One is a former UNC-Greensboro player who, if he were not out of shape, could put a scare into Team Hollywood. He shoots an incredible percentage, and invariably makes great decisions with the ball. I ask the kid sitting behind me who he is.

Turns out he’s a local cop.

The point of the event starts to sink in. The kids on the Knight Basketball team, and the kids in the stands, are by their own admission in some cases, what you’d call “at-risk.” And here they are, laughing, clapping, cheering, and playing with the local police. That’s a pretty good trick.


After the game, I get to be part of a three-person panel who votes on offensive, defensive, and most valuable players of the game.
Everyone loves Brandon’s game so much. I’m dying to vote for him for something. But the two stretches of the game when Team Hollywood really built leads were the spurts when Tony “the one” took over. He scored 12 of Team Hollywood’s first 14 points, and a whole bunch in the fourth quarter to put the game away. He also chiseled out some meaningful turnovers with his trapping backcourt D in the second half. He’s the offensive player of the game and the MVP any way you slice it.

Besides, Brandon was 0 for six from the line.

Windchill is really the only one who played tough D every possession, and he had a million rebounds. He’s the defensive player of the game the way I vote, and as it happens that’s how the awards are handed out.

I heard later that Brandon thought he should have won something. I know how he feels. I had two points, one assist, a couple of rebounds, and two dropped passes in my six or seven minutes, but I consider voting for myself as MVP, just because I didn’t injure anyone or fall down on my face.

The awards are handed out at halfcourt, in the middle of a happy crowd of children from the stands. The point of the whole thing is suddenly incredibly obvious. This game is big-time for these children. Harrisburg is not an NBA city, and these kids will likely never go to an NBA game, which is sky-boxed to the hilt and tailored carefully to a different kind of customer. As much as there is professional basketball catered to these kids, this is it.

These are the children of streetball. Pete t
ells me after the game that if you ask these kids whose better: Jason Williams or the Professor? They will all agree on the Professor, even though, in Pete’s words, Williams would kill the Professor. If you ask them whose better, Dwyane Wade or Skip to my Lou (the street name of legend Rafer Alston, who now plays for the Houston Rockets), they’ll say Skip to My Lou.

Or, most incredibly, if you ask them who’s better: Skip to My Lou or Rafer Alston, plenty of them will ask “Who’s Rafer Alston?”

On this court, at this moment, however, thanks in large part to Clay’s championship ring, the lines are blurry. Are the people on Team Hollywood really big NBA stars? The next morning in the hotel some children talked to Clay, then turned to the rest of the team and asked “are you guys the Lakers?”

The players are mobbed for autographs, and they could not be nicer about it. Every single one of them is kid-friendly and chatty—unlike any NBA team I have ever seen. Kids are getting their shirts signed, their arms, their programs…everything. Even I sign dozens of autographs.

The players from Knight basketball are in the mix and smiling too. No one makes this claim that I heard, but it’s not hard to imagine that the prospect of events like this keeps some of the kids in the program.

Clay is thrilled—this is a good moment for Team Hollywood. “My passion these days,” he says, “is sharing just about anything I can with some young person that will make them go on the straight and narrow. If that’s basketball, then great.”


After a night in the Sheraton, we are driving to breakfast.
Everyone was supposed to go in the van, with me following in car. But the van was too full. So Peter Adams is in my passenger seat. Clay Johnson and his championship ring are in the back seat of my filthy car, with his feet resting a container of anti-freeze (it comes in handy from time to time with this car). Brandon—one of the Knight Youth players, and a very nice young man—is in the back with Clay, not saying much.

No one in the car has any idea where we’re going, other than “breakfast,” so once again we are trying like hell to follow the church van.

“If I asked you a question, Clay, would you tell me the truth?” asks Peter.
“That depends,” says Clay.
“Is Magic Johnson gay?”
Clay played with Magic Johnson, and knows a lot of stuff. “I really don’t know,” says Clay.
“So you can’t say for sure that he’s not gay?”
“I can’t say for sure that you’re not gay.”

The church van makes a left across traffic with no chance for me to follow. There goes breakfast. Peter starts reaching for his cell-phone. He’s going to call C-Nut and make him tell the driver to pull over. There’s a break in the traffic, we skip across, and I start passing cars on the right, catching up with the distant van. As we shoot through the rainy Saturday morning traffic at double the speed of the cars to our left, no talks for a moment.

“Henry,” says Pete, breaking the silence, “I have a wife and kids, and I would like to see them again.”


The group is quiet at breakfast, which is at the Old Country Buffet.
Some of the boys from Knight Basketball are there, as are some of the organizers.

Pete is basking in the afterglow of the big news he dropped on the team in the locker room the night before: Team Hollywood will be playing against players form the NBA Retired Players’ Association at next year’s All-Star game. The game, says Pete, will be televised, and will feature people like Calvin Murphy, Moses Malone, and Chris Morris, as well as a few former Harlem Globetrotters.

“This, gentlemen,” says Peter slowly, with relish, “is big-time.”

UPDATE: Another article about the same game, from John E. De Freitas of the Washington Informer.