“It IS the Windy City,” for a reason, NBA legend Isiah Thomas recently remarked on NBATV. So you’re not going to see playground hoopers pulling up and firing away from long range. Chicago basketball is more of a ground game. It’s gritty, interior-oriented, with emphases placed on driving hard to the rim, fighting for loose balls, and generally creating havoc.
“It’s basketball in any condition,” NBA star Anthony Davis noted of his fellow Chicago-raised hoopsters this past summer to the Tribune. “You find a way to play. Their love for the game is tremendous. No matter if it’s hot or freezing cold in the gym, or outside it’s raining, whatever, any basketball player from Chicago, it means a lot more to us because we are a basketball city.”
It’s where Davis returns in the summertime, or whenever he can during the NBA season. Anthony Davis as a Kentucky Wildcat, as a #1 overall NBA pick, was and remains a nice point of local pride. In that town, Davis as a New Orleans Pelican was a mild curiosity. AD as a Los Angeles Laker, with none other than LeBron James as his sidekick, is a brow-raising supernova.
At the United Center last night, Davis crammed every seat as his newest team, the Lakers, zoomed past the host Chicago Bulls. The latter club hopped on a plane at O’Hare to visit the Hawks in Atlanta tonight (7:30 PM Eastern, Fox Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL, NBC Sports Chicago), on a back-to-back for both.
While in town for his next-to-last NBA visit this season (the All-Star Game is there in February), Davis was asked to double-down on a pair of comments he made during the offseason, while visiting a Nike summer camp that has never been so packed with young hopefuls and even more hopeful parents.
The first comment regarded a softball laid gently over the plate for the First Takes of the world: whether 2020’s top free agent had any interest whatsoever in leaving the Lake Show to sign with the NBA club closest to his dear Lake Michigan. The second comment was what piqued my interest, a closing statement he made while praising the gym rats and blacktop hustlers in and around The Second City.
“And we are The Mecca of Basketball,” Davis said this summer. “You can quote me on that.” Definitive quotes are never enough for the rabid media, as ESPN’s Eric Woodyard was there after a Monday shootaround for AD’s re-iteration, and elaboration. “We’ve got the best basketball players ever. You look at the history with all the guys we’ve got that made the league, and even the guys that didn’t make the league.”
“They say New York. But it’s not even close.” Oh, now you’ve gone and done it, AD. You’ve awakened The Giant That Never Sleeps. Might as well have started another useless fuss over what is and isn’t pizza.
Not only were Gotham’s gabsters all over Davis’ slap at their hallowed metropolis – what else would they call Madison Square Garden? – but folks back in L.A. were taking umbrage, too, forcing Clippers head coach and Chicago native Doc Rivers to take a side. Understandably sparing of Tinseltown, he didn’t blink when the opportunity presented itself to lob some shade NYC’s way.
“It’s not even a question,” Doc responded to ClutchPoints. “New York gets all the rub, which I don’t get. But Chicago is (Da Mecca). It’s not even close.” Clipper pest Pat Beverley was right there in lockstep with his coach. “Over the years, due to the violence, basketball has taken a step down. It has come back up,” P-Bev noted, citing Jabari Parker, Kendrick Nunn and Davis as more recent examples.
America’s Big Dino-Cities continue to squabble over who is the, definitive, “Mecca” of basketball, tossing old names like Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, Starbury and D-Rose, Brooklyn-born but not really-bred MJ, Brooklyn-born but not readily-claimed Melo, back and forth at each other.
Meanwhile, down here in Atlanta we have been, not so quietly, cranking out a growing legion of coveted college, pro, and soon-to-be pro basketball stars. The NBA’s tub is full of legends from the parks of NYC, Chicago, and LA (don’t even let Philly get a wedge in on this argument). But it’s The ATL these days with its hand on the faucet, and folks from those haughty old haunts can’t seem to turn it off.
In the shadow of Georgia Power’s Vader-looking headquarters on the edge of downtown, my first immersion into the local hoop scene was unfolding on a random mid-90s summer weekend. Presumably a vestige of the slum clearance in the Buttermilk Bottom neighborhood Georgia Power replaced, a corner park’s raggedy single court was packed with hustling players and ringers, the fresh new street trees doing little to shade anyone from the 100-plus degree heat.
The streets were lined with cars bumping bass, the sidewalks teeming with teenage wannabe-players, middle-age wannabe-coaches and wannabe-scouts, and ladies in sumptuous summer attire, keeping score on various fronts. They all peeked through the wrought-iron gates like on-lookers at a cage match.
The on-court play, if one could simplify it by calling it “play,” was as roughneck and cutthroat as any scene you’d see portrayed on “Above the Rim” or “White Men Can’t Jump.” At times, amid the constant jostling and barking, it was hard to discern between teammates and opponents.
The Saturday scene was the same up the street at Midtown’s newer Central Park courts, and at countless, less reputable parks across Atlanta. The summer leagues were fueled and ran by the town’s biggest dope kingpins. So the stakes were always high, drawing crowds that, in the Nique-got-traded era of Atlanta, would put The Omni to shame.
On this stage, players like Anthony Carter, a high school dropout, thrived. This was one surefire way kids from the streets could make bank without resorting to illegalities, even if the cash sources probably were from ill-gotten gains. The big collegiate programs weren’t sticking their necks out in search of downtrodden kids like him. But scouts and connects from junior colleges knew they had an angle to offer streetball standouts like Carter a way up, and out.
For this current G-League and former Sacramento Kings assistant coach, Anthony Carter’s path to a 13-year NBA playing career started here on humble blacktop, sidewinding through Saddleback Community College and on to the University of Hawai’i.
A contemporary of his from that age of Atlanta streetball (no known relation) didn’t make it to the big league, or even the NCAA. But through Pearl River Community College, then Delta State University in Mississippi, Wendell Carter, Sr. was not about to go pro in something other than sports.
Wendell Senior went off to hoop in the Dominican Republic for three seasons. It was back in the 80s, while in a summer-league dunk contest here in Atlanta, that an acquaintance from his humble apartment had a local hoop-star sister she wanted him to meet.
Later, as he shared with The Undefeated, Kylia was asked by Wendell to hang on to his dunk contest trophy, and it wasn’t the last shiny object he would hand her. She went on to star at Ole Miss while Wendell was her Around The Way guy, at the smaller Mississippi schools.
As the housing projects were tearing down, and as America’s War on Certain Drugs was ramping up, Atlanta’s kingpin-funded summer leagues were fading into obscurity. The prodigal basketball talent was shifting decisively to more responsible AAU outlets, where players could sharpen and showcase their skills well beyond the wards where they slept.
As intown ‘hoods gentrified, you would begin finding the best basketball games at the fringes of Atlanta’s sprawling region. A prep star from Gwinnett or Cobb County high schools, or the once-segregationist private academies, making a big national splash would have once been unheard of. These days, the ATL burbs, inner and outer ring, are a veritable pipeline, and those local schools know exactly how and where to scour for competitive talent.
Kylia and Wendell, Sr. put in a lot of hard work, sticking together through three decades of marriage plus courtship. They were able to impress upon young Wendell, Jr., the value of academics while maturing as a basketball player. That made the 6-foot-10 Fairburn native an ideal pupil when he was able to move from a small East Point prep school to Pace Academy, a local academic powerhouse near the Governor’s Mansion in a leafy, posh corner of Atlanta’s Buckhead.
You would come to know Pace prominently by all the kids lining State Farm Arena’s Gucci Row while wearing their blue sweatshirts during the Coach Bud-and-Kyle era. But it is Carter, now a second-year standout with the Bulls, who has been putting Pace firmly on the larger sports map. In 2017, while selecting Duke over his parents’ wish for him to attend Harvard, the senior with the 3.8 GPA was named the Morgan Wooten National Player of the Year. The honor takes into account activities in the community and the classroom, in addition to the on-court accomplishments.
Carter, Jr. followed in the footsteps of Wooten winners Dwight Howard (2004), Maya Moore (2007), and Derrick Favors (2009). Throw in, for good measure, Lou Williams, a Clipper no one bothered to approach with the Mecca query, as 2005’s Naismith Prep Player of the Year, one season after Dwight.
No other metro area can claim more National POY winners in that 15-year span. LA had Kevin Love, Brandon Jennings, Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis, Katie Lou Samuleson and Lonzo Ball. Chi-town had Candace Parker, the Hawks’ Parker and Jahlil Okafor. Tina Charles has been The Big Apple’s only bite.
Speaking of New York, the man who entrenched NYC streetball as a national phenomenon, Hall of Famer Julius Erving knew where to eventually settle down and raise kids, and it wasn’t NYC or even Philly. If the unfortunate soul in Wendell, Jr.’s Pace High poster pic above looks familiar, that was Jules Erving from suburban Sandy Springs’ Holy Innocents’ Episcopal. Aptly nicknamed, “Pre-Med”, the younger Erving is now a junior player at Cal.
https://knightlife.paceacademy.org/knightlynews/files/2015/01/Wendell-Carter-Photo.jpgIt’s not just The Doctor who diagnosed what’s been going on in the hoops world. You must be a McDonald’s All-American to even qualify for the Wooten hardware. And even the Chicago-based burger behemoth has a sense that basketball’s “Mecca” has moved south. After Trae Young and Carter, Jr. faced off at the United Center in 2017, Mickie D’s moved their Boys and Girls High School All-American Games out of Chicago, their host city since 2011, and into Atlanta’s Highlight Factory, seemingly to stay.
The older metros have their share of Hall of Famers and NBA stars, past and present, to quibble over. But you don’t have to look hard to find an A-T-Lum on a current NBA roster. Some of the most respected and revered veterans in The Association right now – LouWill, Jae Crowder, Al-Farouq Aminu, Favors – cut their teeth on Atlanta-area rims. Dwight, too.
Look, if you will, at the active, emerging players whom teams are investing their future. Marietta High’s Jaylen Brown. Recent Rookie of the Year winner, Greater Atlanta Christian’s Malcolm Brogdon. Alpharetta’s Malik Beasley. Mableton’s Collin Sexton. Alpharetta’s Kobi Simmons. Westlake’s Chuma Okeke. And the bumper crop keeps on growing.
Your fingers don’t have to walk too far down the annual NBA Draft Boards before you point out an ATL-area product. The next big name, Anthony Edwards of Therell High and Holy Spirit Prep, dropped 24 in his collegiate debut last night in Athens. The UGA freshman is near-certain to be Top 5 in the 2020 Draft.
UK-bound Brandon “BJ” Boston, a Norcross kid, is a top-5 NBA prospect for 2021. Five-star, seven-foot center Walker Kessler, of southside Atlanta’s Woodward Academy, just passed up on Carter’s Duke to accept an offer from UNC. Chances are good that Kessler won’t be around Chapel Hill for long.
The brightest of the bright spots among the young ATLien NBA set has been Carter, who has already introduced himself to Bruno Fernando and the Hawks in preseason action. Losers of five of their last six, the Bulls (2-6) have had a frustrating start to the season. But Carter (14.1 PPG) has been the last person Bulls fans have been pointing to for blame.
Averaging a team-best 9.6 RPG while hitting 64.2 percent of his two-point attempts, and as the sole Bull blocking a shot per game, Wendell has been Chicago’s Steady Eddy, no slight to Mr. Curry. The struggle has been real for backups Luke Kornet and Fernando contemporary Daniel Gafford, so it’s imperative for the Bulls to have Carter on the floor and staying out of foul trouble.
He’s producing the mayhem around the offensive boards that Robin Lopez provided in recent years, useful for a team that has been bottom-ten in shooting from two-point range, three-point range, and at the free throw line (42.7 team FG%, 28th in NBA; 71.5 team FT%, 25th in NBA).
Lead scorer Zach LaVine’s vow to become a more impactful defender has yet to bear much fruit (116.4 opponent O-Rating and 56.6 opponent eFG% on-court, as per bball-ref; 97.8 and 47.3% off-court). LaVine (21.8 PPG, 26-7-7 vs. LAL last night) and Lauri Markkanen’s defensive lapses often leave Carter and Otto Porter (4-for-7 3FGs vs. LAL) as Chicago’s last line of halfcourt defense. Further, only the Zion-less Pelicans have a worse defensive rebounding percentage than the Bulls (68.9 D-Reb%).
Chicago often turns to up-and-down rookie Coby White to relieve Tomas Satoransky and pick up the tempo, and on Kris Dunn (1.9 SPG) and Thaddeus Young (1.4 SPG) to get crucial stops. But the Bulls’ backups have yet to find the cohesion, when playing with LaVine, Carter and/or Markkanen, that would consistently string 48 victorious minutes together.
After The General Car Insurance mascot lookalike Jim Boylen left his reserves, incapable of thwarting Kyle Kuzma and the Lakers’ comeback from 19 points down (47-70 second-half deficit), in the contest late in the second half of last night’s 118-112 defeat, Carter expressed his frustrations in postgame commentary. But the second-year big man took pains not to directly implicate his coach.
“I know I’m p*ssed. Not to talk about my past,” said Carter as he hinted at his brief stay in Durham, if not his scholastic laurels, “but me coming from a winning culture, and then last year (22-60, Carter lost by mid-January due to injury) wasn’t so good for us, and then this year, (losing) bothers me.” His Bulls being on track, in the early going, to duplicate last season’s result isn’t helping matters.
As the only NBA team getting their shots stuffed more frequently than Atlanta (7.9 BPG, to the Hawks’ 7.7), there’s a good chance the Hawks will be treated to a block party at The Farm. Starting pivot Alex Len has been wretched offensively, but he is The Greatest Wall of Atlanta (1.2 BPG) in John Collins’ extended absence.
Blocks by the offensively struggling Kevin Huerter helped the Hawks (3-3) turn the tide on the Spurs in the first and third stanzas, the latter block and some maddening ref non-calls thereafter setting the stage for The Traekover in the fourth quarter of last night’s 108-100 thriller.
If Huerter, Cam Reddish and The DeAns of Defense (Bembry and Hunter) can keep that same energy tonight, and if the centers protect the rim and rebound to dominate the paint points battle, Atlanta could awaken to find themselves not only as a surprising top-ten defensive squad (102.5 D-Rating), but also a team with an early winning record.
Celebrating anything desirable as a “Mecca” comes with the risk of being problematic, given the real town’s holy exclusivity. But there are similarities. Both Atlanta (long known as a “Black Mecca,” which sure as heck got my attention) and the Saudi pilgrimage are major draws for people arriving in waves from around the globe, albeit for quite differing reasons. Both places have been quick to tear down their history in the name of “progress” and making room for newcomers, preferably those with cash.
Ultimately, it’s the phrase, “The Mecca of whatever”, that gets people in a hot-and-bothered tizzy across the sea. There can be only one hoops “Mecca” at a time. In this modern age, folks from all around Chicagoland will be watching their beloved Bulls, tonight, playing in it, their future star's old stomping grounds.
The rest of your favorite metros can fight over which one is basketball’s Jeddah. “Mecca Adjacent,” if you prefer.
Let’s Go Hawks!
~lw3
