CLAY MOYLE AND SON CALEB
A second run at Spokane’s three-on-three Hoopfest tournament is now in the books. Our efforts concluded at the end of day one as a result of a second loss in the three games we played this past Saturday.
My former Bainbridge Spartan teammate Dave Campbell and I arrived at the Spokane home of another former teammate, Mike Livingston, early Friday evening and enjoyed a wonderful barbecue meal while discussing our prospects for the coming weekend.
Mike explained we had a pretty tough draw. He said we’d be playing a very good team in our opening game and should we manage to win that one we’d find the defending champions waiting for us a couple of hours later as a result of their first round bye.
The barbecue presented an opportunity for Dave and I to meet our new fourth teammate for the first time. As I’d mentioned in a previous article, we’ve found it next to impossible to find another healthy former Spartan big man over 50 to join our team. So this year Mike recruited the current Gonzaga rowing coach, Dan Gehn, who stands six-foot-five and weighs approximately 250 pounds to join us.
As we awaited his arrival, I asked Mike what kind of shooting range Dan has.
“Three to four feet from the basket,” was the reply.
I hoped he was kidding and it would be a little better than that.
He went on to tell me that Dan had asked him if we run any plays.
“Yes, pass the ball to Clay,” Mike said he’d told him.
He wasn’t kidding about that and when Dan did arrive he made it a point to emphasize which bald undersized teammate he was supposed to pass the ball to.
Unlike the other teams that we face, who look like they’ve all played together and seemingly do run a few things, we have thus far winged it offensively the two times we’ve played in the tournament. And for the second consecutive year, the first time we’d played with one of our teammates was in our opening tournament ballgame.
(LEFT TO RIGHT): DAVE CAMPBELL, DAN GEHN, MIKE LIVINGSTON, CLAY MOYLE
As I witnessed my teammates sucking down beers the night before our 8:30 a.m. game, it occurred to me that I might be taking these games a bit more seriously than they were.
I also came to realize we weren’t quite as healthy as I’d hoped when Mike showed us a badly swollen black and blue left ankle that he planned to have taped before we played the following morning.
It was raining periodically throughout the evening and by the time Campbell and I retired at 10:30 p.m. it was coming down in buckets. We wondered if we’d be playing on very slick asphalt the next morning.
The games are played on courts that are only 31-feet deep and 50-feet wide so the game is actually better suited for the slower, taller lumbering big men in the first place. So the last thing Dave or I wanted to do was play on a slick court where any 50-plus-year-old quickness advantage we might have would be negated.
So, we were pleasantly surprised to awake to a bright sunny day on Saturday morning and discover the streets were generally dry.
When we met our first round opponents we discovered that despite our two 6-5 and 6-4 big men we were still the smaller team. Having two under-six foot players on our team seemingly assures us that will almost always be the case.
The best player for the opposition was a 53-year-old 6-5 forward named Rob Otis who’d started for EasternWashingtonUniversity in the mid-80s. He was nicely complimented by teammates that included another forward named Mike Bourn who’d played ball for former North Kitsap basketball coach Jim Harney when he’d coached at Puget Sound.
The first time Otis received a pass on the wing he threw a little fake at Livingston and the latter tipped over sideways on his bad ankle and in his own words began to “roll across the asphalt like an empty can of soda in the wind” while Otis drained an uncontested jumper.
From that point on, we had no answer for Mr. Otis. He must have scored 12 or 14 of his team’s 20 points as they cruised to a 20-14 victory.
Unfortunately, we had little choice but to have Livingston try and do his best to contain him. Otis was just too big and strong for either Campbell or I to try and cover. They would have posted him down low where he could easily score over either of us. And our new big man was just too immobile to try and stay with him.
Speaking of our new big man (Dan), Livingston was correct, his shooting range was three to four feet away from the basket and no more. He couldn’t jump, but at least he gave us an inside presence, unlike last year.
It was only after that first game that I learned that Dan had two artificial hips. Unlike me, who have had two artificial hips of the resurfacing variety and am still very mobile as a result, Dan had two of the more traditional full hip replacements and has limited mobility.
I found myself wondering if we might have been the only team in the tournament with a couple of players who have had two hip replacements each, but with almost 7,000 teams in total it wouldn’t surprise me to learn there were others like us.
In fact, Hoopfest is just the sort of tournament that brings out fanatical hoopsters of this kind. For example, in their coverage of the event over the weekend the Spokesman-Review noted there was one individual who’d suffered a heart attack as recently as May 17 and had two stents inserted who was participating.
The opening loss put us in the losers bracket where we met a friendly team of Native-Americans from Browning, Montana who I believe may have been from the Blackfeet Reservation.
We shot well from the outside and scored on a number of drives to the hoop and managed to escape with a 20-14 victory in that one.
That win meant that we’d have to play our third game of the day at 4 p.m. against another victor in the loser’s bracket. Unfortunately, by the time that game rolled around the winds had picked up making it very difficult to shoot from the outside with any accuracy.
In fact, as it turned out shooting from as close as a free throw proved to be difficult as could be attested by the fact that the two teams shot something like a combined 0-7 from the charity stripe during the game.
As a result, the final game was an ugly sloppily played affair and we lost to a very beatable team to bring an end to our tournament.
I was personally pretty disappointed that we didn’t do better as a team. But, realistically I believe that the present makeup of our roster is such that we probably cannot hope to do much better than notch a couple of victories in this particular division.
All in all, I should probably view it as a success because we had a good time and nobody was seriously wounded. However, Campbell did dislocate his pinky finger and has an MRI scheduled to determine whether or not he tore his meniscus. Does a torn meniscus qualify as a serious injury?
Afterward, I complained to my wife about how hard I’d worked to prepare for the tournament and vowed that I wouldn’t make that much effort again next year. She just smiled and said, “Yes you will, because that’s you.” I suppose she’s right, I probably well, but I didn’t want to hear it at the time.
Regardless of how we finish, the highlight of participating in the event is clearly the opportunity to get together and hang out for the weekend with former teammates and friends, and play a sport we love. I suspect that’s the same for the vast majority of those who return year after year.
As for Hoopfest itself, this was the 25th year of the event in Spokane. And believe me, it is truly an event. When it began in 1990 there were a total of 2,009 participants. Twenty-five years later, it’s become the largest three-on-three basketball tournament in the world.
According to the Spokesman-Review, there were some 6,859 teams comprised of 26,810 players that participated on the 458 courts set-up throughout downtown Spokane. It’s a basketball love fest and you really have to see it to believe it.
I don’t know how many more years we’ll do this, but my teammates sound as though they’d like to continue playing in the tournament for a number of years to come. So, I guess I’ll continue to participate and enjoy a successful reuniting of friends who have a ball playing together, regardless of whether or not that translates to wins on the basketball court.