- Well, good
evening, and thank you for tuning in with us tonight.
I'm Marcus Harrison Green, journalist, author,
and host of In the Meanwhile, coming to you on KVRU.
And I have the honor of opening tonight's program.
Basketball is not just a game.
It is an inheritance passed down from withered playgrounds
and creaking high school gyms to the slick hardwood of the pros.
Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, yes, but raised everywhere
in back alleys in Brooklyn and smoke filled gyms in Chicago.
In the alleyways of Manila, on the red earth of Lagos, the ball is a passport.
The hoop is a language.
And if you can cross over, pull up and hit a shot,
I drop off an assist to a wide open teammate.
Well then you speak it fluently.
Cities like New York call themselves the Mecca of basketball.
Los Angeles
insists that hoops are the birth rate, which is why The Chosen One came to play.
The Chicago Speaks in the names of Jordan,
Derrick Rose and The Crucible of the blacktop.
But there is one city that the national conversation too
often overlooks, one whose impact is impossible to erase.
That city is ours.
Seattle.
Because you cannot write the history
of basketball without writing about this place,
about the Metro League, about Garfield and Franklin,
Rainier Beach and O'Dea, about gyms that doubled as sanctuaries.
We're working class kids carved out their dreams
against the backdrop of redlining, of school bussing,
and of a city trying to decide who belong where.
Seattle basketball has always been more than a sport.
It has been a mirror.
In 1955, Garfield fielded the first racially integrated team to win a state
championship, even as much of the city still walled off its neighborhoods.
In the 1970s, Seattle schools begin bussing black students across town.
Basketball became both a bridge and a battleground.
James Edwards, a Central District kid, was sent north to Roosevelt,
where he led the Roughriders to a state title in 1973.
And it was not only the boys, the women of Seattle.
Joyce Walker at Garfield.
Rhonda Smith at Franklin.
Sandy Snyder building, dynasties at Lakeside.
They were all there long before the WNBA
existed, proving that the city's greatness cut across gender.
Over the decades, what seemed improbable became inevitable.
Seattle producing not just college standouts
but NBA All-Stars and WNBA pioneers from the Christie to Jamal Crawford,
from Nate Robinson to Brandon Roy, from Isaiah Thomas
to the city's first number one overall
draft pick, Apollo Ventura,
30 plus NBA draft picks from a city that doesn't even crack the top
ten in population. That is not accident.
That is culture.
That is community. That is Seattle.
But here's the truth that anyone who has ever laced up
a pair of kicks knows
most of the kids who step on to those courts will never make it to the pros.
The percentages are brutal.
Yet the impact of the game, the discipline, the belonging, the love ripples outward
from the hoop dreams that stretch
across the Central District and Rainier Valley to the civic leaders, teachers,
musicians and entrepreneurs who once ran those same Metro League floors.
The story of Seattle basketball is also the story of Seattle itself, and no.
One, no one, no one has carried that story with more devotion,
with more clarity than tonight's present.
Doctor Abe is a professor, a writer and historian with a PhD in education.
For nearly three decades, he has explored the intersections
of race, culture, gender, and communication in this city and beyond.
His book, Emerald Street traced the history of hip hop in Seattle.
His latest projects, years in the making, tells
the story of Seattle high school basketball with the same care
that has poured his scholarship, his heart, and his memory into making
sure this history is preserved, honored and heard.
I've had the privilege of walking alongside him in this work,
and I can tell you this is a labor of love.
I love for the game, for the city, and for the young people
who made something extraordinary here.
So tonight,
Seattle in open your ears, open your imagination,
and remember that what you're about to hear is not just about basketball.
It's about who we are, where we've been,
and where we just might go.
It is my honor to welcome Doctor Arthur.
- Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
I always appreciate you.
I appreciate you, Marcus.
Thank you for that, wonderful introduction.
I appreciate it.
let me first start off by saying,
I, I want I want to say thank you.
And I want to give a shout out to for culture and for helping to sponsor
this event, as well as Cvu to Crystal
and Morris for hosting me at this event.
And, I appreciate it more
than, you know, very much, very much, very much so.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
I would also like to introduce, as you've just heard, the one and only Marcus
Harrison Green on the, on the introduction and also providing the live soundtrack,
the one and only vitamin D.
before we start, I would just like to take a moment
to acknowledge, the passing, doctor Quinton Taylor.
he was
somebody who was a giant in the field of history.
The man literally wrote the book on black Seattle.
he was a mentor to me.
He was a collaborator.
I called him my academic dad.
so that that loss, is great.
and, however, I know that,
carrying on his legacy with projects like this,
is something that he, he looks down on and has a smile on his face.
And, in fact, we will be seeing, some of his work here, tonight.
That will help give us a little bit of context for we'll be talking about.
Okay.
So our presentation tonight will be divided into three parts.
The first part is part one, early Seattle high school basketball.
And evolution years 1896 to 1979.
Part two the ESPN influence
from 1980 to 1999 and part three
The Arrival from 2000 to present.
And now we get ready for part one
basketball was invented in 1891 by Doctor James Naismith,
Canadian PE teacher at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Now, my theory, my working theory is that,
it's spread around the country very quickly.
And it was able to spread because there was already
a national network, a YMCA was that existed.
And as basketball was being presented as a sport activity that could be
that could be done
in inclement weather if it's snowing or raining outside,
it quickly spread across the country as,
as a new alternative, a new option,
for people, young people primarily, who, wanted to get exercise
in an organized teams, game slash sports format.
but had to stay inside because of outside weather.
and it is this, swiftness of,
spreading around the country that only five years later,
not only has the sport made it all the way to Seattle, which is literally
almost the other tip of the country, not only has it made it to Seattle,
but in 1896, we see in the Seattle Times
a story about a game between
who. Well, let's take a look.
We here and in and in an article about the game,
it says the opening contest will be a short match between the teams
from the high school and the ballot Athletic Club.
the game was taking place in the armory, which is, at the Seattle Center
of the Seattle Center center house.
Now, if you notice, it says the high school at this time,
it says that because at this time, Seattle only had one high school.
And so it was that high school, from that team, that that team
from that high school that was going to play the ballot, athletic Club.
Now, an interesting thing that we have is
the fact that girls were playing high school basketball, too.
And in an article dated from 1901,
there is a preview, not just the Seattle High School
girls team, but they are playing the Portland High School girls team.
And so we had interstate travel, for girls
high school basketball in the early 1900s.
And now
it wasn't until 1922, the 19 2223 season
that, the first boys state tournament was organized.
And the winner of that first state tournament was Walla Walla
Walla Walla, beating Prosser in that first boys state tournament.
So that took place.
That tournament was in 1923.
It wasn't until 1945 that a Seattle school won state,
and that school was Lincoln High School, located in the Wallingford neighborhood.
And that's just that's just the beginning.
Because as we get so let's let's call it the post-World War Two era,
as we move past World War Two further into the 1940s,
toward the later 1940s, one of the first kind of stars
to emerge in the Seattle high school basketball scene was Bob Briggs.
And Bob, who Briggs went to Queen Anne.
And after he finishes at Queen Anne,
he goes to University of Washington.
And what happens with Bob who?
Briggs at the University of Washington is that they have a team
that has a kid from Garfield on it, and it has a couple of other local area kids.
And that team at U-dub becomes the first men's team
at the University of Washington to make it to the Final 4 in 1953.
they lose in that
semifinal game to the defending national champion Kansas Jayhawks
and their legendary coach, Fogg Allen.
but they win the consolation game and finished third
in the nation in 1953.
So here you have these high school kids coming, going to U-dub,
these local kids going to U-dub and putting on for the school.
And it makes it to the first five, their first final four, first final
four in school history.
Now as we go through this talk and this discussion,
you're going to see that it is impossible to separate the social and cultural
and political trends that were going on at the time from basketball.
And so what we have here is an example of kind
of what we would call the turning point for the black community in Seattle,
quoting from a book called Emerald Street.
I understand it's a good read, but the author is a jerk.
quote.
The turning point for Seattle's African-American population can be traced
to 1940, when black people made up about 1% of the city's total population.
The start of World War II meant that jobs were available
in the defense industries at companies like Boeing, and between 1940 and 1950,
the black population grew from just under 4000 to nearly 16,000,
an increase of 413%.
Now, when we talk about war jobs, we're talking about jobs
that black people knew they could be eligible for
because there was an executive order that stated that any corporation
that was doing business with the government in the war effort
could not discriminate in hiring on the basis of race.
and so we can see
how the, the, the,
the population begins to shift.
in 1940, as I said, just
just under 4000 people, black people were living in Seattle
by 1945, around the end of the war, it was estimated around 10,000.
We're living here now by 1950, just under 16,000.
And by 1960, almost 27,000 black people were calling Seattle home.
it's also useful to pay attention to the overall population trends
as it was happening at the time.
In 1940, the overall population of Seattle was right around 368,000.
by the time you get to 1960,
that total population is over 550,000.
So not only was the black community experiencing rapid growth,
but the city overall was really in a boom time when when,
many, many, many thousands of people were moving here
over, a relatively short time period.
Now, one of the things that
would go on in, in these war time jobs was that
people would move somewhere for the job during the war,
but then when when the war was over, they would move back,
maybe they would move home, or maybe they would move somewhere else.
Well, in the case of Seattle, there was encouragement
for not only for black people to stay, but for more black people to move here.
I'm quoting from, from an article, that I wrote with
the one and I co-wrote with the one and only Quint Taylor,
and it says, quote, in fact, by 1951, national Black News publications
such as the Chicago Defender called Seattle a, quote, race relations frontier
and ranked it as one of the best cities in the nation for African-Americans.
It urged eastern blacks to move there so
if you
have the Chicago Defenders and old school black publication,
and with a platform like that, if they're speaking in such glowing terms
about Seattle, that may have an influence on
whether or not black people not only just consider moving to Seattle,
but whether they actually do it and follow
through.
Now, as far as the schools go,
we're getting into a time where as we as we're talking about the 1950s
and 60s, we're getting into a time where there are enough people,
living here to where there's not just one high school anymore.
There are a number of high schools, Garfield being one of them.
And so I'm quoting again, quote, Seattle School District's
census information from 1962 indicated that Garfield High School
had become the first predominantly black high school in the state,
with African-American students making up 51.4% of the student body.
Franklin High School, Garfield's closest neighboring high school to
the south, was second with 9.2% African-American students.
So this is this is, again, we cannot separate
the social and cultural from the basketball section because,
what this is really saying is that this is because of redlining,
because when black people moved to Seattle during this time,
they were only able to live in the Central District.
So naturally, Garfield became populated more and more
with these children of these families that were moving to Seattle.
So that means that as we're getting through the 50s, that slow buildup
is, is is coming across in terms of, Garfield's black population.
This shows up in 1955.
And there is a headline that says Garfield
Beats O'Dea for state title.
this is 1955.
my wife and I just went to that same championship game like three years ago.
So some things never change.
Where Garfield Play-Doh day.
but along with that headline is a picture.
what's interesting about this picture is
you see the Garfield team celebrating after their win.
But if you look, you also see that this is a mixed race squad.
This is an integrated squad,
and it is most certainly
the first integrated metro team to win state.
And in all likelihood, it's probably the first team period in the state.
the first, racially mixed team, in the state, to win state.
And so think about it like this.
If you
remember the, Denzel Washington movie, Remember the Titans,
that movie was about, a high school in Virginia
that had been recently integrated, and there were black kids and white kids
now playing on the same football team, that team.
It's a true story. That team goes undefeated,
wins the state title, and they made a movie about it.
But that movie was set when that story happened in 1971.
This happens in 1955.
Perhaps somebody needs to make a movie about this particular
Garfield High School team.
I don't know.
What.
Now, as I was saying earlier,
the steady increase in the population of the city
meant that there were more schools and more schools need to be created.
More elementary, more middle schools, and more high schools.
And so as you get to the end of the 1950s, the Seattle school district sees,
the need for some organization, amongst these schools.
And so the idea there at first there was just a city league where
only Seattle city schools play, but then
the Seattle School district, partners
with, the Shoreline School District and the Edmonds School District.
And as an article says,
about this, quote, shoreline and Ingram both joined
with City League schools for the 1959 60 basketball campaign.
And the Metro League was born end quote.
I'm going to keep kind of making this point
about how you can't separate the two.
You can't separate the social from the athletic,
at least in this conversation.
because by the time you get to the 1960s and into the 70s, you start
having the civil rights era
and the civil rights era, at least in Seattle, there were three main
issues around civil rights.
In Seattle, it was employment discrimination,
was housing discrimination.
It was de facto school segregation.
Now, in the Washington Constitution, segregated schools are prohibited.
However, the
fact that black people were basically
only allowed to live in the city,
Garfield, almost, and schools like Horace Mann became like 90% black.
And so it was in fact a segregated situation.
And the idea of, city leaders was to bus
some of these black kids up to schools up north
in the hopes that they would be getting equal education.
And so kids
born and raised in the city
now all of a sudden were being sent to places like Roosevelt.
One of these kids was James Edwards and James Edwards.
CD native ends up going to Roosevelt.
His neighborhood school would have been Garfield, but he is bus to Roosevelt.
And in 1973, James Edward Lee
James Edwards leads Roosevelt to a state championship.
So here we see an example of Seattle school district bussing policy,
literally changing the course of history as it goes to high school basketball.
James Edwards eventually goes to the University of Washington
and is then selected, drafted into the NBA.
if anybody saw The Last Dance, James Edwards was on that,
Detroit Pistons bad boys team that won back to back titles in 89 and 90,
I want to say, and he was part of those Pistons teams
that was beating the crap out of Michael Jordan
as he was working his way, trying to become a champion.
James Edwards also happened to be on the 1996
Chicago Bulls team that beat the Sonics in the finals.
Now, if we're talking about players getting more attention
in this area, a good example of that would have been Kim Stewart.
Kim Stewart in 1974, Ballard High School,
senior was named an All-American.
And, he went and played in the Capital Classic in Washington, DC.
Now, the Capital Classic would eventually become the McDonald's All-American game.
and so here we have the first, you know, probably the first, high school
All-American, at least getting that kind of attention that they did.
If we're calling the modern era, you know, my lifetime,
which means the 70s, then we're talking about a shift
in how Seattle basketball players are viewed by people outside of Seattle.
I think people here always understood that there was talent,
but now people outside are starting to recognize
just as a quick, historic aside,
in an article talking about Kim Stewart being an All-American,
there was this there was this sentence, quote,
the top, the top or top vote getter on the 40 player
squad was chosen by coaches or chosen by coaches and sportswriters,
was six foot 11 inch Moses Malone of Saint Petersburg,
Virginia, who led his team to back to back Virginia state championships.
Moses Malone would end up being a Hall of Famer.
Great player, ends up being a Hall of Famer.
Now again, with the overlap, the socio political overlap,
I said that the first boys state tournament had been played in 1923.
Well, the 1972 title
nine was passed and title nine says, quote,
no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex,
be excluded from parties or participation in be denied the benefits of
or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity
receiving federal financial assistance.
This means if you have a boys basketball team,
you're gonna have to have a girls basketball team.
If you have a boys swim team, you're gonna have to have a girls swim team.
If you have a boys state basketball tournament,
you're going to have to have a girls state basketball team.
And so in
1974, the first girls state
basketball tournament was held in Washington.
Wahpeton won that first title.
Wahpeton, Eastern Washington, maybe around Yakima, I believe.
Okay.
However, in the article announcing that Wahpeton had
won that first state tournament lakes.
It also noted that Lakeside had won, had come in third place,
and that the Garfield girls had come in fourth place.
I mentioned
just a little bit ago about the increased attention
that players were starting to get, as we move further into the 1970s.
And one example of that in 1975 would have been Clint Richardson.
Clint Richardson played at O'Day,
and he got offers.
An article talking about this.
Notice that, Clint Richardson received 300 scholarship offers,
which seems crazy, but he was that good.
Now, interestingly enough, Clint Richardson, when it was time
to go to college, decides to go to Seattle.
You and you know, it's not like Seattle.
That may be surprising now to some people, but it's not like Seattle.
You didn't have, history to it. Seattle.
You made it to the championship game of the NCAA tournament in 1958
with a young man named Elgin Baylor, who would go on to become a Hall of Famer.
so Clint Richardson plays at Seattle U.
He gets drafted into the NBA and he in 1983 Clint Richardson is is on
the Philadelphia 70 Sixers
championship team that wins the NBA title.
And also on that team are doctor J.
And Moses Malone.
And this trend keeps going
because in 1970, five and 1976,
you have Cleveland winning back to back state championships
and the
they have a couple of, of of, quality players on their team.
Cleveland. And,
what where do they decide to go?
They decide to go to Seattle, you two.
And so now at this time in the mid 70s Seattle, you has this
stacked team of all these local players on it.
You have Carl Irving, you have Joanne Oldham, you have Keith Harrell.
And Clint Richardson.
and Joanne Oldham would go on to be drafted
and have a lengthy career in the NBA as well.
So as we close out the 1970s,
a couple of, key coaching hires happened in 1979.
One of them is it Al Harrington, is hired to coach the Garfield boys.
The other is that Sandy Schneider is hired to coach the Lakeside Girls.
Each of these, Al Harrington and Sandy Schneider,
will finish their careers with five state championships apiece.
Okay, so as we move into the 1980s, a couple of things begin to happen.
A couple of trends begin to happen.
Well, one is that you have Garfield, the Garfield boys in 1980 winning state,
and then you also have the Garfield girls winning state.
This is the first time
that a metro League team wins
both boys and girls state tournaments in the same year.
Okay, now playing on that
Garfield girls team that year was one Joyce Walker.
And Joyce Walker goes from averaging.
Joyce Walker goes from averaging 38 a game in that last state tournament.
She plays in to going to LSU
does not go to U-dub
and I go to Seattle. You
she goes to LSU and at LSU she is a two time
All-American and is still left there as the all time leading scorer.
obviously, the the opportunities for women
playing professional basketball are not near what they are today.
and so, Joyce Walker plays a little bit overseas.
and then she ultimately becomes, one of the first women
to play for the Harlem Globetrotters.
And it is difficult for me to really kind of articulate for younger people,
the level of popularity that the Harlem Globetrotters enjoyed during the 1980s.
But if you if you think about maybe, maybe a decent comparison is like the the,
the And1 Mixtape Tour which took was like the 2000s, I think something like that.
that the Globetrotters were going around the country,
around the world, really selling out arenas in the way that, that, that
that popular And1 mixtape Tour was and and and it was in the And1 Mixtape Tour.
It was about basketball, but it wasn't about missed.
It was about the show as much as it was about basketball.
And this was certainly the case with the Globetrotters.
Now here,
we here, we start to see the trend become a little bit more pronounced.
So Jojo Buchanan,
O'Day, Gay.
He is a highly sought after recruit, a national recruit,
and he has u-dub on his list.
But it's when it's time for him to pick a college.
He picks Notre Dame.
And there's an interesting, trend that is revealed out of this. Now,
I want to
reference an article that came out in like 2006.
I want to say, and it's like, where are they now?
Article.
And it's about Jojo right now.
Here's the key line that I want to quote out of this article.
Quote, more commonly referred to as Jojo
Buchanan, was the first of Seattles ESPN influenced hoop recruits to leave
town, eagerly headed for far away destinations in 1982.
It's important to remember that ESPN was launched in 1979.
And look, I'm a kid who remembers watching TV
when the channel choices were four, five,
seven, nine, and 11.
Okay, so when cable comes out, it's more channels than I had ever imagined before.
But not only do you have more channels, but you have specialty channels
like ESPN, which is a 24 hour sports network.
Now, I remember coming home and watching Big Monday,
the games that they would have on Mondays on ESPN.
But what it also did was it
it broadcast these games into the living rooms of people everywhere,
but more specifically to this conversation,
into the living rooms of young hoopers
who now we're starting to see themselves, perhaps in the case of Seattle,
not starting to see themselves, perhaps going somewhere besides Seattle,
or maybe somewhere besides the University of Washington.
If you're getting to see Kentucky, if you're getting to see North Carolina,
if you're getting to see UCLA,
if you're getting to see Notre Dame, you're getting to see
these blueblood programs and you're an elite prospect.
The atmosphere, the competition, it's attractive.
It's seductive.
And so
and so as we move forward from here,
for all the elite prospects that are coming out,
there will be this tension about where what will you do when you graduate?
Will you stay here and play or will you go somewhere else?
And that still exists to an extent today.
Now, one of the first kind of,
examples after Jojo,
becomes Quin Snyder and Quin Snyder at Mercer Island,
finally wins a state title for the,
for the legendary coach, Ed Pebble.
And he is thinking about perhaps going to u dub.
It was on his list.
Okay, he's a McDonald's All-American.
Quin Snyder is the first McDonald's All-American.
Like I said, Kim Stewart played in what became the McDonald's
All-American game in the 1970s.
But Quin Snyder was the first
actual McDonald's All-American to go and play in the game from here.
And so as he's thinking about where he's going to go, he makes his choice.
And his choice is to go to Duke.
And he joins a young coach, K,
who was just in the infancy of building what would become, a Hall of Fame career.
and Quin Snyder was actually kind of rewarded in a way,
because Duke ends up making it to the Final 4 in 1989,
when the Final Four was held here in Seattle at the Kingdom.
So he had the opportunity to come back as a member of Duke's team,
playing in the Final Four in Seattle.
This tension continues throughout the 1980s.
In 1988, you have someone like Doug Christie, who wins the state
tournament, leads Rainier Beach to two state in 1988
is is two a player of the year I believe
and he decides to go to Pepperdine.
You have someone like Bill Ellerby, Garfield,
another nationally recruited player.
He decides to go to Cal Berkeley.
And so that's what I mean about the tension about staying versus going.
however, some people did stay.
You have Rhonda Smith now. Rhonda Banchero.
she went to Franklin, she went to U-dub,
and then she was drafted into the ABL,
by the Seattle Reign, she played some overseas.
And then she eventually becomes the first woman from Seattle drafted into the WNBA.
I talked a little bit about at the end of the 70s about,
some significant coaching moves that took place at that time
and perhaps the it could be argued the most
consequential coaching move that happened in
the 90s was the departure of Francis Williams.
And Francis Williams was the coach who had, Coach Doug
Christie had beach to that state title for personal reasons.
Francis Williams has to leave,
his coaching position at Rainier Beach.
And who takes over for him?
A long time assistant named Mike with that
and Mike with that has gone on in the roughly 30 years
that he's been coaching beach, he's going on to win countless metro titles,
countless district titles, and I believe he's sitting right now
at ten state championships far and away more than anybody else.
So it is not a stretch to say that, Mike, that that is one of,
if not the greatest high school coach in state history.
The stay or go keeps popping its head up.
in the mid 90s.
You have someone like Donald Wise.
He goes to Lake Washington, the son of the legendary Slick Watts.
He goes to Lake Washington.
He he decides to come to the University of Washington.
That list is also on that.
you dub is also on Jason Terry of Franklin's list.
Jason Terry wins Back-To-Back state championships at Franklin,
but then he decides to go to Arizona.
You can't really argue with the results of that decision because Jason
Terry wins a national championship in Arizona in 1997.
He's the National College Player of the year in 1999, and in 2011,
he wins a world championship in the NBA with the Dallas Mavericks
as they defeat LeBron James in the Miami Heat.
This means that Jason Terry has achieved the elusive championship
trifecta where he is a state champion, he is a national champion
and he's a world champion.
Now, AEW has been around for some time.
but in the 90s, it really starts to kind of coalesce
primarily around a couple of programs in particular.
One of them is, friends of who, founded by,
then SuperSonics head coach George Karl with his own money, I might add.
and he even after he is fired by the Sonics,
he continues to fund, friends of hoop.
And in doing this, George Karl was really continuing a legacy
of Sonics coaches engaging with the local high school community.
That goes all the way back to Bill Russell when he was coaching the Sonics.
Then you had Lenny Wilkins, and then you had people like Bernie Bickerstaff.
So, so Sonics coaches engaging the local high school,
community was not something that was, that was new.
And, and so the, the, the
level of talent that has come through friends of hoop has been amazing.
And it's been going strong, for the last, what, 30 plus years?
And on the other hand, you have the, the, the,
the creation of what is probably
one of the best on the West Coast, probably in the discussion
for one of the top AEW programs in the country.
and this happens when,
the Seattle style basketball academy,
combines with the Rotary Boys and Girls Club.
And what you end up with is rotary style.
And it kind of reminds me a little bit of, the massive monkeys, origin story.
massive monkeys are Beacon Hill based, breaking crew who have won not one, but
two world breaking championships and up on, at the Jefferson Community Center.
you would have there were two crews.
One was, massive crew, and the other were the incredible style monkeys.
And when these two crews came together, they became massive monkeys.
And so that story just kind of reminds me of how,
rotary style came about,
founded by Dan Finkel and, Darryl Hennings.
And they have put so much the, the amount of talent that has gone through
rotary is truly impressive, truly impressive.
And an article, about rotary, it talks about,
the Seattle to NBA pipeline.
As you get to the end of the 90s,
the whole question of stay versus go still remains.
You have Jamal Crawford.
He leaves beach to state in 1998.
And then as a senior in 1999, there's the question, what is he going to do?
Where's he going to go?
He decides to go to Michigan.
He plays there for one year.
his freshman year, declares for the NBA draft and is, drafted eighth overall.
He becomes, Sixth man of the year.
He wins that award three times.
And I think there should be something said with regard to
the style that he brought to the game.
Jamal Crawford is universally loved in the basketball community.
It's not just because he he's a he's a great guy or a great player.
It's the charisma with which he played the game and the obvious love
that he showed for that game.
and again, it's difficult to argue with him going to Michigan
because this is all turned out great for him.
In fact, he's even fashioned himself a very, nice broadcasting career
where as NBC has regained the rights to broadcast NBA games,
they have brought on Jamal Crawford as one of their caller
analysts.
So as we close out the 1990s, again,
we have the overlap between the social and the athletic.
And, in this case, it's the 1998 creation of the King Holiday Whoop Fest.
And this was played, it was played both at SPU and at heck yeah, that you dub.
And what this really does is it starts off where it's the top teams
that play on Martin Luther King Day, the top teams in the city.
Then it starts to be the top teams in the state, then they start,
then they start to bring in top teams from around the country.
Because I, I my sense is that people in other places started to realize
that if you really wanted to test yourself, Seattle was a good place to go.
The top teams in Seattle.
Yeah, I'm saying it wasn't going to be no pushover.
And so that sense of competition, I feel like, really came out
in terms of the kind of teams, kinds of teams
that were coming to participate in the MLK Hoop Fest.
and lastly, I think I would say that it's only appropriate
for a tournament
like that, a hoop fest like that to be played
in the only county in the United States that is named after Martin Luther King.
now as we get into the 2000.
during this time, Seattle high school basketball starts to enter the local
and national consciousness
in a variety of ways, not always in the, in, in Metro League gyms.
and one example would be
the number of McDonald's All-Americans.
In the early to mid 2000, there was a plethora
of McDonald's All-Americans that came through, one.
An example would be Luke Ritenour.
Now Luke Ritenour went to Blaine.
I understand Blaine is not Seattle, but it's the region.
Okay.
you have someone like Aaron Brooks who went to Franklin.
someone like Marvin Williams from Bremerton.
someone like Martell Webster, Seattle Prep, John Brockman.
Snohomish.
Kirsten Thompson, Monroe,
Micah Downs, Juanita and Spencer Hawes, Seattle Prep.
Now, out of all those people I named Spencer Hawes,
Kirsten Thompson, and John Brockman went to U-dub.
The rest went to either Oregon.
Marvin Williams went to North Carolina.
Martell Webster was going to go to U-dub.
But he didn't.
He had he had, he had a great McDonald's All-American game
and was all of a sudden like, okay, I think I'll put my name in the draft.
This was during a time when you could go straight from high school to the draft.
You didn't have to spend spend that one year in college.
Another way that it,
the Seattle basketball kind of was imprinted on
the consciousness was the 2004 documentary The Heart of the game.
This film followed the run of the Roosevelt Girls team
to the state championship in 2004.
And, in that game, in that state championship game,
they beat a Joyce Walker coached Garfield girls team.
Now, the interesting thing about this is that the next year, Coach
Walker got her team back to the state championship in this time one.
In doing this, she became the first person
to, as a player, lead her team to a state championship
and then also do the same as a coach at the same school.
I talked a little bit earlier about the state versus go, we're here, here.
It was here was a big deal. Stay.
In 2005, the Washington men's basketball
team had a number of Seattle players
Brandon Roy, Nate Robinson, Wil Conroy, Trey Simmons
and what they were able to do were a couple of firsts.
They were able to become the first Washington
men's team to win the Pac ten tournament,
and they also became the first U-dub men's team
to earn a number one seed in the NCAA tournament.
And in this way, they were similar to that 1953 team
that had Bob Briggs on it that I talked about earlier,
this collection of local kids who were able to come together
and do something that had never been done at these schools, and this was this.
This was made possible by the fact that so many of these kids
that I just name their had opportunities to go other places,
but were determined to stay here and put on for the town.
I talked a little bit
earlier about Martell Webster and how after he had that
great McDonald's All-American game, he decided to go straight to the draft.
Well, he does do this.
He goes to the draft and in the 2005 draft,
okay, Martell Webster is selected number
six overall by the Portland Trailblazers.
But also drafted number two that year was Marvin Williams.
He had spent a year at North Carolina, but he graduated from Bremerton.
So what that meant was in the 2005 draft,
Seattle area players went two,
went in the top six.
Now, one important thing to think about, especially as we move into this time
period into the 20s, is the ways in which new technology
began to play a role in how local sports were covered.
And the example that we have here,
is the website whoop girls.com
girls g u r l z.com.
And this is started by, Glenn Nelson.
He's an award winning, sportswriter,
for the Seattle Times at one point.
And he saw a niche that needed filling.
There were plenty.
There was plenty of coverage around, boys high school basketball,
who the elite players were,
where they were thinking of going, who was recruiting them.
But there was very little, if any, of that for girls.
And so Glenn Nelson, in creating this site, saw a need
for that same coverage of who are the elite girls players,
who was recruiting them, where are they thinking about going?
And this became enough of a thing to wear.
In 2008, ESPN purchases the site
from Glenn Nelson.
Another example that wasn't necessarily,
in Seattle basketball per se, but involved a Seattle basketball
person would have been Tony Rhoden in 2010, and he was a part
of the U-17 team that won the gold medal at the Fiba World Championships.
a quote
from Tony Rhoden, fairly excited, at having won the gold medal.
He says, quote, I'm going to hang it up somewhere in my room,
but I'm wearing it all day and I'm not taking it off.
I'm getting on the plane with it.
When we land in my city, I'll be wearing it.
I might sleep wearing.
Another example is Ed Peploe,
legendary Mercer Island coach.
And in 2012, Ed Pebble is awarded the Morgan Wootten Award
for lifetime Achievement in, high school basketball.
And this is awarded by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
each year, one boy's coach wins it and one girl's coach wins it.
And in this particular year, Ed Pebble was the boy's coach who won.
So even when you have
historic elements, let's say, of,
a story like the Youth of women, we have a local tied to it.
So in 2016, the husky women became the first team
in state history to reach the women's final Four.
Now, that team was led by Kelsey Plum, who
when she was finished, was the all time Division one leading scorer.
However, another crucial player on that run
to the Final Four was Talia Walton.
Natalia Walton was from Federal Way.
She, she was she, playing for the Huskies in that Final Four?
She was the Robin to Kelsey Plum's Batman.
And she herself gets drafted, into the WNBA
by the Los Angeles Sparks.
Okay, here's here's something that happens on the court.
The kind of that
that that plays into what I'm talking about with the national consciousness.
in 2015, Chief
Self is playing a game against Garfield, and,
Chief Self has the
ball under their basket, the basket they're trying to score at.
And, the inbounds play a lob is thrown to Hartford.
Yacine and Yacine.
He jumps high obviously.
But he's kind of, buoyed up and jostled to where he gets up even higher in the air
and they're saying chin over the rim as he catches this alley oop and dunks it.
Now that in itself would have been an amazing play.
I'm sure you can you can Google it. You can find it.
That in itself would have been an amazing play.
However to add on to that,
that play that night was the number one play on the Sportscenter
top ten countdown.
Okay,
so now you want the previously mentioned Brandon Roy.
He has finished playing his professional career
and he is coming back to coach.
And in 2016 he accepts the boys job, head coaching job at Nathan Hale.
This coincides with the arrival of the Porter family
and Michael Porter Junior is the top rank.
He's he's coming in to be a senior.
He is the top ranked senior in his class, and he enrolls at Notre Dame.
And he and Brandon Roy have this kind of dynamic duo combination
of coach and star player.
Now, usually during the,
winter holidays, the school break, the winter vacation.
Often top high school teams will travel around the country
and play in these holiday tournaments
against some of these other teams from different parts of the country.
Well, in the aftermath of that and on those trips,
Nathan Hale had beaten Oak Hill.
If anything, if anybody knows anything about power, high schools and prep
programs, you know, Oak Hill, Oak Hills put a gang of people in the league.
Okay. And I also beat Sierra Canyon.
Sierra Canyon is another high profile program in Los Angeles.
you may remember that LeBron James junior recently went there.
So by the time all that takes place, Nathan Hale is ranked as the consensus
number one team in the country, not in a state in the country.
Nathan Hale goes
on to win the state championship.
Michael Porter Junior is named state player of the year.
He's named Most Outstanding player at a state tournament.
and he wins MVP of the McDonald's All-American game, possibly
one of the most distinguished players ever to come out of Seattle.
and I've actually heard some people argue
that this Nathan Hale team may be they finished the season undefeated.
Maybe the greatest high school team, boys high school team in state history.
I'm not saying it is, but they certainly have an argument.
Usually when that discussion is had, one of the other teams
it's brought up are the, a team known as the Super Dogs
or an undefeated Garfield team in the 1970s.
But it's an interesting discussion to have
in the aftermath of,
Nathan Hale's ultimate triumph.
Brandon Roy leaves the coaching position at Nathan Hale and goes to Garfield,
and he wins a couple more state championships at Garfield.
and seems poised seem poised to do more of the same when suddenly,
within the last week or two, he was fired, with,
fairly vague explanation.
and certainly people in the community have had questions, and,
and there's certainly I myself, as a
graduate of Garfield, am interested in learning more about that situation.
Not only was Brandon Roy fired as the coach of the boys team,
but Roy Dale smiley, another Garfield alum who has connections to
the community, was also fired as, coach of the girls team.
So we will see what happens with that.
Now, when we're talking about
recognition for this area,
it goes beyond simply people, because, you know, people that live here,
we're homers.
You know, we have a little bit of a slanted view.
but then when it comes to people who have impressive basketball resumes,
who are saying something about this place
that hits a little bit different because it's it's it's a validation.
Okay.
Now PJ Carr listen Mo was broadcasting
a University of Washington men's game on TV offering color, color analysis.
And during that broadcast he said, quote, the Metro League in Seattle
is the best high school league in America and quote,
now it it is different in this sense.
It's the only high school league in America that has public schools,
private schools and religious schools.
No other high school league in America has all of those things.
and it's difficult to
quantify, whether it is or not, whether it's the best or not.
But we must remember who's saying this.
PJ Carr m.o his basketball resume is fantastic.
He coached Seton Hall
to the national championship game in the 1989 Final Four.
That was held at the Kingdom here in Seattle.
He he was an assistant
on the original Dream Team, the 1992 Olympic team in Barcelona.
He was an assistant on that team, and he coached multiple NBA teams.
He coached the Golden State Warriors, he coached the sides.
And so this is not somebody who is just shooting off the hip.
This is somebody who knows who has spent his lifetime
evaluating basketball talent.
Interestingly enough,
a mere six months later,
this this, this
this take by PJ was validated
because in the two, two, 2022 NBA draft,
we have three Metro League players going in the first round.
Paolo Banchero goes number one overall.
Tari Eason from Garfield goes number 17.
And Marjan Beauchamp I believe he played both at Garfield and Rainier Beach.
He goes number 24.
and so this is just like I said, this is this is a bit of validation
for somebody, for people who were scoffing at PJ, calling someone
when he said what he said that next NBA draft, really gay, really gave validation.
And it's not just players.
As we get ready to go into the 2526 NBA season,
10% of NBA head coaches are Seattle basketball guys.
Doug Christie at Sacramento went to Rainier Beach, Mitch Johnson
at San Antonio went to O'Dea and Quin Snyder
at Atlanta went to Mercer Island.
And it's not even just not even, pro
coaches, Mercer Island's own Travis Cure just became the all time
winningest coach at Montana.
But while
the NBA stuff is great,
the glitz, the glamor, the money, the fame, the attention
I love, I love, love, love how it brings shine to our city.
And what this whole story
really is about is community.
One of the ways that community
plays out would be the crossover.
And this is Jamal Crawford's program, Pro-Am Summer League.
played out at at the gym at SPU for years
now, he has been bringing basketball royalty into town.
People like Kevin Durant,
Kobe Bryant, LeBron James.
And it allows the community, allows people in the stands
to see and interact with these players
in a way that is less sterile than an NBA game might be.
NBA is very NBA games are very slick and rehearsed
and very production value and and all this kind of thing here
you are amongst community at the crossover.
You are amongst community.
and it not only that,
it allows high school students to get on the court
with some of these guys that they only see on television
and measure themselves, see how good they really are,
and that kind of interaction
in that kind of community matters
when it comes to developing and and as it as it works with the
with the maturation as it kind of goes hand in hand with the maturation
of the a few programs here in the city, not just friends of hoop,
or rotary, but others like, Emerald
City and others that really serve to
allow for
skill development and identifying top talent.
that comes out of here.
I talked a little bit about Hoop Girl,
and this new form of media.
well, you also have people like Bill Libby, also known as the guru,
and he's known as the guru because of his exhaustive scouting
and reporting that he does.
He has, pre-season, predictions,
for first second team,
all Metro defensive team player of the year.
He has postseason awards that he gives out.
he refs all kinds of games in the summer league tournaments.
and so he is, like I said, this
new age community, grassroots type of media, and with him,
you have someone like, proof proven to play and proof
proof has he is the go to documentarian
as far as photos and video go.
of of
not just high school sports, but youth sports in general.
And the platforms that they are able to create for themselves means that
they don't need to wait for the Seattle Times or the Seattle P-i
to come and decide who to cover
when they are more community driven, they are more grassroots driven.
If they are at a game and they see a kid who looks outstanding,
they're going to go interview him immediately.
They're going to start getting that kid's name out there immediately.
And so the freedom that comes with building
your own platform, again, with the with the advancements of tech
and being able to build your own platforms, really makes a difference
in how we are now able to consume, high school basketball in this area.
If I'm talking about community,
I would be remiss if I did not mention
my son Dana, who played for our day, and my daughter Lila,
who play for Bush.
I love you both.
And finally,
you know,
there has been
a bit of focus on, like I said, The professional and the Collegian.
But again, I go back to what this story is really about is community.
And you have people who have walked the Seattle high School basketball path,
and it has led them to do many different things.
You have someone like former Governor Jay Inslee,
you have someone like the owner of Fats Chicken and Waffles, Erica White.
You have someone like, Grammy Award winning musician and rapper
Ishmael Butler, and you have someone like Seattle City councilwoman,
Joy Hollingsworth.
And it's these and many other folks
doing the work every day, and building up the fabric
that makes our community as vibrant as it is.
I want to say thank you very much
to everyone who was listening, everyone who tuned in.
I want to thank for culture.
I want to thank Kvue.
I want to thank Crystal.
I want to thank Reese.
I want to thank my wife Danielle, and I want to thank the one and only Marcus
Harrison Green and also the incomparable vitamin D I appreciate y'all.
Good night y'all. Peace.