The Hoop Hall

The Washington Wizards 2104 postseason starts today at 7 pm. So before my attention gets totally swayed in the direction of our first playoff run since 2008, I thought I should wrap up my thoughts on my recent trip to New England. I've talked about watching hoops in Springfield and finding what I hoped to find in the D-League in Maine in past posts. I've also covered an important side trip in Portland on my mini-brewery tour up there. But one of the most important reasons I visited New England this year was to make a pilgrimage to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame while I was in Springfield. After becoming a true certifiable hoops junkie, I figured it was time to go.

This was not my first trip to the Basketball Hall of Fame. I'd visited once before when my dad and I were both Knicks fans and my folks lived about 35 miles from the Hall in Connecticut. But it feels like a long basketball journey for me since that visit. I've now been a Wizards season ticket holder for 14 years and schedule my life around the NBA season, something I couldn't say the last time I was in Springfield, Massachusetts. I've become engrossed in the history of my own team and basketball in general with a focus on the pro game through reading books and watching movies in the last dozen plus years so I figured this time around I'd get a lot more out of a visit to the Hall.

After flying to Boston Friday morning, driving straight down to Springfield and making a cautionary, but as it turned out unnecessary, couple of hours long stop in the Mercy Hospital emergency room, I arrived at the museum that celebrates the birth and history of the greatest game ever invented. To be clear, the museum is not the NBA Hall of Fame (there's no such thing…yet) but instead covers basketball in all its incarnations both foreign and domestic and focuses as much on the amateur and collegiate game (yes, I'm deliberately separating those two) as it does on pro ball.

My first impression of the place was that I didn't remember the Hall of Fame this way from my previous visit. The museum is buried in a strip mall with a Subway, Cold Stone Creamery, a couple of bars and some retail stores I'd never heard of. I totally didn't recall all this. And for good reason based on some Googling when I got home. As it turns out, this is the third iteration of the Hoop Hall which opened in 2002 and in fact, I had never been here before. The Hall of Fame I visited with my dad is about a football field's length north of the current location, now converted into an L.A. Fitness gym. I was shocked to learn that the current facility was designed by respected architects Gwathmey Siegel. To me, it looked like a commodity strip mall and until I actually got all the way into the museum, I remained unimpressed.

After entering the museum property, we grabbed some tickets and then looked for the entrance to the Hall, something that required the assistance of a guide after asking for directions; the sequence of arrival is that confusing. Our visit started with an elevator ride, which is never a good way to start the journey through a building to me. It works in the Guggenheim Museum in New York; this is not the Guggenheim. The elevator let us out in the Honors Ring, which occupies the giant silver ball component of the building in the photograph above.

The Honors Ring contains photographs and career details of all the Hall's inductees and while to me this should be at the end of the museum sequence, it at least provides an instant immersion into the history of the game. Eventually, most visitors are going to recognize someone in this room unless they just started watching basketball in the last few years and have managed to remain blissfully ignorant of any and all of the game's pioneers.

For me, the Honors Ring meant seeking out Bullets and Wizards legends from the past. There are a total of 11 former Bullets and Wizards players currently inducted into the Hall of Fame, with a 12th (Mitch Richmond) on the way this fall. Only one of those 11 (Michael Jordan) played for the Wizards and most of the soon to be 12 played their best ball somewhere else. In the interest of time, I concentrated on finding the four who have had their number retired by the franchise, meaning Gus Johnson (class of 2010), Earl Monroe (class of 1990), Elvin Hayes (also class of 1990) and Wes Unseld (class of 1988).

Gus Johnson was selected by the Chicago Zephyrs (soon to be the Baltimore Bullets) in the 1963 draft and played nine years with the Zephyrs and Bullets before being traded to the Phoenix Suns in 1972. Johnson was released by the Suns but went on to win an ABA championship with the Indiana Pacers in 1973. Earl Monroe was drafted by the Bullets in 1967 and spent four years with the team before being traded to the New York Knicks in 1971 and helping the Knicks to their 1973 NBA Championship. Monroe, to me, is more a Knick than a Bullet, although he arguably had a greater impact on the game in Baltimore.

Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld both played on the Washington Bullets' 1978 championship team. Hayes spent the first four years of his career with the San Diego and Houston Rockets before being traded to the Bullets and helping the team to its three NBA Championship appearances in the 1970s. In 1981, he was traded back to the Rockets where he ended his career. Unseld is undoubtedly the franchise's greatest player, spending his entire career with the team from the time he was drafted in 1968 until his retirement in 1981. He won both Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player honors following the 1967-1968 season and presided over the franchise's most successful run ever in the 14 seasons he suited up for Baltimore and Washington. The franchise hasn't been the same since.

After the Honors Ring, we were directed into the History of the Game Gallery, a room whose entrance is presided over by a bronze statue of Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of basketball. Among major American team sports, basketball is unique in that its origin can be traced back to a single inventor on a specific date and time before which the game absolutely, unquestionably didn't exist.

The game was invented by Dr. Naismith in December 1891 while he was a physical education instructor at the International YMCA Training School (now Springfield College) in Springfield as a way to keep his students occupied during the New England winters when they were frustrated about having to exercise indoors. Naismith wrote the original 13 rules of the game down and pinned them to the gymnasium's wall before the first game was ever played. He originally requested two boxes for goals from the YMCA's staff but finding no boxes, elected to use peach baskets instead. I'm glad in a way. Although I never would have known it, I think I would have had a harder time being a boxball fan.

The original game was way different from the way it is played today. The first game was played with a soccer ball and dribbling was not permitted. The game also featured two teams of nine, because there happened to be 18 student's in Naismith's physical education class. I imagine the original game would be barely recognizable to fans of the current NBA game. The invention of the game is described in a video behind the bronze statue of Naismith in front of the History of the Game Gallery.

The History of the Game Gallery itself traces the game's spread and development from its beginnings in the YMCA system and then through the American Athletic Union (AAU) when the game outgrew the ability of the YMCA to manage the game's growth. It deals with the early professional leagues and the transfer of the game to the college level and its rise internationally. It also traces the development of the game's equipment, from the balls used to the design and manufacture of uniforms. The early woolen uniforms and smoking jacket like warmups (complete with pockets) on display in the center of the room are crazy. I can't imagine today's players competing or warming up in these things. 

Early gear in the History of the Game Gallery. Love the wool Celtics jersey.

The next room in the museum to the right of the History of the Game Gallery for me did a great job of crystallizing the start of the current NBA. Early on in basketball's development as a professional spectator sport, there were a number of regional leagues formed, mostly in the northeast and midwest, between the two world wars. At this time, before the development of jet travel, it was difficult to get anywhere outside of your immediate geography so most teams were clustered within few states. It's odd to think of Oshkosh and Sheboygan, Wisconsin being able to support teams but that's just where some of the early teams were located.

Eventually, two leagues, the National Basketball League (NBL) in the northeast and the Basketball Association of America (BAA) in the midwest became the dominant professional leagues. The NBL was important in standardizing the rules of professional basketball which had been in almost constant evolution since the game's invention. In 1948, the two leagues merged, creating a league which would eventually be renamed the National Basketball Association in 1949 and would continue under that name to the present day.

The same room that chronicles the development of professional ball also describes the NBA game's early days and the introduction of the most important development in the game's history: the introduction of the shot clock. The proverbial straw that broke the camel's back to need to speed up the game and stimulate more scoring came in 1950, when the Fort Wayne Pistons and the Minneapolis Lakers played to a final score of 19-18. I know a lot of people who criticize today's NBA game for too much scoring, claiming all you need to do is watch the last five minutes of the game to understand what happened. I can't imagine watching a game in which both teams scored fewer than 20 points. It would be worse than watching playoff hockey!

From this point, the Hall got a lot less interesting for me. We spent some time looking through the Players Gallery, Media Gallery and Coaches and Teams Gallery but the substance contained in the History of the Game Gallery were just not there. There are only so many uniforms and autographed balls and shoes I can look at in one day. The Media Gallery admittedly suffered from some of the interactive displays being inoperable, but ultimately I was there to learn about the history of the pro game and not the guys who covered it.

The last stop on my Hoop Hall tour was the Center Court on the ground level of the museum, a full size basketball court with a museum display on one side chronicling the development and history of the hoop itself, starting with Dr. Naismith's peach baskets and ending with today's NBA hoop and backboard. Since the place was relatively quiet the Friday I was there, I thought this would be a great opportunity to show off my shot on everything from the original peach basket to dropping in some Js from three point land on the main court.

When I lived in upstate New York, my primary source of exercise came from playing basketball down at the Cooperstown Elementary School (next to the addition I designed) and up at the Richfield Springs Central School near where I worked. While there were obvious deficiencies in my game (like my utter lack of ability to play defense), I always had a pretty good shot if I got going on any given day. It's been a few years since I've been on a court but I figured I could get right back into the groove like riding a bike or something. 

Not so much. The years away have not been kind to my game. My performance was quite honestly embarrassing. It took about four or five progressively closer shots for me to drop one in the peach basket and I never hit a shot from beyond the arc. I left humbled and felt the whole exercise in futility the next couple of days in my shoulder. I'm not as young as I once was clearly. At least I could still dribble properly. All in all a pretty humorous end to my trip. We moved on from here to a local bar, far more up my alley at this point in my life.

I know I'll come back here one day. I've promised myself I'll come take in Hall of Fame Enshrinement Weekend one day but I'm sort of waiting for a Wizards-related induction. Mitch Richmond this year doesn't count, despite him being in a Wizards uniform for a few seasons. Given the Wizards' fortunes of late, know I'll likely have to wait a while, unless somehow Antawn Jamison revives his career and squeaks by in a down year, so I may have to revise my philosophy. I'm not sure I can wait 20 years, assuming there's even someone who would qualify on our current roster. Until that time, I know I got something out of this year's visit and I'm glad I went. And I'll keep learning. I still have five or ten books on my shelves about basketball history I still haven't read.

Strip mall: Not the look I want for the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Courtside Again

It's the last full week of March, meaning we are less than one month from the end of the 2013-2014 NBA season. This past weekend found the Wizards on their last west coast swing of the year, one that netted them a disappointing 1-3 record. It also saw me back on the road to watch hoops for the third time this month and last time (I think) in this NBA season. I knocked out Philadelphia and Milwaukee earlier this month; this past weekend I spent some time in the NBA's minor league system on my second (potentially annual) NBDL trip. Last year I took a swing through Texas. This year, I picked New England and the first stop was the birthplace of basketball itself: Springfield, Massachusetts.

The last time I was in Springfield was in the late 1990s when I visited the Basketball Hall of Fame with my dad. I grew up about 35 miles away in Glastonbury, Connecticut and I never in my wildest dreams or nightmares imagined I would end up on vacation there 30 years or so after graduating high school nearby. It is what it is. It's funny how life works sometimes. But in visiting last weekend, I found a side of Springfield I never would have imagined or discovered had I not gone back. There's some genuine history worth discovering in that town and of course, there's a D-League franchise playing downtown. I'll strategically omit my time at the Hall of Fame while I was in town from this discussion so I can dedicate an entire post later on to my couple hours in that building.

On my first NBDL tour last February, I set out to get a flavor of what life in the minor leagues was like for the players, and, by extension, the fans. I intended to continue that theme this year and hoped to discover something new. One of the real treats of last year's trip was sitting courtside for the first time at a professional basketball game when I visited Hidalgo, Texas to watch the visiting Maine Red Claws take on the home Rio Grande Valley Vipers. When it came time to purchase game tickets for this trip and courtside seats were available in Springfield, I thought why not do it again. So I did.

Springfield and Hidalgo share a common thread in that both have minor league NBA franchises. But the similarities between the two cities pretty much end there. Hidalgo was established by Spanish settlers in 1749 but boasted few residents until well after it's founding and absorption into the United States. Today, the place has all of about 11,000 inhabitants. Springfield was established in 1636 as the northernmost outpost of the English Connecticut Colony and today has a population of a little more than 150,000 with a metropolitan area population of about 700,000.

Springfield's self appointed nickname is the "City of Firsts" and there are indeed a lot of firsts here, some important and some silly: first dictionary, first dog show in the United States, first American made automobile, first witch trial (enlightened! woo hoo!), first UHF television station, first "Springfield" and so on and so on. It's also the birthplace of Dr. Seuss, which I will refrain from discussing further than this one sentence because of my personal aversion to all things Dr. Seuss (too chaotic - makes my brain want to explode!). Despite having passed through the city many many times by car on my way from home to upstate New York and back over a slightly less than 10 year period, I didn't have any idea of Springfield's history. I guess we sometimes take the least interest in the stuff around us. Or at least maybe I do.

The Arsenal at the Springfield Armory.

But Springfield's greatest contribution to American history is arguably through George Washington and Henry Knox founding the Springfield Arsenal in the city in 1777. After Washington established the site for the Armory, the location was used as an arsenal (a place for weapons storage as I learned last weekend) during the Revolutionary War. After independence was achieved, manufacturing began in 1794 and the Armory maintained continuous operation until 1968, when the United States decided to privatize all weapons contracting.

The Amory produced the first American made musket in the year it opened and later produced the famous Springfield Rifle and M-1 Garand, which helped the allies win World Wars I and II respectively. As much as I loathe guns and the misinterpretation of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, I cannot deny that the Springfield Armory occupies an important place in the history of our nation and it's difficult to criticize anything which helped us win the two World Wars. The arsenal component of the Armory is now part of the National Park System and was worth the hour and a half inside the place to understand more about what happened there.

But the real attraction for me was basketball. Springfield acquired an NBDL team in 2009 and re-named the franchise the Armor in tribute to the city's importance in U.S. history. The franchise was moved from Anaheim where they were established as an expansion team to the league in 2006. In 2011, the team entered into a single affiliation with the Brooklyn Nets using a hybrid model, meaning the team is locally owned and operated with the exception of basketball operations, which is run by the Nets. This means the Armor run the same offensive and defensive schemes in Springfield as the Nets do at the NBA level, allowing them to assign players to the D-League without losing continuity in player development.

The first year in Springfield was not a good one for the Armor, posting a D-League worst-in-history 9-43 record. But failure one year does not necessarily breed failure the next in the NBDL due to the almost complete lack of roster stability year after year. Two years after their nine win season, the Armor finished the regular season first place in the Eastern Division. This year, the team is mired in the middle of the East Division with a losing record and likely on the outside looking in when it comes to playoff time.

Downtown Springfield's MassMutual Center.

The team plays in the 41 year old MassMutual Center right downtown. Of the four NBDL arenas I have visited to date, this is the only one in an urban environment, which I appreciate even though the area around the arena was less salubrious than I would have liked. I had actually been in the building before. The last time I was there was in 1989 to see the Moody Blues in what was at that time known as the Springfield Civic Center. Both the Moodies and the building have aged quite a bit since then although the building did manage to get a facelift, with a fairly attractive new skin added over the original concrete structure since the last time I was in town. The building seats about 7,300 for basketball, so it's about a third of the size of Verizon Center in Washington.

Like last year's trip, the price of D-League tickets this year was way lower than my Wizards season tickets; I quite honestly splurged for these tickets, opening up my wallet and spending $80 for my courtside seat. That seat in Washington will cost Wizards season ticket holders $1,650 per game next year. I love courtside seats and I'd love to spend one game sitting there in Washington someday even though I know it might cost a ton of money. The only drawback to courtside seats is the constant walking back and forth and standing in front of you that the coaches and players engage in. It makes watching the game challenging sometime, as shown at the top of this post and just below.

Even though the seat cost was lower, one thing comparably priced in the arena to the NBA level was beer, although the MassMutual Center's 20 fl. oz. domestic beers were a little more reasonable at $7.00 per cup than at Verizon Center (where they are $8.50). The best part of the beer sales action was the fact that Molson Canadian was considered domestic along with Bud Light and similar light-ish beers. Ironically, Samuel Adams, brewed in the same state as Springfield, is considered an import and costs fifty cents more. I stuck with the Molson!

Um, coach, can you move a little so I can watch the game?

I found that hoops in Springfield is much like Frisco, Hidalgo and Austin was last year, although it was nice to find the venue in a downtown area rather than in a suburban setting. The arena was about the same size as those three places but, unlike Frisco and Hidalgo, was equipped with a  center scoreboard and replay monitor. The place was packed, mostly with kids since it was apparently some kind of Read To Achieve event that included a several minutes long parade of what seemed like 500 or so kids around the perimeter of the court. It was also Fan Appreciation Night, which may have had an effect on the attendance. I was disappointed that we missed Superheroes and Fairy Tales Day by a couple of weeks. That would have been fun to see. They don't have that sort of event in D.C.

Watching D-League basketball in a filled, lively arena that looks like the MassMutual Center does on the outside makes it easy to forget what kind of desperation some of the guys on both teams are playing with. It looks so polished and professional despite the size of the arena. I just had to keep reminding myself that these guys are playing for something akin to minimum wage, just hoping to get to the NBA and some sort of reasonable payday. 

Some of the players are honestly just living out a dream, chasing something that likely won't ever happen for another year or two before moving on with their lives and hoping to land a career or at least a job. Others are former NBA players trying to get back into the league and the rest (which is a very small minority) are working hard and hoping someone at the NBA level notices something about their game which fills a spot on their squad either for game action or just to provide a body in practice. There's a lot of risk and very little hope at this level of ball but that very little hope is keeping some of these guys going day after day for probably less than $20,000 for a season plus some sort of per diem.

The game itself was competitive, probably the most exciting D-League game of the four I saw to this date, with the home team winning behind a strong third quarter where they pulled away and held on despite being down two at the half. Unlike some of the games I saw last year, which featured players I knew such as former Wizard Shelvin Mack and then-Rocket Royce White, there was nobody I was particularly focused on watching in this game on either team. Devin Ebanks, who was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers in the second round of the 2010 draft and was a top D-League prospect, was inactive for the Armor (I think honestly he quit the team). The only other recognizable name on either team was the visiting Canton Charge's Kyrylo Fesenko, who played four years with the Utah Jazz from 2007 to 2011. Although he played, he had little impact on the game despite his 10 rebounds.  I can't see him making it back to the NBA. He just doesn't look like he's in good enough shape to do so.

It ended up being a fun night and I'm glad I stopped in Springfield to find a place I never really knew and see some more D-League ball. Often when I travel, I have chance meetings with total strangers that enrich my trip. On this trip I actually had a chance meeting with a friend, which is astonishing to me that I would know someone in a 7,000 seat arena hosting a minor league basketball game. Through the magic of Facebook, with me lamenting a pre-game meal in a local bar festooned with New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox memorabilia, I found out my friend and fellow former Marillion obsessed fan Jeremy, who I knew from architecture school would be at the game with his son. It was good spending a half hour or so courtside catching up on some old times and current goings on. Worth every penny.

Catching up with an old friend courtside in the second quarter.