Avon's Cameron Hollins among three members of Pacers dunk team making Slam Ball impact

Cameron Hollins was mulling options for the dunk he wanted to try Sunday when he consulted the sideline.

"I looked at the bench and I saw coach Noah Ballou and I saw coach Brendan Kirsch," Hollins said. "And they didn't say it, they kinda mouthed it. They were like, 'Go ahead, give them the McNasty.' All I could tell was, 'McNasty,' and I knew what time it was."

A McNasty, Hollins said, is a "360 Eastbay," meaning a dunk that includes a 360-degree spin and requires the dunker to put the ball between his legs in the air. It's a nearly impossible move for someone to pull off in a basketball game when leaping off of flat ground. But in Slam Ball -- a made-for-TV hybrid sport having a renaissance this month that use trampolines and includes elements of basketball, football, hockey and acrobatics -- the vertical leaps and hang times of already impressive athletes are enhanced. So Hollins, a former hurdler and high jumper at Avon High School who has spent several seasons working with the Pacers Power Pack knew he'd have no trouble.

Hollins was taking part in a face-off, Slam Ball's stand in for foul shots that is effectively a one-on-one play that doesn't require any dribbling. He sprinted up to the first trampoline, set up about where a foul line would be, and jumped off two feet with both hands on the ball. He put it between his legs with his back still facing the basket, then completed the full spin right as he got to the rim where he threw down with his left hand. The dunk got an uproarious reaction from the fans at Cox Pavilion in Las Vegas and was celebrated on Slam Ball's official Twitter account as one of the dunks of the weekend.

"I saw I had the defender beat," Hollins said. "I was already in the air. He was still down on the tramp. I was like, 'Here we go.' I was going to make it count."

The McNasty was the highlight of a spectacular weekend for Hollins in the second of three weeks of Slam Ball play this summer. He was named Offensive Player of the Week after averaging 20.3 points per game in four games, all wins for his team, The Mob. In two wins Sunday, Hollins scored a combined 55 points. The Mob's opponents scored 54 points in those two games total. Hollins, a 6-1, 185-pounder whose Slam Ball position is "gunner," ranks second among all Slam Ball players with 141 points in the season's first two-plus weeks. The Mob headed into the third weekend of competition alone in first place at 8-0 and won twice on Thursday night to improve to 10-0. The final weekend of regular season play is next week and the season ends with playoff games on Aug. 15 and Aug. 17.

Hollins is one of three players with roots in Indiana who are making an impact in Slam Ball, taking advantage of the sport's return to American public consumption after a 15-year hiatus. The other two -- Nathaniel Harris of the Lava squad and Marcus Gray from the Ozone -- were also teammates of Hollins' with the Pacers Power Pack, the acrobatic trampoline dunkers who entertain fans during halftime and other breaks in the action at Pacers games. All three come to Slam Ball from different athletic backgrounds and different parts of the state, but they symbolize the diversity of talent that the sport attracts.

"I really just think it shows the driving force of Indiana and the Midwest as a whole," Hollins said. "Nate's from Chicago, so I can't just say Indiana, but it shows the type of athletes and dogs that we have in Indiana and the Midwest. That's one of the reason I do it is to put on for my city, put on for the Midwest, put on for where I'm from, really. Just to say, hey, we may just be a state you drive through, but we're more than that. We have talent."

Hollins, Gray and Harris all took winding roads in pursuit of athletic careers that could sustain them, and joining the Pacers Power Pack when they did kept them ready to jump on the opportunity when Slam Ball was ready to make a comeback.

'I was skeptical about it'

Before Hollins started working for the Pacers he had never played much, if any, organized basketball. He played football but mostly ran track at Avon, winning sectional titles in the 110-meter hurdles and high jump as a senior in 2014 and qualifying for states in those events and the 300-meter hurdles. He posted a 6-6 personal record in the high jump and went to Indiana State to compete as a track athlete where he added the decathlon to his events.

However, Hollins left Indiana State after 2 1/2 years as he didn't have anywhere near the success he was hoping for.

"My mindset was really just athletics," Hollins said. "I wanted to go to the Olympics. Coming out of high school, I was one of the top 10 in the nation in hurdles. My goal was, I'm going to go for Gold, I'm trying to go professional with this, I'm trying to get to the Olympics. I was very tunnel vision with that. I did 2/12 and it just didn't work out. I was like, alright, let's see what else is going to work out."

Hollins returned to Indianapolis and started working as a bartender at Tiki Bob's downtown on Meridian Street. Harris was working next door at Taps and Dolls as a security guard, but he was also working with the Pacers Power Pack.

Harris actually did have a basketball background. He played high school ball at Hammond High School and a year of college ball at IU-Northwest. However, he had issues with financial aid, he said, and left in hopes of catching on somewhere in professional basketball.

His sister had moved to Indianapolis, so he decided to move there as well in hopes that he could get an opportunity with an ABA team or some other semi-pro shot. But she told him about the Pacers Power Pack.

"At first I was skeptical about it," Harris said. "You don't really hear about things like this often. But I tried out and one of the guys there took me under his wing. He had been doing it for like eight or nine years, so he taught me the ways of it. I ended up making the team. Now I'm eight years in."

So Harris convinced Hollins to give it a shot. He didn't have as easy of a time getting on board -- not only did he not have an acrobatics background, he didn't have much of any idea of what he was doing with a basketball -- but he showed perseverance and got there eventually.

"I came to tryouts, didn't make it," Hollins said. "Was quickly humbled. But they liked the way that I focused and that I could catch on really quick. They kept bringing me around. I eventually got to the point that I bought my own equipment so I could practice whenever I want to. They saw the dedication and drive. The next season I got a text from Boomer (the mascot) saying, 'Hey, you want to be on the team?' I was like, 'Heck yeah.'"

Like Harris, Gray was hoping to catch on in another sport. He played high school basketball, but football was his primary sport. He starred at Jeffersonville High School and saw action in three seasons at Indiana State from 2014-16, recording 106 tackles including 7.5 for loss as well as two interceptions.

Gray played for the Indianapolis Enforcers in the Continental Indoor Football League in 2021, but they folded and Gray didn't have anywhere to play. A close friend was working as an emcee for Fever games and connected Gray to the Pacers Power Pack. Gray was introduced to the team, which reconnected him with Hollins, who he had known when the two were at Indiana State.

"Pretty much two-plus-two," Gray said. "I did the tryout. Had to learn to get the flip down, but I was able to do all the steps we had to do and I made the team."

Gray wasn't ready to quit football after he made the squad either. In February, he signed on with the Topeka (Kan.) Tropics of the Champions Indoor Football League and had a strong season, leading the league in tackles per game while also maintaining his ties to the Power Pack.

"Right from the basketball season I went right to football," Gray said. "So it's pretty much been no offseasons. Going, going, going, going, going, going."

What he didn't realize when he left for Topeka, though, was that his short time with the Pacers had put him as well as two of his teammates in position to play an entirely different sport, one that was ready for a comeback after 15 dormant years.

'The world might have caught up to us'

Mason Gordon first came up with the idea for Slam Ball in 1999 by drawing it up on a napkin when he was working at Tollin/Robbins Productions, a television and film production company run by famed executive producer Mike Tollin. Tollin liked the idea and helped finance a prototype court in East Los Angeles. Gordon recruited streetball players in Los Angeles to give the idea a shot and within three years he had a six-team league with a television sponsor. Then-Philadelphia 76ers owner Pat Croce signed on as a partner. The National Network, which later became Spike TV, showed the games. They even had former NBA All-Star Reggie Theus working as a color commentator. It was televised more like a show than a live game -- think American Gladiators style structure -- but it developed a legitimate following.

After a two-year run, however, Gordon and Tollin had a disagreement with Warner Bros. Television, which had become a partner. The league was dissolved for four years, but brought back in 2007 for a tour in Italy and then for another season in the United States. That was the last year of Slam Ball in America, but the game did have a five-year run in China from 2012-16.

Gordon and Tollin have plenty of other ventures together and in the time since, they put their focus into those other projects. They produced numerous award-winning sports documentaries including ESPN's "The Last Dance" on Michael Jordan and the 90s Chicago Bulls, "The Captain" on Derek Jeter and "The Redeem Team" on the 2008 U.S. Men's National Basketball Team, which reclaimed the Gold Medal after stumbling in 2004.

But in the midst of all of that film success, Gordon noticed that there was a growing desire for a Slam Ball return. In 2020, he noticed people on social media posting Slam Ball highlights with a hashtag #BringbackSlamBall. A video that was posted as part of the hashtag did over 200 million views and now has over 500 million.

"That was really sizable communication from the market that the opportunity was really ripe and the timing might be perfect," Gordon said. "Mike and I have always been saying to ourselves, we're not going to bring this back until the timing is absolutely optimal. Alternative sports are red hot. Young audiences are reaching out for sports to call their own. The one thing we heard all the time while we were building Slam Ball was that we were ahead of our time. That was something that felt like the world might have caught up to us."

They reached out to potential investors and television partners and found that many of them agreed. They recently announced $11 million in Series A financing with Fanatics CEO Michael Rubino and Celtics forward Blake Griffin among the investors involved.

They found even more agreement from potential television partners and eventually got ESPN on board for broadcasts on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN+.

"We didn't expect that every single sports channel would make an offer or signal a serious intent to make an offer," Gordon said. "They actually improved those offers three and four times over. It's not crazy to say that everyone in sports wanted Slam Ball and we were able to pick our partner. And that's what we did."

The response was dramatically different and Gordon and Tollin didn't even have to change much the second time around. They also found a culture that was much more amenable to a sport played on trampolines.

"We just re-presented Slam Ball in a similar way that we always had, but everybody just responded to it 1,000 times more passionately," Gordon said. "I think the reason for that is the rise of these trampoline family fun centers. They have really create a mainstreamification of that concept. People could look at Slam Ball and have an insight of what it's like to be able to launch yourself off a trampoline and do amazing things in the air. That concept became pretty ubiquitous, because not only did you have multiple generations that grew up in those trampoline centers, but parents comfortable with their kids in that environment."

Gordon went public last August to say that Slam Ball would be returning. By that point he had a venue and TV partners and plenty of money to work with. But 15 years after the last American Slam Ball league, he had to find an entirely new crop of players, presumably none of whom would have any experience playing the game.

'We really couldn't say no'

Hollins was 13 for the last year of Slam Ball, so he remembers it well. It was something he enjoyed watching and something he could imagine himself doing.

"I knew about Slam Ball since I was a kid," Hollins said. "I told myself as a kid, 'I'm going to be one of these guys doing this one day.' They ended up cancelling Slam Ball. I didn't know what was going on at the time, but I was really bummed out."

So when Hollins heard the word come out that Gordon was bringing Slam Ball back, he immediately started looking for names and contact information for anyone he thought might possibly have influence on what athletes would be part of the newest iteration. After several years with the Pacers Power Pack, he now had videos of acrobatic dunks to show them, so he sent e-mails when he could but just as often looked them up on Instagram and tried to connect that way.

"I just started blasting them with videos," Hollins said.

Gordon hadn't wanted to pick players through applications or an open tryout this time around. He and Tullin had decided they would only take players who they knew or came recommended from somebody, whether those were football or basketball coaches or former Slam Ball players. They were trying not to make the process unwieldy.

That said, Gordon liked what he saw from Hollins and sent him an invite for what he called the Super 24 training camp in Las Vegas in June.

"We're always looking for people with a skillset that applies to Slam Ball, but also exotic backgrounds and great backstories," Gordon said. "I'm a storyteller, so I really like when that kind of thing happens. Every now and then somebody with a really tremendous athletic background and kind of a unique hook will reach out to me and be unbelievably passionate about Slam Ball and Cameron was that guy. I was telling our head of athletics, 'Hey, we should look at this guy.' He said, 'Are you sure? He's like a dunk team guy.' I said, 'Some of those guys are really incredible athletes, man. If we get the right guy who has that physicality and that strength, some of those guys can be pretty special.' We kind of made an exception for Cam, and once he was in our system, we really couldn't say no."

Harris and Gray were referrals, and both had interest in part because Hollins had so much interest.

Harris was an easy sell to get involved. He too was a Slam Ball fan growing up and after so many years with the Pacers Power Pack, he had built the necessary skills for the job.

Gray's situation was a little more complicated. His schedule was tight because he'd signed up for several offseason events with the Pacers Power Pack, plus he'd just finished his football season. He originally didn't think he was going to make it because of schedule conflicts, but there were a few openings due to injuries, so he arrived in Las Vegas later in June and still made a team.

"It's a blessing because I honestly didn't think I was going to be out here," Gray said. "Through the blessings of God, I was able to make it out here. They liked my performance on the tramps the first few days. After the first week they put me on a team. It's pretty much been all uphill from there. It's been like a perfect experience for me."

All three players have easily found a role that suits them. Harris, a point guard in high school, is a "Handler" and co-captain for Lava which makes him sort of a combination of a point guard and a midfielder. He's fifth in the league in assists with 15, though the Lava are 0-4. Gray can bring his defensive skills and has played both stopper and gunner, but he's taken on more of an offensive role for the O-Zone and is averaging better than 8.0 points per game.

And now Hollins, after his spectacular weekend, is averaging 14.1 points per game and is second in the league in dunks with 41 on a Mob team that seems to be running away with the league.

All three of the are hopeful that the league has staying power. The Pacers Power Pack has provided part-time work for all three while they've pursued other ventures. Harris has done some work for Amazon along with bar security. Hollins has been a recruiter for an IT company, and of course Gray is still trying to play football. If this takes off, he'd be happy to just continue playing Slam Ball.

"This is the main thing for me now," Gray said. "If I can continue doing this and take this overseas or take it to next season when they're going to be back here, I definitely want to do that."

And Hollins hopes Slam Ball takes his career to places track and field never did.

"My goal with this is this should be an actual sport, the NFL, the NBA, I want it to be there," Hollins said. "I want to be able to just do this. That would be a dream. It's always been my dream to just be an athlete. With Slam Ball, I feel like that's something that can actually happen. I'm putting my all into this."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Slam Ball: Three Pacers dunk team members playing in revived league