Shelby County Pro-Am championship game highlights gritty hoops culture in Memphis
Country boys! Country boys!
Former Memphis Tigers player and current Whitehaven boys basketball coach Willie Kemp yelled directly in front of fans as the team he had been coaching at the Shelby Co. Pro-Am, "Str8 Ballers," took control on Thursday evening inside the Orange Mound community center. The team was without their best player, former Arkansas All-SEC guard Jaylen Barford, but that didn’t stop them from grinding their way to a 71-68 victory.
It was a team of underdogs. They had the most trash talked to them during the pro-am season of any team. Usually it was Barford trading verbal jabs with the crowd as they attempted to throw him off his game with overrated chants and more, but in his absence, Kemp let the crowd know who had won.
“A lot of my players from West Tennessee went back overseas, but my young players stepped up big tonight,” Kemp said. “We had something to prove. They played they hearts out tonight.”
The 2023 Shelby County Pro-am featured a bevy of the cities biggest stars. Current NBA players Cameron Payne, Kennedy Chandler and David Roddy played, plus several other former NBA players, overseas players and former University of Memphis standouts.
Nick King was a member of the losing team in Thursday’s championship game, but he didn’t play because of his knee, he said. Former prep stars and college standouts Dedric Lawson, Chris Crawford, Adonis Thomas and Chris Jones were among those that played in the league this summer, but their teams didn’t make the championship game.
In most cities, it would probably be a surprise that the teams with the most star-power didn’t win in the end, but in Memphis, it's all about grit.
Kemp’s team without Barford were underdogs. It was a team made up of players traveling from as far out as Jackson and Bolivar — Kemp's hometown — mixed with a flavor of Memphis to play in the pro-am. They took charges and hounded their opponents with suffocating defense, picking up from half court most of the night.
The fans often heckled their team, but just like on many other summer nights, Str8 Ballers got the last laugh.
“The whole summer they been counting us out every game,” former Arkansas State and Hamilton high guard Donald Boone said. “Everybody against us. Those country boys came down and made their names known in the city. They love them now.”
Boone shined as he scored 21 points points, but it was the youngest player on the team that stole the show.
Current high school forward and former Memphis East standout Alijah Curry led the way with 24 points on his way to earning MVP honors. Curry is leaving Memphis soon to finish out his prep career at Camden in New Jersey, where he will team up with fellow Memphis native Billy Richmond. The pro-am experience was his last taste of organized Memphis basketball.
“It’s toughness out here, and it’s grown men,” Curry said. “Everybody is moving the ball, so you’re just learning from different pros.”
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Before leaving the gym, Kemp stopped Boone and asked how was he going to talk trash and how long. Boone responded by saying that he will start trash talking tonight on social media and all the way until next year’s pro-am.
Boone has now been on the championship team in consecutive years. The 2010-11 All-Sun-Belt guard has been giving buckets in Memphis long enough to be one of the last remaining players from the Bluff City Classic that suit up for the current summer hoops get-together in Memphis.
Just like the Bluff City Classic often did, the Shelby County Pro-Am not only highlighted the biggest stars, but many of the other professionals, too. Thursday’s game is the latest example.
“The pro-am has got better every year,” Boone said. “In the next two or three years, this will be the next Bluff.”
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis basketball pro-am championship spotlights gritty hoop culture
