The Secret Tourney of Global Hoops

It's interesting, if self-indulgent of me, to look over my body of work at Sports Central and see how my column has evolved. I used to write quite a bit on golf and occasionally on the NFL. College football is, and always will be, a mainstay ... at least in-season. But other than that, I've drifted towards writing about sports journalism (read: taking easy shots at national columnists) and sports and events that don't get a lot of stateside press and are not ameri-centric.

There's reasons for this. One, I like to feel that I'm writing something informative even if you fail to find it interesting. I like bringing something unique to the table. Every columnist wants to stand out, but most do so by concentrating their efforts on calculating outrageous, contrived opinions that they don't even believe on the standard sports fare.

The second reason is that the Internet is a wonderful thing. You can use the internet to not just follow the coverage of a lot of sporting events, but actually watch them.

At any rate, these columns seem to generally attract more comments than my mainstream columns, and it's usually positive and along the lines of "thanks for covering my niche, I thought no one cared!" This only motivates me to do more such columns.

This last week, I had the privilege of watching an absolute doozy of an event that fits this formula perfectly.

It's called the William Jones Cup, a basketball tournament in Taiwan, and as near as I can tell it only had one English language website actively reporting on it.

It's a straightforward enough concept — it's simply an annual basketball tournament of invited national teams, mostly Asian, to play a round robin format to determine a champion (although they've held playoffs in previous iterations). The United States participated, as well. How could the U.S. National team play somewhere and get zero coverage, not even a paragraph buried on ESPN.com?

Well, for starters, as you may have guessed, it's not the national team representing the U.S. More on that later.

The William Jones Cup first came to my attention when I came across it doing some Internet channel surfing. The tournament was already a couple days old, and I came in during the first half of Lebanon vs. The Philippines. This is perfect, I thought. I bet I'm practically the only one in the U.S. watching this (more self-indulgence)! I took a six pack out of the fridge and watched as intently as if I cared who won.

I ended up watching much of the tournament over the week. There were no traditional global powers represented in this tournament, except the U.S., sort of. China didn't participate because they consider Taiwan a renegade province. Countries you didn't even know had basketball programs — Jordan, Kazakhstan, Qatar — took part. This was a very evenly-matched tournament. The 10 participants each played the other nine once apiece, and every team one at least two and lost at least two.

Strange observation #1: They play the same sort of hype arena music there as they do here ... but it continues during the course of play. I kind of liked it. The DJ did a nice job of picking songs that matched the situation and the flow of the game.

Strange observation #2: A lot of the teams had a player or two with suspiciously American sounding names. I looked deeper into it, and for the most part, the player in question was indeed American, but had some sort of connection — usually a relative who is a native or some such. Gabe Norwood, he of the magical George Mason run of 2006, is the most notable of these cases, plying his trade for the Philippines. But there was one particular unusual case.

The Jordanian team, among a roster of Arabic-sounding names, contained one Rashiem Wright. Investigating it, I discovered this article that strongly implies that Wright, who played college ball at the University of the District of Columbia, had zero connection at all with Jordan. The article states that each national team can have one naturalized player per squad, but evidently, that can be anyone. The article speaks of Jordan's "negotiations" with Wright in making him a citizen of the country. Wright says he new nothing about Jordan before this went down, and he also said of the move, "[N]ever in a million years would I have ever dreamed that I would be playing ball internationally, let alone have the opportunity to be on another country's national team." (Emphasis mine.)

Good move, I guess, on Wright's part and on Jordan's part. Jordan won the tournament and Wright was the star. I guess it's okay to just recruit an American who wants to play international ball, but isn't good enough to play for the U.S. I don't think I could do it, though. Even if it meant I couldn't play international basketball. I'd have to have some sort of connection, however remote. I'm mostly Irish. I'd play for them. If my grandfather told me that his great uncle was born in Western Samoa, fair enough. There's a connection, I'll play there. But there'd have to be something.

So if Rashiem Wright isn't good enough to play for the United States, who was? That would be Athletes in Action. You've probably heard of AIA if you've ever studied your college's basketball schedule, and it included preseason games.

AIA is a "sport ministry." From their website: "Athletes in Action has sought to be a global pioneer, innovator, and servant leader in sport ministry. As a branch of Campus Crusade for Christ, AIA exists to bring Jesus Christ and His message of victory into the hearts, homes, and communities of millions around the world."

So, okay. According to their Wikipedia page, they make a presentation at half-time of the games they play.

Who plays for AIA? Well, you have to be a Christian, of course, since they expect you to witness on others (I think). Beyond that, their roster is made up of players fresh out of college who were not immediately able to latch on to a pro team. They're deep enough that they can play several exhibition games against colleges warming up for the season on one night.

This is the offseason, though, so AIA is free to recruit and play players still in college, and that's what they do.

Which players? No one you've likely heard of. Although the bulk of the roster is made up of players from big schools, it's not those team's stars. I sort of had heard of Alex Ruoff, from West Virginia. Their was another Mountaineer on the squad, plus a player from Michigan and another one from Clemson. The team featured a couple guys from lesser conferences who were all-conference caliber for that level. The star seemed to be Reed Rawlings, one of the few on the squad not in school (Samford grad of 2000). The most recognizable name on the squad is actually the coach. Remember Mike Jarvis? Now you know what he's doing this days when not on ESPN.

So, if you make up a team of minor stars of mid-majors, and average contributors of major squads, how good are they?

The answer is: about that of a middling Asian nation, as their 5-4 record shows (they were defending champs, though ... some of the more interesting winners in the tournament's history have been Canada, Sweden, the University of Hawaii, and the New Zealand "Tall Blacks.")

I'm a little bit curious, however, about AIA's mission and how it fits into these tournaments. Now, I'm not a Christian, so these questions may be ignorant, but I have relatives who were missionaries in Brazil for decades and I know it takes a long time to get a foothold in a culture and start really saving souls.

AIA is in Taiwan for a week and a half, and they are kind of busy with basketball in that time. I don't know if they did their half-time sermon or not, but how many fans speak English? Or did AIA find a Chinese speaker to do the presentation?

A lot of teams participating come from Muslim nations, including Iran. How do they feel about that? Are they trepidatious (I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's not too many Evangelical Christians who are big fans of Iran right now), or do they see it as an opportunity to make the really tough saves? Or do they not even care, they're just really there to play basketball? Inquiring minds want to know.

It was a good tournament. In the World Rankings, Jordan was ranked below all their competitors except the Philippines (who finished 5-4 themselves), but as I mentioned, their 7-2 mark took home the trophy.

Next year, let's pay closer attention to it. Where are my weirdos who relish obscurity? We'll drink beer, watch the games, and run the first-ever William Jones Cup fantasy league. Who's with me?

And can someone tell me where I can submit this column for an award in the "Best Basketball Column Largely About 'Jordan,' But Not About Michael or Anyone Surnamed Jordan, Like That Guy Who Coaches the Wizards?" category?