By Mitch Abramson
Unlike summer havens like the Entertainers Basketball Classic, where players want to break their opponents' ankles, Matthews' and Connor's league is devoid of the usual banter and decorative play that, to paraphrase a line in last week's cover story in Sports Illustrated, is responsible for the decline of western civilization.In the Rego Park league, players cannot exceed 6-foot-3 and they must be at least 30-years-old, although the occasional 29-year-old slips in because he is friends with a player in the non-sponsored league who happens to be a grandfather, of which there are a couple.The Summer Classic has special rules for its unusual clientele. There is a $10 fine for getting a technical foul, and if a player collects two in a game, he is tossed and suspended for the next contest. If a team is leading by 20 points or more with two minutes to go, the game is stopped and the frustration that accompanies blowouts doesn't fester and boil over into a reckless foul. Outsiders might interpret these rules as assistance for the elderly, but the participants are empowered by them.”Everyone's equal; everyone belongs,” said Tyrone Simmons, who has been with the league since its inception in 1996 and was an all-city player at John Bowne HS. “It's all about ability. There are no 6-foot-9 guys playing, where all they can do is dunk. Here, you have to know the fundamentals of the game, how to pass the ball correctly, how to stop at the free-throw line on a fast-break. Here, everyone's serious about winning, not showing off.”Simmons, a medical biller at Mount Sinai Hospital, has watched street ball grow from a neighborhood attraction into a national spectacle, from a game built on fundamentals to a freewheeling exercise in futility. And he cited the shoe company, And1, fresh off the cover of Sports Illustrated, as the main culprit for taking the sport in a mischievous direction.”I tell people that those And1 tapes are the worse thing that could have happened to youth basketball,” said Simmons, who is 41. “Because of those tapes, now all kids want to do is shoot 3-pointers and dunk and shake you, and then they get to high school ball, and they can't make layups. They don't know the game the way people used to know fundamentals.”Connor, 45, retired from the NYPD in 2003 and segue-wayed into officiating recreational leagues across the city. Two weeks ago he was working The Rumble In The Bronx basketball tournament at Fordham University, which attracts some of the best high school boys' players in the country and he shuddered at the thought of Rego Park's players guarding them. “A lot of these guys who play in this league had a reputation when they were younger,” said Connor, who played at Power Memorial HS and then at Eastern Michigan. “They don't want some young kid dunking on them. That's something they don't want to experience.”Matthews fits that description like a glove. He was a star at Christ the King HS in the mid 70's, leaving the team as the school's leading scorer until Khalid Reeves, the former star at Arizona, broke his record in 1990. Matthews, 43, played at Adelphi University and then graduated to the streetball circuit where he stretched his legs and found himself occasionally getting beat off the dribble by father time.Together with Connor, they gravitated to a league run by a childhood mentor named Sonny Lewis for players no taller than 6-foot-3. Lewis died of a heart-attack a year later, and the league was sustained by Lewis' wife and kids until the end of the summer when it closed. Connor and Matthews opened the Summer Classic two years later as a tribute to Lewis, and the league has blossomed into a safe haven for former basketball stars such as the former St. John's guard, Greg “Boo” Harvey, who still plays in the league, current Red Storm coach Norm Roberts back when he was coaching at Queens College, Derek Brown formerly of St. John's, and Georgetown's Dave Edwards. “We started doing the league as a way to help some of the older guys get along a little,” said Matthews, who works a Phys. Ed teacher at a junior high school in Brooklyn and whose wife Virginia is the PSAL girls' basketball commissioner. “It gets tough as you get older going up against 6-foot-10 guys. Our league is suited for guys who aren't explosive as they used to be.”Reach reporter Mitch Abramson by E-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300 Ext. 130.
