City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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(Ed. Note: In four-plus years of running City of Basketball Love, one thing I’ve tried my hardest to avoid is writing about myself. It’s not who you want to read about, and it’s not who I want to write about. So I hope you forgive this exception to the rule as I shed a little light onto what got me onto the path that ultimately became CoBL. -- JV)

~~~

The funny thing about life-changing moments is that they aren’t always obvious at the time.

It can take days, weeks, months, even years to look back on those events and realize what an impact they had, to wonder what would have happened if things had been different, even just a little bit.

Such is the story of City of Basketball Love, and one 3-point shot that just might have made it all happen.

And approaching nine years after it happened, I finally got to meet the man who hit it.

~~~

Like many sports-obsessed 19-year-olds at the school of their choosing, I’d become quickly engrossed in University of Pittsburgh athletics as a freshman in 2007, helped along by a roommate that was the first person I knew to study Scout and Rivals, memorizing recruiting rankings and college offers. Growing up a casual observer of college basketball without a true rooting interest -- and not yet knowing that journalism was in my future -- I went all-in for the Panthers, sitting front row at every home football and basketball game I attended during my three semesters at the institution.

The early season games that Pitt hosted at the Peterson Events Center that 2007-08 season weren’t exactly awe-inspiring: Houston Baptist, in its first year as a Division I program, lost by 41. Games against North Carolina A&T (88-61), Mississippi Valley State (78-45) and Buffalo (92-45) weren’t exactly barnburners either. In fact, the Panthers won eight home games during a 10-0 start to the season by an average of 28.6 ppg.

My roommate and another kid on our floor wore gorilla and orangutan suits to games, to fit in with the student section, known as the Oakland Zoo; Oakland being the section of Pittsburgh where the school was located and Zoo because, well, we were crazy college kids. I wore those suits once or twice, though they smelled too awful to want to wear with any regularity.

Fun? You bet. Life-changing? Not exactly.

It took a trip to one of the meccas of basketball to really set the wheels in motion.

~~~

It was December, 2007, when my best friend Andrew called me up.

His father, through connections at work, had scored box seats to the Aeropostale Classic, taking place the 20th of that month at the legendary Madison Square Garden. Pitt was to take on Duke, one of the blue bloods of college hoops, with fairly high stakes; both teams were 10-0 heading into the matchup, with Pitt ranked No. 9 in the country and Duke No. 7. It was everything you could have hoped for from a non-conference, pre-New Year's Game: a sold-out arena going crazy for two programs hoping to make a big statement with conference season just around the corner.

Like any time the Blue Devils take the court, especially on such a big stage, the crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Duke. The box we were in held myself, Andrew, his brother and father (all cheering for Pitt, with no other horse in the race) -- and about 20 Duke fans. The entire crowd was about 90 percent blue, with a smattering of gold sprinkled throughout the World’s Most Famous Arena.

Early on, it was ugly for the Pitt fans in attendance. Duke doubled up Pitt, 31-15, through the first 16 minutes, taking a 12-point lead into halftime. It was so bad that one of the fans sitting next to us looked over at me and commented, “I thought Pitt had a college basketball team.”

“I did, too,” was the reply.

~~~

Pitt battled back, though, taking a brief lead late in regulation before Episcopal Academy’s Gerald Henderson tied things up with a minute left, and five minutes of extra basketball were needed.

Overtime couldn’t have started out much worse for Pitt. Small forward Mike Cook, one of the team’s leaders and a valuable two-way wing, crumpled to the ground a minute into the extra session. A day later, a torn ACL diagnosis confirmed his season and college career was over; his teammates knew it immediately.

The Panthers rallied, though, going up three points with three minutes to go on a pair of Levance Fields free-throws, only to see Duke score the next five points to make it 64-62 with 23 seconds left after a foul shot by Kyle Singler.

With 16 seconds and the ball across half court, Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon called timeout.

For what seemed like an hour, we all held our breath.

~~~

Every once in a while, I’ll go back on YouTube and watch the footage of those last 16 seconds. It’s horribly grainy, uploaded nearly nine years ago and looking every bit of it, but the quality isn’t what’s important; the transportation back to that night is.

It’s the same play, every time: the inbound pass, high ball screen, set by Sam Young; the switch, putting a slower-footed David McClure on Fields, a shifty 5-10 point guard. Fields takes a moment to size up the situation as the clock ticks past 12, past 10. The drive left, the crossover, the step-back.

The shot.

Watching from up above -- a similar angle to that TV broadcast, which is maybe why I enjoy watching it so often -- the ball hung in the air, impossible to tell which trajectory it was on. Until it dropped straight through the net.

The clock still actually read 4.7 seconds, though I don’t know how many people that were in the building that night kept their eyes on the court as Duke rushed to inbound the ball. Jon Scheyer actually got two shots off in that span, a 3-point heave and an attempt at a put-back from near the foul line, but both hit back iron.

I turned to the fan who’d teased me at halftime, said “good game,” and shook his hand. Nothing else needed to be said.

On the way out, the “P-I-T-T, let’s go Pitt” chants rang out through the arena, on the concourses and out into the New York night sky.

I was hooked.

~~~

It took a while for that game’s effects to lead to where we are now. The next two years were great ones for Pitt basketball, which went 58-15 in that span, making it to the Elite 8 in 2009 before Villanova and Scottie Reynolds ended that run.

It took a transfer from Pitt to Temple to study journalism, mostly spurred by the boredom of political sciences courses and the lack of a journalism program in Pittsburgh, to find a way to channel my passion for writing. A senior year at Temple spent writing for Aaron Bracy, who gave me an opportunity with his site Philahoops; which solidified in my mind that as much fun as being a fan had been, being an objective reporter allowed me to combine two things that I loved into a job that was more fun than I’ve ever had.

When I started CoBL in June 2012, it was initially as a side project while I started law school, pursuing the career I always assumed I would. One year there, combined with the initial response to the site, proved to me that I was in the wrong place. Since then, the site has continued to grow, becoming my full-time occupation, in addition to launching camps and events that have provided a platform for many under-appreciated players in Philadelphia and beyond to get a chance to show what they can do.

If you’d told me at 10, 15, even 20 years of age that this is what I’d be doing for a career, I’d have laughed in your face.

Now, I can’t imagine doing anything else.

~~~

On Saturday night, I met Levance Fields for the first time, after he played with The Untouchables at The Basketball Tournament this weekend at Philly U. He looks just like he did at Pittsburgh, his body a little rounder than your typical high-major point guard, his hair still braided back just like it was when he donned the Panthers uniform.

When I showed him my old Pitt ID, he lit up.

Asked if the night of Dec. 20, 2007 rang a bell, it didn’t take him more than a half-second to remember why.

“The Duke game,” he said, and it was a night that was vivid in his memory. “My best friend Mike Cook getting hurt, knowing that his season was pretty much going to be over once I saw the injury, and then obviously making that big shot, one of the biggest shots of my life.

“Even in the midst of a close game like that, I was thinking about Mike, and the best way to make him feel any better would be to win, and for me to do it. I just said you know what, I’m going to go shoot the three, win lose or draw -- we’re either going to win it right now or we’re going to lose it.”

Fields hasn’t played professional basketball in more than two years, after he was sent back from the Czech Republic due to an anomaly found in a physical that Fields said cleared up when he was back in the United States. Now, the Brooklyn native and Xaverian HS grad is back in his home city, working with children in after-school programs.

We spoke about that Duke game and the season that followed, one riddled with injuries; Fields himself suffered a broken bone in his foot the next game, which kept him out for six weeks. Keith Benjamin played through a fractured hand.

“(There were) even more injuries that I can’t remember right now, but I’m pretty sure there was a couple of more,” Fields said. “I just remember us playing through adversity that year, never giving up -- understanding that we had each other and no matter how bad things looked, we were a good team.”

They were indeed a good team, one good enough to win a Big East Tournament championship that year and earn a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament, though No. 5 Michigan State pulled the slight upset in the Round of 32. Those Panthers: Fields and shooting guard Ronny Ramon, whose 3-pointer buried West Virginia at home that February (pause this video and look closely at the 1:20 mark); freshman sensation DeJuan Blair, the Pittsburgh native who averaged 11.6 ppg and 9.1 rpg and left for the NBA after his sophomore year; Sam Young, the best shot-fake artist of his era, who exploded for 18.1 ppg that year.

That’s the team I’ll always be a fan of, somewhere deep inside.

That connection, that so much of what CoBL has become all started with that shot, clearly meant something to Fields.

“I get the call late to come join the team and now I’m being told by you how much I’ve impacted you...right now I’m getting goosebumps, it’s crazy,” he said. “I knew this would be good for me to be here, and to hear that from you, you just don’t take it for granted, just try to put your best foot forward every day.”

If that shot doesn’t go in, does everything still play out the way it happened?

Who’s to say?

But I’m sure glad it did.