City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Last year, Darryl Reynolds sat in the stands at Philadelphia University and watched as the team of Villanova alumni that calls itself SuperNova was bounced in the first round of The Basketball Tournament, after it was forced to finish out the game shorthanded thanks to a five-man roster and a mid-game Scottie Reynolds shoulder injury.

Reynolds, unable to participate in the $2 million tournament last year as he still had one season of college eligibility remaining, vowed that if he was around to help SuperNova on the court this year, he would be there.

A week ago, it still wasn’t clear whether the 6-foot-9, 235-pound Reynolds would be able to participate, as he had been added to the Philadelphia 76ers roster for a summer league out in Utah. But when Reynolds was cut by the team after its last game on Thursday, he hopped a flight back to Philly to fulfill his promise.

“It’s a great experience, there’s great players in this, there’s probably going to be dudes I’m going to be playing against the next couple of years,” he said. “Plus it’s ‘Nova, it’s our guys, so...it was a no-brainer.”

Reynolds was one of nine players on the SuperNova squad to show up on Saturday evening, seven of whom played four season for head coach Jay Wright. Scottie Reynolds was back, as were Corey Fisher, Reggie Redding, JayVaughn Pinkston, Maurice Sutton and Shane Clark; Malcom Grant and Isaiah Armwood, who each played at Villanova before transferring to Miami (Fl.) and George Washington, respectively, rounded out the team.

They had two practices leading up to their Saturday night opener, though Reynolds wasn’t able ot be present for either.

“It’s nice to know that all these dudes at some point or another were Nova dudes and we can all still come back together and play,” he said, “and it’s very cohesive for a bunch of dudes who really are in different parts of the world, literally, who can come back together and just start to play together almost like they know each other.”

This year, there was no disappointing first-round exit, as SuperNova advanced to Sunday’s second round with a resounding 97-72 win over the South Jamaica Kings.

Reynolds played 15 minutes in the win, contributing four points and six boards in a game that saw Grant score 21, Sutton go for a double-double of 16 points and 13 rebounds, Scottie Reynolds score 15 points and drop four assists and Fisher chip in 11 points.

“Caught a flight yesterday, got in...legs still kind of catching up to me,” Reynolds said. “A bunch of just jumping around, but it’s all good.”

That’s something he’s quickly adjusting to.

Just before Utah, he was halfway around the world -- in Dubai, getting ready for a camp with Mason Plumlee.

“I was out there, and the day before the camp started [on June 27], my agent [Andre Buck] was like ‘you’ve got to come back,’” Reynolds said, “so I came back, worked out for the Sixers, summer league team and now I’m back here.

“The flight was 14 [hours],” he added. “I think I spent more time in the air than I did in Dubai.”

For Reynolds, playing with several of his ‘Nova predecessors in an official capacity was a shot back to his childhood. The 2012 graduate of Lower Merion High School -- he went to Worcester Academy (Mass.) for a season before going to Villanova -- was in sixth grade when Shane Clark began playing at Villanova, in seventh grade when Scottie Reynolds arrived and in 9th when the exciting guard then led the Wildcats to the Final Four.

They were players he watched closely during his formative years, whom he followed to the college ranks and inherited their wisdom, and now he finally was their teammate.

“It’s a bit surreal, obviously, growing up and being from Philly and knowing these dudes’ names, seeing these dudes...it’s kind of surreal playing with them,” he said, “but there isn’t really much time to focus on that. We have to make sure we win.

“After that kind of subsides, it’s like oh s**t I’m on the court with these guys for real.”

When he was with Villanova a few months back, Reynolds was one of the elder statesman on yet another Wildcats squad to win 30-plus games and a Big East title. Now, with SuperNova, he’s one of the youngest members of the squad along with Pinkston, and it’s like freshman razzing all over again.

“The older guys saying us younger dudes have it a bit easier because coach is getting old or this is changed, or ya’ll didn’t have to work out in this building, ya’ll didn’t have to do that,” he said. “It’s just, that’s how your older brothers are.”

There is one thing that Reynolds has, though, that the other can’t claim. He’s the first member of the national-championship winning Wildcats to play in TBT, with last year’s graduates Ryan Arcidiacono and Darrun Hilliard as well as Reynolds’ fellow classmates Kris Jenkins and Josh Hart all currently involved with NBA and D-league teams.

But he says he won’t even try to hold it over his SuperNova teammates’ heads.

“[With] these dudes’ resumes?” he said. “So I’ve got a national championship, well [Scottie Reynolds is] the second-leading scorer in the school.

“Everybody has something,” he continued. “What coach Wright preaches is that...once you have played for him for four years, the battles for him that you will go through, you’ll earn your stripes, no matter what you did as an individual. If you played on teams that fought, you earned your stripes in that way.

“Everybody has something that they can kind of rest their laurels on, but they don’t, because that’s not how we were raised and that’s not what Nova taught us to do, and to be honest that’s not the type of men we are. Everybody’s got something and everybody’s lacking something, it’s how do we make this work as a team.”

SuperNova is still five wins away from splitting a $2 million prize; Reynolds’ $150,000 cut is equal to that of the majority of his teammates. First, they’ll have to get through Sunday’s game against NYC-based Team Fancy (4:30 PM) to advance to the Super 16 in Brooklyn on June 20.

Along with his agent, Reynolds said he’s also been leaning heavily on the Villanova support staff for advice on beginning his professional career in Europe, mentioning James Bell and Reggie Redding as two he’d been talking to often.

Bell, who graduated from Villanova in 2014, has played one season each in the top leagues in Italy, France and Italy. Redding, who graduated in 2010, has played with five different clubs between Cyprus, Turkey and now Germany during the course of his seven-year professional career.

“I don’t come from a basketball background, a lot of these dudes (do),” Reynolds said. “I’m figuring this out on my own, and that’s okay, because I have these dudes to lean on in the sense of figuring out how does this whole process work, where are you looking to go, what should you be looking for, what should you look out for in terms of a bad situation, what’s the process. I have these dudes, that’s what this family is about.”