“Only 5,100 professional players have ever touched an N.B.A. basketball,” said Kenny (the Jet) Smith, the former Houston Rockets point guard, two-time N.B.A. champion, now a television sports commentator, and on Saturday, the headliner at the Hamptons Basketball Skills Camp at the Ross School.
His enthralled audience — about 70 boys and girls between 8 and 18 — digested the fact that professionals who make it to the elite level of the National Basketball Association are an insanely rare breed. “And three of them were here today,” Smith pointed out. About 140 eyeballs lit up.
Indeed, there was something essentially hopeful about a basketball camp full of wide-eyed youngsters from New York City and the East End, who had paid $350 for a full day of rubbing shoulders — or, rather rubbing shoulders against midriffs — with three very tall men who are (or were — Smith retired from the N.B.A. in 1997) paid lots of money to play professional basketball in the world’s most revered league. In this financially stratified landscape, it was also good for the adults present to see athletes in a moment of grace and inspiration.
Miles McBride of the New York Knicks and Cole Anthony of the Orlando Magic joined Smith and his son, K.J. Smith, a former N.C.A.A. guard and now a basketball media analyst, as well as Emanuel (Book) Richardson, the boys basketball director of the New York Gauchos Amateur Athletic Union basketball program, in leading a fun-filled, energetic camp. All day long, there were drills, question and answer sessions, competitive one-on-ones, skill games, and scrimmages. So much brilliance takes so much work.
The prospect of going up against Anthony was one not to be missed for Cecil Munshin of Sag Harbor. Cecil, who graduated later that day from Pierson High School, had played on the boys varsity basketball team that made it to the state Final Four tournament in March, the first time since 1978.
“I got to attend the camp and had the pleasure of working with some of those coaches, and I was able to play one on one against Cole Anthony, which was a super fun opportunity,” said the Pierson graduate, who, technically speaking, beat the N.B.A. star in a one-on-one contest.
“Well, I was able to prevent him from scoring and then it was my turn and he said, ‘You got to shoot, I’m not going to play defense.’ And I made the shot. That was a fun moment,” said Cecil, who heads to Elon University in the fall, where he hopes to try out for the college team as a walk-on. “I’ll start by playing club [level] and then work my way up. To play on the team is a big goal of mine,” he said.
For 22-year-old Anthony, a native New Yorker who used to attend the Knicks summer camp in the Hamptons when he was younger, Saturday was all about having fun and inspiring kids, including his younger brother, who was in attendance. “Got a bunch of good kids here and we just let them have fun so that they can have a good time,” he said.
But for two people on the sidelines, much more was at stake than simply kids vociferously having fun. It was, in fact, day one of a fledgling project called the Program NYC, founded by Jared Effron and Griffin Taylor of New York City, whose mission it is to “restore New York City basketball to the powerhouse it once was,” Effron said on Saturday, in between exchanging a bro handshake and hug with McBride, from the Knicks, who was on his way out. “There’s so much history behind New York City basketball, but it hasn’t been talked about as much in the last decade. At least not at the youth level,” he said.
“We feel that the coaching and the resources over the past 20 years have been dwindling,” added Taylor. “So, a lot of our kids, our talented kids leave New York and go to other states to improve their basketball game. We hope to see New York City basketball recognized again like it used to be in the ‘90s,” he said referring to the beloved era of the Knicks, led by the likes of Patrick Ewing, John Starks, and Latrell Sprewell, who helped turn it into a marquee franchise.
It all sounded appropriately fantastical. Sporting success, after all, hinges upon dreams and aspirations, and winning often comes from having a claustrophobically narrow focus, and going after it.
“Our goal is to build a state-of-the-art facility in Long Island City to provide youth with full-time access to all resources. Not just basketball, but also coaches, a weight room, cryotherapy — everything in one place,” said Effron, adding that it will operate as a membership business. “So, this camp today is to actually show the sort of high level training and organization that you can expect from us. You know, it’s fun to just run around and shoot hoops, but to actually try and get better . . . that’s really the goal.”
Taylor added: “We had a bunch of kids from the New York Gauchos and Riverside programs come up early this morning — we provided a car service for them at 6 a.m. — because we wanted to have some diversity and give out scholarships to kids who don’t usually get to come out to the Hamptons.”
On Saturday, it was Smith who provided the infectious playfulness that the campers seemed to love, as well as offering them a rare pipeline to basketball’s megastars, like LeBron James and Michael Jordan, who Smith played alongside at the University of North Carolina, as well as his co-commentators on TNT, Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley.
“Can you call Shaq now?” one young boy asked Smith.
A chorus of, “Yeah, let’s call Shaq,” reverberated around the gym. Clearly, there was a sense of visiting royalty, a brush with something luminous.