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TOURNAMENT WORDS. Austin Burton
Red Bull King of the Rock
It was the greatest 8-to-6 basketball game you'll ever see.
Andre Emmett, formerly of the Memphis Grizzlies and Bobby Knight's Texas Tech program (where he is the all-time leading scorer), was going 1-on-1 with Vili Morton, a relative unknown who played college ball at California-Riverside and now manages basketball training programs at 24 Hour Fitness gyms in the Bay Area. On paper it shouldn't have been close.
And yet at the end of their furious display of power dunks, post- ups, pick-pockets and pro moves – completed in less time than it takes to cook a grilled cheese sandwich – the crowd was invested, and the man with the most points on the scoreboard was declared the loser.
Emmett was up 8-6 late in overtime when he committed his fifth foul and was disqualified. I tried to get his post-game reaction, and he basically told me to get lost.
That's how it was at the 2011 Red Bull King of the Rock tournament final: Unpredictable, unforgiving, often unbridled, sometimes even unprecedented.
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, a.k.a. "The Rock," was the setting on a Saturday night in late September as 64 players came from all corners of the world to the infamous island in the San Francisco Bay to compete in the 1-on-1 single-elimination tournament. At stake was a $10,000 prize for the last man standing, a ring and a trophy, plus bragging rights as the best 1-on-1 ballplayer on Earth who isn't facing a labor lockout.
With a five-minute time limit for each game and four courts being used simultaneously, the field was quickly cut from 64 believers to 16 survivors, and eventually down to the final four. In one semifinal, Hugh Jones, a.k.a. "Baby Shaq" from AND 1 Mix- tape Tour fame, defeated Brian Centella, a gym teacher from Chi- cago. In the other semifinal, NBA D-League signee Lance Perique played through a groin injury suffered in his final-eight matchup – "I took two Advil and wrapped it up," Perique shrugged in his Creole accent – to get past 6-7 New Mexico alum Michael McCowan.
And so the championship game would pit Baby Shaq, the Wash- ington, D.C. bruiser who had already turned five guys into burgers and fries with his physical low-post style, against a man who was nursing a fresh injury to a sensitive area. Underdog stories are great, but that didn't stop me from texting a friend in the crowd before the final: "This is gonna be Animal Planet."
It was.
Perique, a smooth 6-6 wing who played collegiately at Georgia State and was picked up by the Idaho Stampede for the upcoming D-League season, kept himself in the game early with some three- point bombs and even had a brief lead.
But inevitability soon set in, as Baby Shaq continually backed Pe- rique down to within two feet of the rim. Layup, layup, layup, layup. On the rare miss, an offensive rebound and another layup.
For those who knew of Baby Shaq's AND 1 resume and were ex- pecting a razzle-dazzle showcase, this was not their night. Jones
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PHOTO. CARLO CRUZ/RED BULL CONTENT POOL