Future bright as basketball embraces past
And it can still stop your heart like few other sports can.
Irish basketball had one of its big weekends the one just past, with the Neptune Stadium and the Parochial Hall pulsating to the sound of music, a bouncing ball and the roars and gasps and screams and shrieks of those who were lucky enough to flock to those old basketball cathedrals on the north side of Cork for the National Cup semi-finals.
The Friday night men’s clash of UCC Blue Demons and Killester from Dublin was particularly dramatic, as if someone had taken a time tunnel back to 1987 when the same two clubs served up another classic cup semi-final. Just as then a Demons player went to the free-throw line with his side down a point and only seconds remaining. Just as then, the Demons player only made one of the two shots so, just as then, the game went into overtime. This time though, Demons would be the ones to shade it in that extra period, 87-86.
That 1987 game enjoys a certain immortal status. Playing for Killester that night was Mario Elie, who would go on to not only make the NBA but win three world championships. Their other American, Kelvin Troy, is one of four or five players synonymous with that golden age for the sport. Last Friday night’s game will likewise live in the memory of those who witnessed it, especially Demons die-hards. At the start of the fourth quarter they trailed by 15 points. Their best player, player-coach Colin O’Reilly, was fouled out. Enter young Adrian O’Sullivan from Ballincollig. It didn’t all go to plan. He fluffed his first drive. He was the man who missed one of those two free-throws with just eight seconds to go. But he was still The Man, with his drives and threes and just sheer daring that triggered a sense among the Demons faithful that they might still do it and that creeping dread among Killester folk that they just might blow it.
Afterwards, as everyone else in the packed stadium struggled to take in the drama they’d just witnessed, this column couldn’t but help think of the cup semi-finals weekend five years ago.
It was up in the National Basketball Arena in Tallaght, on a Sunday afternoon. About 400 people had been in the place for a riveting women’s semi-final between Glanmire and DCU Mercy. But once it was over, half the crowd left. The two men’s semi-finals were still to come. A drab game between Killester and Tralee was played out in an even drabber atmosphere. The clash between Killester and Neptune that followed was better and closer but everywhere you still looked there were empty seats. For the first time in quarter of a century there were no TV cameras for a men’s semi-final. I was never so despondent about Irish basketball. Basketball, for all its troubles since the ’80s, at least had always had the cup. Now it seemed it had lost even that. That same year I was researching Hanging from the Rafters: The Story of Neptune and the Golden Age of Irish Basketball. I suggested to the Neptune committee and Basketball Ireland that to mark the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Neptune Stadium and Terry Strickland’s legendary Cup-winning basket there that Neptune should host the 2010 cup finals. The Neptune committee at the time were initially reluctant about the idea but it grew on them and when their Superleague team were drawn to play old rivals Demons in the semi-final, they successfully bid to host it.
It turned out to be an even greater success than even I could have envisaged. I thought it had been a mistake in 2007 to split the semi-finals and finals over different weekends, and that they should be run off over the same weekend as they had been for over 20 years. The way it has transpired, each weekend can stand alone. Neptune and Cork have made the semi-final weekend stand alone. The cup has helped galvanise Neptune just as Neptune have helped galvanise the Cup. Basketball Ireland has stopped running away from the sport’s history, instead embracing it, while creating a new cup tradition, its senior finals now played on Friday nights, up in the Arena, televised by Setanta.
Adrian O’Sullivan’s father, Francis, played for all three north side superpowers in the ’80s but has been coaching on the south side in Ballincollig for nearly 20 years now. Adrian played for Ballincollig, just like his brother and Demons teammate Ciaran. Last Friday night the club had tens of youngsters up in the stadium.
“Just for them to experience that buzz, we’ll benefit for 10 years,” says Francis. “It’s like when you saw the likes of Lennie [McMillian] play back in the day.”
That’s why he bounced out of the Neptune Stadium last weekend. Not just because the son he taught the layup to all those years ago shone on the big stage but that another generation will want to shine and play too. Irish basketball still has issues. Most glaringly, it still has no national team. But as the story of the weekend and the O’Sullivans show, it still has a pulse and a heart, a future as well as a past.
