Jalil Bethea’s strong summer includes the Archbishop Wood star shattering a backboard with a dunk

Bethea has risen in the recruiting rankings and earlier this week he made a statement with a summer league dunk. The backboard paid the price.

Archbishop Wood’s Jalil Bethea during a Catholic League semifinal against Roman Catholic at the Palestra on Feb. 22.Read moreSteven M. Falk / Staff Photographer

by Aaron Carter

Published July 12, 2023, 9:44 a.m. ET

The next time Jalil Bethea gets angry on the basketball court, maintenance staff might be wise to search for the closest place that sells new backboards.

The 6-foot-4 rising senior for Archbishop Wood pulled his best Incredible Hulk impersonation Monday night at the Salvation Army on North Broad Street, shattering a backboard with a powerful, one-handed dunk in traffic at the Post and Pivot summer league.

“The play before that,” Bethea said in a phone interview, “the refs didn’t make a call and I was pretty upset …”

The next possession, Bethea, who recently ascended to No. 9 on ESPN’s national recruiting rankings, went coast-to-coast after the opposing team missed a layup.

He needed only three dribbles to drive from foul line to foul line, take flight, get fouled on the way up, and then throw it down.

His teammates on the Philly Hoop Group squad reacted immediately, but it took last year’s Catholic League MVP a moment to figure out what had happened.

“I didn’t even know the backboard broke until I felt a couple glass shards in my hair,” said Bethea, whom Wood coach John Mosco says has grown into more than just a scorer.

Subsequent league games have been moved to the Commonwealth Athletic Center.

The dunk was about as powerful as his others, Bethea said, but the result of this one felt a little better.

“It felt great,” he added later. “I don’t know, I just got all my anger out on that one dunk.”

The official score is now: Bethea 2, backboards 0.

Like so many others who grew up loving basketball, Bethea said he balled up socks around the house and would shoot them into laundry baskets.

When he was 9 or 10, he graduated to one of those plastic baskets that can be hung on the back of a bedroom door.

He might not have been angry before he shattered that one, but he was definitely mad afterward.

“I was upset because it took me a while to get another one,” he said. “My next birthday somebody got me one.”