The Baker League memorialized as a Philly hoops centerpiece | Mike Jensen
A Tony Paris documentary premiered this week, documenting the famed summer league
The film had just ended, and then it came to life. Men who had been on the screen performing basketball feats that helped define several generations ambled to the front of a little theatre at 37th and Chestnut. They'd start talking and see someone in the crowd and motion them down so that by the end a who's who of Philly hoops - a representative cross section of it - was at the front of the room.
A minister named George Clark, father of a current Temple Owls assistant coach, got Monday night's premier of The Baker League documentary started, pointing to higher ground.
"They say history has but one honorable purpose - to train the student to be an honorable steward of power," Clark, a Baker League veteran himself, had said before the film began. "And basketball is a powerful game."
This premiere of the latest basketball film by Tony Paris featured footage that spanned from young Wilt to pre-Temple Chaney to teenaged Kobe. Guy Rodgers to Earl Monroe. Lewis Lloyd to Pooh Richardson to Sad Eye Watson. The film glorified Philadelphia's summer basketball scene, paid homage to the thriving playground leagues that used to pack in crowds, offered perspective such as pointing out how Monroe - "Black Jesus" - was the first to take a true playground game to the NBA with success. One of his nicknames was "Thomas Edison," an early one for all his inventions.
Wilt Chamberlain's place in the game was quickly established with Jack Ramsay on the screen talking about averaging 50 points a game and 30 rebounds over a season and never fouling out. Feats not to be repeated.
Some of the men on the screen were in the room.
"Lewis Lloyd, where you at?" Paris asked.
"Right here," came a voice from the back.
Lloyd, "Black Magic," was described in the film as Earl Monroe without the spin move. There was Lloyd reverse dunking in a Baker League game on a young Charles Barkley, already a Sixers star, making clear who was in charge of the city in the summer.
Baker League legend Bill Baggett, whose own son, Kevin, is now head coach at Rider, described being guarded by John Chaney, getting slapped repeatedly in the head. "You ain't trying to get the ball," Baggett remembers telling Chaney. "You just slapping me."
A move would show up on the screen and there would be a murmur of appreciation. "Pooh."
"Pooh's crossover was first," Littel Vaughn said on the screen about Jerome "Pooh" Allen.
Retired NBA official Joe Crawford talked about the Baker League - founded in 1960 and around for more than four decades - as his own breeding ground. He described going over to the late Claude Gross before a game, asking if Gross wanted a "T" right then just to get it out of the way.
Jeff Clark, Baker League and St. Joe's star turned Final Four ref, described afterward how he "emulated" Crawford with his quick claps at the start of the game. He did a quick and funny Crawford imitation. Crawford bowed. "They told me I've got to match the intensity from the door," Clark said of starting here as a ref.
You heard about moves Lionel Simmons made that made his defender look silly and silly again. Tim Perry, over from Jersey, told the crowd how you have to hang your game on something, and his thing was defense, which took him to the NBA after Temple.
"I play against you. I'm going to keep you quiet," Perry said. "Majority of the time. I played against Hank for the first time . . . "
The room didn't have to be told Hank was Gathers.
"He got 47 points on me," Perry said. "I remember it was his mom or his aunt who kept saying, 'Bust him up Hank. Bust him up!' "
Tee Parham, Baker and Sonny Hill League coach, a living legend in this room, noted the huge crowds were always peaceful. "Outside was a different story," Parham quipped.
The footage had the whole thing - Rasheed Wallace, Gene Banks, Nate Blackwell, Snoop Graham. Dr. Foot. More Monroe, returning to the Baker League later in his pro career. All the Sixers who played in the Baker League in the summer, from Dawkins to Barkley, how the Baker League was a precursor to the current NBA summer leagues.
There was great footage of Baker league co-founder Sonny Hill in action, how his league was the blueprint for youth leagues across the country.
The film wrapped, and the talk kept going. Mo Howard talked of his Baker League experiences, and somebody called down his son, Ashley, a Villanova assistant. Chris Clark, a Temple assistant, came down and talked. Basically, the past hasn't really passed. Shoutouts were given to successors to the Baker League tradition, men such as Rahim Thompson and his Chosen League and Charles "Shoob" Monroe and his All-City Classic.
An announcement: the festivities would continue at a bar Lionel Simmons owns in South Philadelphia. Everyone is welcome. Many still lingered. This wasn't the kind of history you quickly left behind.
@jensenoffcampus