Aug 02, 2004 00:00 by sbadmin
Commentary from Fayetteville Online Sports,
Sunday, August 5, 2001

By Brett Friedlander
Staff writer, Fayetteville Online

The idea first came to Jerrod Mustaf while sitting in a taxi cab in Turkey, of all places.
The former University of Maryland star was playing professional basketball there and while riding along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea one afternoon, he noticed a blacktop with 10 fully marked courts on it.

He told the driver to stop and watched the locals play for awhile. And what he saw amazed him.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Mustaf, a 6-foot-10 power forward who played four seasons in the NBA for the New York Knicks and Phoenix Suns.

“Here I was in Turkey and I was watching a bunch of guys playing street ball. That’s when I realized that this was the new wave of basketball being played all around the world.”

When Mustaf returned to the U.S., he decided to spread the word about his revelation.

He did it by putting together a team of the best street ballers he could find in his hometown of Washington D.C. and taking them out on the road to play local legends from other areas of the country.

Saturday, Mustaf’s Street Basketball Association made a stop in Fayetteville at E.E. Smith High School.

No street needed

If you were expecting the game between the D.C. Legends and Fayetteville Ballers to take place on the playground outside the school, you’d be wrong.

You don’t actually need a street to play street ball.

It’s more of an attitude and style than a description of where the game is being played.

Just ask the world’s most famous street ball practitioner, Allen Iverson, the NBA’s reigning Most Valuable Player.

Or better yet, ask any of the several hundred fans who packed into E.E Smith’s gym to watch the show.

Most of them probably won’t be able to tell you the final score (the D.C. Legends won 108-96, in case you were wondering).

But they probably will be able to describe in great detail how Randy “White Chocolate” Gill passed the ball to himself off the back of a defender, then fired another pass to himself off the backboard before dribbling the ball between his legs and draining an 18-foot jumper just as the halftime buzzer sounded.

Organization, exposure

Gill is exactly the kind of player Mustaf had in mind when he decided to sink his time and money into starting the SBA.

While D.C. Legends teammates like Victor Page (Georgetown) and Antric Klaibur (UConn) have had their time in the spotlight, most are completely unknown outside of the D.C. playground circuit.

“There are a lot of guys out there who have the talent, but never got the opportunity,” said Mustaf, who grew up in Whiteville before moving to Maryland when he was 13.

“I wanted to help these guys out. I wanted to get them a coach, get them with some people who know the game and understand business and put together our own organization.”

Now that he’s done that, Mustaf is setting out on phase two of his plan -- to get his street ballers, and opposing players like local star Anquell McCollom, noticed by the right people.

That’s why they’re here in Fayetteville, which just happens to have a team in the newly established National Basketball Development League.

“This is our first year,” Mustaf said, “but eventually, we hope our players will start to get noticed and get a shot.”

If not here in the U.S., then anywhere else in the world where street ball is played.

Even Turkey.

Columnist Brett Friedlander can be reached at 486-3513 or friedlanderb@fayettevillenc.com