In This League, Basketball Isn’t for the Big Man : It’s for the ‘Minute’ Bols--Players Not Over 6 Feet Tall

Forget the Twin Towers.

For that matter, forget Kareem, Artis, Patrick and all the other thyroid cases who call themselves centers.

Spud Webb can bring his Air Jordans.

What we have here is a different kind of basketball. Welcome to the Six-Foot-and-Under Basketball League--where point guards outrebound centers, where power forwards can’t get near the basket because of the congestion underneath and where centers routinely go for three-pointers.

Its founder is Ramin Farhoomand, a 23-year-old Iranian immigrant. Farhoomand, a 5-foot 10-inch gym rat, began the league when “a friend of mine, also from Iran, gave me this idea. I started it mostly to have fun and at the same time make a little money on the side--and it got bigger and bigger.”

Bigger seems a decent adjective for a league that started with 18 teams at the Whittier YMCA and now has 92 teams playing in divisions from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach, from East Los Angeles to the LAX area.

Each team pays $195 (and $29 per game for two CIF referees and a scorekeeper) to sign up. With two 12-game seasons and 6 playoff games a year, Farhoomand, who runs the league with his sister, Fariba, has plenty of time to concentrate on the league.

Each team gets a shot at regular season and playoff trophies. In a format nearly as generous with playoff berths as the National Basketball Assn., about 50% of the teams make it to the playoffs.

It’s a muggy Saturday, and the Long Beach Poly gymnasium is beginning to hold the heat as the day’s schedule of Long Beach/South Bay playoff games begins. First game is the Brothers (11-4, Division I champions) and the Express (8-7, seventh-place finishers in Division II). The teams are very intense and playing aggressively. Tempers are flaring. The referees--John Hall and Joseph Hughey--are calling a tight game with a lot of technicals. When a technical is called on the Brothers, Hughey sets up the free throws as Hall calls some of the more boisterous players over to calm them down. While the referees are occupied, one Express player and one Brother exchange words, then punches at the opposite end of the court. Both teams and benches rush to get in the act--and a Saturday recreation game begins to look like a hockey match. There are some serious blows struck before the referees can end it. One player is taken to a hospital with a possible concussion. The referees rule no game, no win, and clear one team out of the gym 15 minutes before sending the other one home. Five minutes later, another game starts.

John Hall, a 24-year-old assistant purchasing manager with a Los Angeles law firm, seems chagrined that the Brothers-Express game ended in a brawl. He says it’s a very rare occurrence. Hall, a one time forward at Delta State, has been a referee for five years.

Hall says that players in this league tend to “lose their attitude more. The intensity of (playoff) play is more out of control than high school games. The players are older, have lost skills and technique (compared to high school), and play more wildly.”

Hall’s partner, Joseph Hughey, a 30-year-old computer programmer at Xerox in El Segundo, is in his first year with the league. He referees because it is a way “to be near the game, to be part of something that I can’t do anymore because of an injury.”

Hughey says that players in the league are “generally out just for the fun,” and he tries to “give them a chance to play.” It is the only brawl he can recall.

Farhoomand says most of the league’s players are about 25 years old. “Some teams have youngsters, a son or a younger brother 16 or 17, but we don’t have any youth programs,” he said. They are two co-ed teams, however.

The skill level varies. “We have players in the L.A. High School area,” Farhoomand said. “They really play very good. They dunk, they have good teams, they score a lot--70 to 80 points (in a 40-minute game). You don’t see a lot of teams like that; you may see a lot of players on different teams that are very good, but you don’t see a lot of teams like that.

“In the San Fernando Valley or West Los Angeles . . . it’s very average--some teams are even below average. Of these 92 teams, five of them are really very tough and there is no competition for them in this league; the other 87 are about the same level, your average type.”

All of which is OK with the players. Dennis Kiper, 21, played high school basketball at La Habra and now plays for the Operators, a team of Mobil Oil workers from Torrance.

“The playoffs have a good skill level, not quite high school. Here it’s more freestyle--and it’s fun,” Kiper said.

Team organizer Curt Lawrence, 24, is sorry that his team “can’t practice together, because everybody works different shifts (at Mobil).”

Larry Hathorn, who at 37 is one of the league’s oldest players, is enjoying his first year in the league, playing for Riggs Trucking of Long Beach.

“I’ve played in city leagues for 15 years. Here there’s more quickness, more facing the basket,” says Hathorn, a real-estate developer and cable talk-show host (“Larry’s Look at Life”--recent guests include Chick Hearn, Reggie Theus and Tommy Hawkins).

“You find out quick who wanted to be a center but was too short,” Hathorn said. “Everybody rebounds; there’s good up-and-down action on the court.”

Paul Velasco, 24, who drives from Pasadena to play for Coast Envelope, is also enjoying his first year in the league. “We usually have nine guys show up--and everybody plays,” he says. “I’ll play again if I have the chance.”

The teams play to audiences of 10 to 15, mostly friends, wives and girlfriends. There always seem to be one or two nursing babies each game as well as a couple of infants using the bleachers as makeshift forts. Many teams use the games as a social event, and follow a match with a picnic or barbecue.

“A team joins to have fun,” Farhoomand said. “They don’t join to get money or trophies--though I’m sure they would love to have a trophy--but the main thing is to have some sort of exercise and have fun, too. It’s a lot of fun, because when you play as a team--whether you win or lose--it just gives you a good feeling.”