Basketball Bounces to a Different Rhythm in the Bahamas

For those who think that the Bahamas’ entry in the American Roundball Corp. Future Stars Showdown this week at Notre Dame High is a team in a foreign land playing a foreign game, listen up.

“The rumor all over Nassau is that the Lakers are going to trade Michael Cooper and Mychal Thompson to the Philadelphia 76ers for Charles Barkley,” Bahamas Coach Moon McPhee said. “You tell everybody you heard it here first.”

McPhee’s inside knowledge of a trade rumor is understandable, as Thompson is the Bahamas’ most celebrated gift to U. S. basketball.

But by no means is Thompson an aberration. According to McPhee and his players, life as a young Bahamian is a life of run and gun, not sun and fun.

“Basketball is the No. 1 sport,” forward James Sweating said.

And the sport is played with one eye on colleges and professional teams in the United States.

“Basketball has always been the biggest sport in the Bahamas,” McPhee concurred. “I guess it’s because we are so close to the U. S.”

Although the Bahamas team lost its second game in as many days Thursday, falling 75-72 to Reno, the popularity of basketball has given the Bahamian archipelago some winnin’ times of its own in the past four years.

“We’ve played in the Slam N’ Jam tournament and always come away with at least two wins,” McPhee said, refering to a prestigious tournament held every summer in Los Angeles.

This year, for the first time, the coaching staff went outside of Nassau, the country’s largest city, and recruited players from the most distant of the nation’s 700 islands. In previous years, McPhee and his staff have benefitted from a team composed of players from the city, players who knew one another and had played with one another.

“This is a team of players that are still getting to know each other,” McPhee said. “Some of these players have never played with coaches. So right now our team isn’t as strong as it will be.”

This summer’s team showed signs of coming together in the Reno game. The Bahamians, led by 6-foot, 1-inch guard Hilton Pinder’s 17 points, led until the final minute, when their wild running game finally ran ragged. But if anything is going to go wrong with the team, it will go wrong while the team is running. That’s the McPhee prefer to play.

“I think we run more than American teams,” McPhee said. “We play more of a contact game. And that’s one reason why our players do well over here.”

The Bahamas have dozens of players in the U. S. junior college ranks and a few at major colleges.

But for now, McPhee is concentrating on grooming this summer’s team into a competitive one. The team will be entered in the Las Vegas Invitational, perhaps the most competitive summer tournament in the nation.

Meanwhile, the players just want to see the sights while they can.

“I want to go shopping in Beverly Hills,” guard Chris Edden said.