Compton Magic isn’t exactly what it seems
LAS VEGAS -- Where, exactly, would the Compton Magic have held its victory parade had it won the Adidas Super 64 tournament?
The club basketball team has players from San Jacinto, Santa Barbara, Sacramento and Sahuarita, Ariz., among other places. It does not have one player from Compton.
The Magic’s only player with ties to the city, Compton Centennial High guard Deonta Burton, had to return to his Los Angeles home earlier this week because of family issues.
Burton’s teammates gamely played on, rallying from a nine-point, second-half deficit Saturday evening in the Adidas championship game before losing in double overtime, 88-79, to Grassroots Canada Elite at Las Vegas Rancho High.
It was the Magic’s first defeat since May.
“We had a great streak going,” said guard Roberto Nelson, whose three-point basket with seven seconds left in regulation forced the first overtime.
Compton lost to a Canadian team that was also something of a misnomer. Grassroots’ roster is mostly made up of Canadian-born players who compete for U.S. high schools. Junior forward Tristan Thompson, a native of Brampton, Ontario, plays in New Jersey and has committed to Texas.
The Magic’s jerseys feature a collection of black-and-white stars running vertically along each side set against a yellow background. Yet the team features no stars, just talent.
There’s Nelson, the flashy guard from Santa Barbara High who scored 24 points in the title game; brawny forward Joe Burton of Hemet West Valley High, whose exit early in the second overtime after fouling out accelerated the Magic’s demise; and guard Justin Hawkins of Woodland Hills Taft High, who has a smooth pull-up jumper. The list goes on.
Etop Udo-Ema, the Magic’s founder and director, said he started the team in 1995 to keep the players he helped coach at Compton High together in the off-season “so people wouldn’t steal them.”
His early teams featured Compton stars Tito Maddox and Jeff Trepagnier, among others from the area. They were known as Team Reebok back then, becoming the Magic in 1999.
Udo-Ema said his team no longer features many Compton players because “you have to get the best kids to fit the team. Not that there’s not good players in Compton right now, [but] you have to get the most competitive group you can, no matter where the kids are from.”
So why still call it the Compton Magic?
“That’s how we made our bones,” Udo-Ema said. “That’s where it all started.”
Magic players said they liked the name.
“You can say it’s weird,” Hawkins said, “but not to us because we’re so used to it.”
Said Nelson: “I don’t really think about it too much. I’ve been playing with a lot of these guys since the seventh grade. It’s basically a family.”
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Even with star forward Jeremy Tyler sitting on the bench for about the first five minutes of each half, California Supreme pulled out a 79-70 victory over Houston Hoops in the 17-under platinum division championship of the Main Event at Las Vegas Spring Valley High.
Supreme Coach Gary Franklin said he sat Tyler at the outset of each half so that the 6-foot-10 junior from San Diego High could “kind of get back to the familiarity of what we’re doing” after missing several recent tournaments.
“I’ll do whatever it takes for my team to win,” said Tyler, who finished with 12 points. “I wasn’t really focused on my personal game.”
Gary Franklin Jr., the Santa Ana Mater Dei High junior guard who is also the coach’s son, scored 21 points for Supreme, which regrouped in a big way after losing its first two games in pool play earlier in the week.
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Guard Kenny Boynton scored 26 points to lead Florida-based Team Breakdown to an 81-64 victory over North Carolina-based D-One Sports in the Reebok Summer Championships open division title game at Henderson (Nev.) Foothill High. D-One Sports point guard John Wall, who scored 20 points in the championship game, was selected the tournament’s most outstanding player.
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