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July 6 - 12, 2001
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Summertime means relaxing, going to the beach and sipping on lemonade. There’s no need for the hustle and tussle of working yourself up over something. Just relax, Maya.
Maya Fok, the hyperactive, hustle-till-you-drop point guard of Golden State, must not know what summer means. Judging from her bruising, knee-scraping style, she must not know what fall or spring means, either. She’s there banging with the big girls in the paint, diving after loose balls, frantically wheeling backwards in transition.
Welcome to the San Francisco Bay Area Pro-Am League, a summer basketball program that provides current and former women college basketball players a chance to compete and condition during off-season. Here, in this damp, light-starved gym, pure love for the game radiates.
“You’re able to play in game-like situations here,” says Selena Ho, a first-year point guard for the South Bay team. “ It’s close to the real thing.”
The Pro-Am league started seven years ago with funding from the San Francisco Park and Recreation Department and small team fees. The games take place at Kezar Pavilion, at the corner of Stanyan and Waller Streets, every Saturday afternoon through August 11 and are free to the public. Seven talent-ridden teams make up the league, and they all battle for playoff positions that start in early August, and a chance for the championship.
“These players play for the competition and to develop their skills,” says Ashley Hill, an assistant coach of Golden State.
Fok, a senior at University of San Diego, was recently picked up by her Golden State team when she decided to stay in San Francisco for few weeks. As a Division II point guard, Fok quickly found out the high level of competition at the Pro-Am, since rosters are filled mostly with Division I and several national and international professional players — current WNBA star Jennifer Azzi once played here. Players attending formidable basketball schools such as Stanford and Arizona are common.
“You never see competition this good,” Fok says. “It’s fun to see if you can hang with these types of players.”
Meanwhile, Ho of the South Bay is a perfect Lego-piece fit in this league. As a senior Division I player competing in the Big West Conference at the University of Pacific, Ho didn’t miss a step in the Pro-Am league. She unabashedly showcased her bag full of tricks: the no-look passes, lightning-quick crossovers, fearless penetration. She was definitely at home.
“You are playing pick-up games here,” Ho says. “You just have to come out and have the instincts to play with different types of players. You gotta have instincts, because the amount of talent here in this league can probably compete with a lot of Division I programs.”
It is this animal-like instinct that makes the game flow. Rarely do teams have enough practice time to diagram and run set plays. It is mostly transition basketball, where lay-ups and penetration dominate, instead of rolling off picks or hi-low passing. But this type of game doesn’t take away from the purity or excitement of basketball. It just has more pizazz.
Perhaps that’s why fans who come to these games enjoy it so much. Fans can be heard hootin’ and hollerin’ when a player makes a great play or hissing at a referee making bad calls. Even the players sitting on the bench are as much part of the game as the players on the floor. Support and instruction are constant. It’s also their duty to yell out the seconds of the shot clock since there aren’t any in the gym.
“The competition is as good as it gets away from college basketball,” Hill says. “They definitely know how to play.”
Reach Ethen Lieser at elieser@asianweek.com.
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