Basketball never stops. This is the moniker… the battle cry of sorts… that every locked out, NBA basketball player has lived by during this nearly 6-month NBA lockout. With no hope of a professional basketball season on the horizon, many NBA players who have stayed stateside have turned to local, patchwork “pickup” games across the country to get their basketball fix. The fans want NBA basketball… the players want NBA basketball… for now though, both fans and players will have to settle for games like Houston’s John Lucas Celebrity NBA Lockout Game.
3:00PM: Delmar Stadium, usually home to AAU and high school basketball games, is today home to the closest thing to NBA basketball the city of Houston has seen since last April… the arena is quiet, with volunteers scampering around with last minute preparations. Outside the arena however, a different, more chaotic atmosphere is beginning to build as basketball-hungry fans wrap a line around the parking lot.
John Lucas, former Houston Rocket point guard and local AAU basketball legend. If there was one man to bring some sense of NBA basketball back to Houston, John Lucas is the man. NBA players 
respect Mr. Lucas, many have turned to him for mentoring. So it was no surprise when NBA superstar names such as Derrick Rose, Kevin Durant, and Luis Scola began to circulate in local circles as possible participants in Mr. Lucas’ celebrity game.
4:00PM: Two local AAU teams take to the court in what looks like a Goliath versus David re-enactment so of course the sentiment is to pull for the little guys, literally. As the crowd, who have been waiting outside since 2PM, begin to trickle in, the Goliath-sized team begins to dominate the much smaller but feisty team. Back in the locker room areas, a few NBA players begin to saunter in.
One of the first NBA players to arrive is local product and former Texas A&M freshman phenom, DeAndre Jordan. DeAndre has gone from viciously dunking on local area gyms to rattling rims at Reed Arena in College Station to bending NBA rims most recently with the Los Angeles Clippers. His meteoric rise has made him one of the most sought after centers in the next NBA free agent class — when we next have a NBA free agency that is.
Wanting to beat the rush from the rest of the media, I was able to get a few words in with my fellow Aggie while in the locker room. I welcomed him back to Houston, we reminisced about one of his more memorable monstrous dunks as an Aggie (that put-back dunk got us both on ESPN Top Ten) and spoke a bit about the lock out.
5:00PM: The crowd is in a raucous state now. Word of the NBA players and local sports celebrities that have arrived and moving around the locker rooms has spread through the stands as the AAU game draws to an end. Yes, the taller, more athletic team one… but Team David put up a helluva fight! The crowd roars as Chicago Bulls star, Derrick Rose, addresses the crowd — he’s in street clothes… he won’t be playing. Disappointment.
Playing simply for “the love of the game” is an undoubted cliche in sports but seems to ring true in the halls of Delmar’s locker rooms today. The sight of Luis Scola, dressed with a ball in his hands pacing, ready to hit the court good hour before any other player (apparently no one notified Luis that these “celebrity” games never start on time). Hearing every player voice the same wary sentiment about missing game time because of the lock out. Knowing that each of these players, substituting tailored NBA uniforms for the lock out game’s generic uniforms, have all paid their own ways to get here and are not profiting from the event. Cliche it may be, but these guys love the game… and they just want to play ball.
5:30PM: Tip-off. The ball falls to another local-product-turned-NBA-player, T.J. Ford. He pushes the ball up court, flicks a pass towards the rim and DeAndre Jordan swoops in to do what he does best… he punishes the rim with a monstrous dunk. The crowd blows the roof off the arena with a unified roar of approval.
As the game progressed and the dunks reigned as most would expect in all-star type games, it was easy to forget the shortcomings of a non-NBA, charity basketball game and just enjoy the sport. So what if the arena is small, so what if you can’t understand a word being said over the sound system, basketball is basketball… so it must be true, basketball never stops.
See all the images from this event in our Featured Gallery!
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