Where did some top Chicago area high school basketball players learn how to play the game? In community centers, grade school gyms, parks and driveways–anywhere there’s a hoop and a desire.
JACOB PULLEN, PROVISO EAST
WASHINGTON & 10TH, MAYWOOD
However abundant the gifts that made him one of Illinois’ top seniors and earned him a basketball scholarship to Kansas State, most would-be stars begin as morning players at 10th Avenue Park in Maywood, and Jacob Pullen was really no different.
The spindly, 7th-grade version of Pullen would arrive early with friends, passing the warm days with two-on-two, three-on-three or even exhausting full-court one-on-one encounters. The day would wear on, and eventually a bigger, better crew of players showed up and unceremoniously banished the pipsqueaks to the sideline.
But at least you couldn’t beat the view. From the outskirts of the on-court action, Pullen, now a senior at Proviso East, absorbed volumes of basketball knowledge. Most of it stuck, including one particular early summer day in 2001, when the likes of Dee Brown, Shannon Brown and Steven Hunter showed up.
Toward the end of one tight contest, Shannon Brown drove to the rim. Hunter, the 7-footer from DePaul, stood sentinel in the lane. Brown rose up. Hunter rose up to meet him.
“Shannon just completely dunked over him,” Pullen recalled. “It was crazy. His whole head was over the rim. Steve Hunter tried to jump, and [Brown] just dunked all over him. [Hunter] had no chance to block it.”
The game was being played to 32. Upon the thunderous dunk, the majority of the 60 or 70 people within the park fence–you couldn’t even see the courts that day from your car if you wanted to, Pullen recalled–stormed onto the court.
A game about six or seven points shy of its official end was terminated. No one needed to see anymore that day.
“Everybody got on the court,” Pullen said, “and they couldn’t start the game again.”
For Pullen, 10th Park, as he calls it, was equal parts proving ground and learning annex. At 6 feet 1 inch and 170 pounds even today, Pullen is not the brawniest of point guards, and he admits to the games at the park giving his basketball attitude a steel-wool rubdown.
“It was real tough,” Pullen said. “Especially when you get into the games, you’d be playing so hard, you didn’t call fouls. You’d get knocked into the gates, you’d get cuts, all of that stuff.”
But even before that, he took in the sights of Shannon Brown’s monster dunk, or Dee Brown streaking downcourt past the five members of the opposition, and filed them away. Each represents some fraction of the player into which Pullen has morphed.
— Brian Hamilton
KAMILLE BUCKNER, YOUNG
ADA PARK FIELDHOUSE, CHICAGO
Fans of Young’s girls basketball team can thank Chelse Hoover for Kamille Buckner’s decision to play the game.
Hoover is now a student and player at Morgan Park. In 2nd grade, she was Buckner’s close friend. She phoned her one Saturday and said, “I’m going to Ada Park for this basketball thing.”
“I didn’t even play basketball until my friend called me,” said Buckner, now a 6-foot-1-inch senior headed to Ohio University.
She joined a group of grammar school students for layup drills, rebounding and learning defensive fundamentals at Ada Park, on 111th Street.
“I was the tallest kid,” Buckner said. “Every Saturday we had games. We used to do layup drills, lots of defensive drills, practice rebounding.”
Buckner made the trek to Ada Park for the next few years, and in 4th grade girls basketball was introduced at her school.
Over time, it’s those rebounding and defensive drills that apparently stuck with Buckner.
Young took third in Class AA last season, but the Dolphins wouldn’t have made the trip to Redbird Arena without a 45-40 sectional win over Hope in which Buckner had 10 rebounds.
That’s why Buckner’s modest scoring average of 4.1 points isn’t a concern.
“She led the team in blocks and was our best defender,” Young coach Corry Irvin said. “She knows the pressure and does a good job of accepting it, trying to get everyone to strive for the same goals.”
So now Buckner has become the instructor.
— Alan Sutton
DEANDRE LIGGINS, WASHINGTON
BLACKWELDER PARK, CHICAGO
The courts at Blackwelder Park are a bit peripheral to the basketball landscape in Chicago proper, located just off West 115th Street and a few blocks from Interstate 57. But savvy observers on Metra can spy the action on any given day.
And so DeAndre Liggins feels like he gains a fresh audience each time he takes to the courts he has visited since 6th grade, the hum of the trains inevitably presaging new sets of eager eyes.
“That’s what makes it special for me,” said Liggins, a junior at Washington. “I don’t know. It’s just a good feeling.”
They might have seen Liggins last summer, even, getting to Blackwelder Park at 7 a.m. and remaining there until midafternoon, firing up jump shot after jump shot, usually about 500 a day. All in order to climb even higher in the national consciousness, as Liggins is ranked as the No. 84 junior nationally by Rivals.com.
He also hears from the older players there, the “guys who didn’t make it but had talent,” according to Liggins, who feed him what advice they can. Keep your head straight. Stay focused.
That way thousands more eyes than what Metra can provide might watch the 6-foot-5-inch swingman down the line.
“I expect them to care,” Liggins said, “because they like me a lot around there.”
— Brian Hamilton
MICHELLE MCDONALD, JOHNSBURG
THE FAMILY DRIVEWAY, JOHNSBURG
Yes, Johnsburg is almost 60 miles from the Loop. But, no, Michelle McDonald did not learn basketball shooting at a hoop attached to a barn.
“Probably my driveway at our old house” is where the 5-foot-11-inch junior at Johnsburg picked up the game.
McDonald was 6 years old when she and her brother Matt, who is two years older, would wander out to the driveway on North Florence Road. Her first shots were at a toy basketball hoop–which she still has.
It was her father who introduced the game to McDonald. A 1980 graduate of Grant, 6-2 Dan McDonald taught her the basics.
“I just played all sports,” she said. “I would try whatever and see what I liked. Basketball just stuck with me, I guess.”
She made Johnsburg’s varsity as a freshman and last year started for a 28-2 team that lost in the sectional finals to Warren. With 6-1 senior and Marquette recruit Paige Fedorowicz returning, there’s optimism in the far northwest suburbs.
“There are big expectations this year,” McDonald said. “Basketball has really grown.”
— Alan Sutton
LINDSEY WILLIAMS, HINSDALE CENTRAL
LIBERTY SCHOOL, ORLAND PARK
It’s understandable if Lindsey Williams’ favorite Web site is Mapquest.
She was born in Naperville, lived in Orland Park and then followed her father, a General Motors executive, to Minnesota, Michigan, San Francisco and Southern California.
Now the Williams family has returned to the Chicago area, and the 6-foot-1-inch senior will be playing for Hinsdale Central.
However, it was at Liberty School in Orland Park where she learned how to play basketball.
“I was in 5th grade and learned in the park district program,” Williams said.
Williams didn’t have to look far for guidance on the basketball court.
Her father, Maurice Williams, played at Southern California from 1978-82 and was drafted by the Lakers in the seventh round as the 160th pick overall. That’s the same draft the Lakers took James Worthy with their No. 1 pick.
Williams never did hook on with the Lakers, but he played overseas for two years. Then the Clippers showed some interest, but he decided to take a job offer from General Motors.
“The younger I was, the easier it was to move around,” Lindsey Williams said. “This one was the hardest. Going into senior year, everyone’s established.”
She was well established at Westlake in Westlake Village, Calif. Williams averaged 20 points and 10 rebounds a game. She was All-Ventura County, an All-State selection. Williams has made a verbal commitment to Yale, where she already has been accepted.
She also excels in track and field. Her personal best of 5 feet 7 1/2 inches in the high jump at Westlake would have won the Illinois Class AA state title last spring. She also ran the 100, 200 and 400 meters.
Her enrollment at Hinsdale Central came as a surprise to coach Steve Gross. During the summer he received an e-mail from the Davidson coach inquiring about Williams.
“I thought it was one of my friends kidding me,” he said.
— Alan Sutton
DEANNA ORTIZ, RESURRECTION
DUNHAM PARK COMMUNITY GYM, CHICAGO
It seemed only natural that when Deanna Ortiz was in 1st grade, she would be introduced to basketball.
“I was always pretty much taller than everyone in my grade,” said Ortiz, now a 5-foot-10-inch junior at Resurrection.
Ortiz didn’t have very far to go to learn the game.
When she was 6, she merely had to walk over to Dunham Park on the city’s Northwest Side to be signed up for a Biddy Basketball league.
“I was a little uncomfortable,” she said. “The league had mostly boys. I was one of only about six girls in the whole league. At first I thought I wasn’t going to be good enough to play with all the boys.”
Ortiz has older brothers, but she said they never really played much basketball.
It was her father, Orlando, who taught her the fundamentals of dribbling, passing and shooting.
Resurrection coach Kerry Durham said Ortiz, now 17 and considered one of the area’s top juniors, had a “tremendous” summer.
“Her basketball IQ is way up there,” she said.
“She doesn’t have to rely on a shot to be part of a game. Her passing is tremendous. She can score inside and out. The whole package.”
— Alan Sutton
JONATHAN MONTGOMERY, J.J. HENLEY, MICHAEL THOMPSON, LINCOLN PARK
LOYOLA PARK, CHICAGO
The ragged surface itself hardly befits the exquisite view, with Lake Michigan bounding into the shore maybe 50 yards from the court at Loyola Park.
Seams run through the concrete playing surface every few feet, as if they were plates of the Earth’s crust scraping against each other unevenly. Weeds poke through the cracks. A tattered net hangs limply off one of the rims.
Loyola Park is not what it used to be for three Lincoln Park players who date their friendship back to this particular court. All of them grew up within a few blocks of the place. All of them–Jonathan Montgomery, J.J. Henley and Michael Thompson–gravitated here to play.
And all of them are in line to be Division I basketball players. Thompson, a 5-foot-10-inch point guard, is headed to Northwestern. The 6-6 Henley will play for Wisconsin-Green Bay. Montgomery, a 6-3 shooting guard, has yet to settle on a destination and likely will make his decision in the spring signing period.
Not a bad success rate for one uneven patch of concrete.
“We all grew up around here,” Montgomery said. “When we were younger, every day we got out of school, we’d all come up here and hoop. Everybody who thought they were good, they’d put them up against us, because they’d think we were the kings around here, basically.”
Not that they readily ceded the honor. Because of the various commitments to Lincoln Park’s school squad, the three do not return to play at Loyola Park frequently, but they made their mark during summer park district games barely a year ago.
“We were losing by about 25 in the first half, and then these guys came,” Thompson said. “I was playing, but I wasn’t doing anything, and we were losing. When they came, we came back and won the championship in the second half.”
The competition isn’t as fierce at Loyola Park as it used to be, the players say. Maybe it’s natural attrition, or maybe it’s the fact that the three cleared out of the neighborhood and have to devote most of their time to the Lions’ varsity squad.
“The talent level at the time we were playing, that’s what pretty much made other players want to come up here and play,” Thompson said. “Nowadays the talent level isn’t that good, so there aren’t that many good players up here.”
“Things change,” Montgomery said, bouncing a ball and trying to control the wayward caroms off cracks in the court.
— Brian Hamilton
NICK FRUENDT, BATAVIA
BIG WOODS PARK, BATAVIA
Joel Fruendt is a big guy. A 6-foot-7-inch former center at Illinois Wesleyan. In a one-on-one contest against a 7th-grader–or any grader, for that matter–this portends problems.
“Just because he’s 6-7, when I was younger, and obviously smaller, he could just back me down and use that,” said Nick Fruendt, standout Batavia junior and former hapless post defender. “Nowadays I’ve got a lot of quickness on him.”
Beginning in his 7th-grade season, Nick Fruendt and his father would head to nearby Big Woods Park in Batavia for work on the teenager’s individual game, which inevitably included sets of one-on-one contests against Dad.
It took two years for the younger Fruendt to take a game off his old man on the oddly conceived courts–a circle with just three hoops, pretty much eliminating the place’s capacity to hold any full-court contests.
“We played sets of games,” Nick Fruendt said. “I never shut him out like five games to nothing. The first game that I won, it was two years ago, the fall before my freshman season. I don’t remember it exactly. Finally, I could beat him in a game up to 11.
“But after each game, we have a little free-throw contest too. I think I won the game, but he beat me in the free-throw contest.”
Indeed, Fruendt is different from his peers in that the place that formed the better part of his basketball identity doesn’t even provide a full-court environment.
Despite its configurations, Big Woods is anchored in Fruendt’s heart..
“My dad really taught me everything I know about [basketball],” Fruendt said. “[Big Woods] is definitely a place I’m sure I’ll have memories of when I’m older.”
— Brian Hamilton
