AEBL puts basketball first

Celebrity-driven summer league aims to make Atlanta hoops the city’s newest star

Basketball has always been on the back burner when looking at Atlanta’s sports landscape. As capital of Georgia and unofficial capital of the South, it’s a (college) football town by default. The city’s most recognized sports export, the Atlanta Braves, also happens to be the only professional team to bring a major championship title to the A. Well, 14 if you count those divisional “titles.”

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And then there’s the Atlanta Hawks. Despite being a perennial play-off team since 2008, the Hawks hovered in the cellar of NBA home-game attendance ratings until last year’s “dream season,” and are just now earning back the trust of fans for the first time since they traded hoop hero Dominique Wilkins 21 years ago.

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Adding to that, Georgia Tech went to two Final Fours and came back sans trophy, and our WNBA team, the Atlanta Dream, reached three WNBA Finals, but got swept in each of them. So it’s no surprise that basketball hasn’t won over a lot of fans in the town that ESPN once called “the city too busy to root.”

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As a basketball fan and 14-year resident of Atlanta, Jahi Rawlings, founder of the Atlanta Entertainment Basketball League (AEBL), knows this and hopes to change it.

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Founded in 2013, AEBL describes itself as a “live sports and entertainment attraction for competitive basketball played by current, former and aspiring NBA players, celebrities, entertainers and local athletes.” The league started play on the asphalt courts of Central Park (yes, Atlanta has a Central Park) in Old Fourth Ward, installed hardwood courts there the second year, and then moved to Grady High School’s gym this past June. Games are played on weekends between June and August and are free to the public, giving families a much-needed option when looking for somewhere to take the kids. The league also includes community outreach via back-to-school and holiday toy drives. Modeled after New York City’s famed Entertainers Basketball Classic (EBC) held at street basketball mecca Rucker Park, AEBL features teams ran and organized by local celebrities, brands, and NBA players.

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2 Chainz’ Street Execs label has had a team in the league since its inception. Trinidad James’ Gold Gang squad won the 2013 championship and the “All Gold Everything” rapper even played some minutes himself. Former South Gwinnett High School star and current Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Lou Williams’ Uptown Sounds team won the trophy last season and he currently holds the league record for most points in a game with 51. The No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 WNBA draft and Atlanta Dream franchise player Angel McCoughtry has a team in the league.

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Players ranging from ATL streetball legend and former Mays High School standout DeAndre “Mosquito” Bray to Georgia State University guard Kevin Ware (yes, that Kevin Ware) and current Hawks All-Star Paul Millsap have played in the league as well. Last year, AEBL sent a team to the EBC’s South Beach Invitational in Miami and won the whole tournament beating teams from New York and Los Angeles.

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“As a basketball city, I don’t think Atlanta gets the respect it deserves,” says Rawlings, a New York City native who played college ball at Georgia Perimeter and also worked in the Atlanta Hawks player development department. “When I first moved here I said there’s a lot of basketball here. But nobody is putting it on a platform.”

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He’s right, there is and has always been a lot of basketball here. In the ’90s, if you weren’t old enough to get into stripper paradise Club Nikki’s with the “ballers,” you could go five minutes further down Stewart Avenue and hoop at Run N’ Shoot (now the Metro Fun Center) with real ballers. The Atlanta Celtics AAU team is one of the most respected amateur organizations in the nation and made NBA stars out of Atlanta natives Dwight Howard and Josh Smith. Right now, Atlanta is a hotbed for high school players including ones like Marietta’s Jaylen Brown, a No. 1 ranked recruit who just committed to play for University of California, Berkeley.

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But, even with all of that history, basketball in Atlanta has also played second fiddle to the entertainment industry. The crowds that used to be at basketball courts have migrated to recording studios. Being asked, “Do you hoop?” has been replaced with “You make beats?” As a former Grand Hustle Records Entertainment intern and A3C festival sponsorship manager, Rawlings recognizes music’s stronghold on the community, hence the “Entertainment” part of the league. Members of the Coalition DJs crew have played music during the games. Migos and Monica have sat courtside. Cast members of VH1’s “Love & Hip Hop Atlanta” have come by for photo ops. Occasionally, upstart R&B singers perform the National Anthem. But Rawlings insists that the league will always be about basketball first.

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“We don’t want to go overboard with entertainment but we want young people to be able to come and showcase their talents,” he says of the league that has grown from eight to 12 teams in three years. “Artists and managers want us to have performances every weekend, but we don’t want to do that. If anything we will scale the entertainment part down to keep it about the basketball.”

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And that they do. Star-craving fans and even some of the team organizers themselves initially saw AEBL as a vanity league. But once the games started, shit got real.

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“The first team we assembled was guys from the office and a couple close friends we play pick-up games with,” admits Street Execs co-founder Allen Parks. “After noticing the superior talent in the league, we did what any team would do, recruited.”

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“As a pro you want to come play against some of the best competition in the summer time,” says Millsap, who played with the Skill Factory team in the last week of the 2015 regular season. “I attended a few games and liked what I saw. They asked me to play so I figured it would be a good run.”

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AEBL is NBA sanctioned, meaning pro players can participate without fear of getting hurt and having their contracts voided. The league is also making inroads by involving women as team owners, coaches, and referees, and features Streetz 94.5 radio personality Bria Janelle as the in-game host. Rawlings also has aspirations of building youth and women’s leagues under the AEBL banner.

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“I can tell we’ve made an impact,” says Rawlings about his league that has grown from 200 weekend visitors to 1,200. “Ever since we started, I’m seeing basketball events pop up all over the city now. In the next two or three years you’ll hear the conversations change. Basketball is for real in Atlanta.”