WASHINGTON — Miles Rawls didn’t invest a good chunk of his life into running the Goodman League with the expectation that one of the more intimate, check-your-status-at-the-door outdoor basketball venues in the country would one day attract NBA All-Stars and future Hall of Famers. He wasn’t chasing big names; they came to him because of the hoop-loving community that had been built inside the gates.
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And when they arrived, Rawls couldn’t resist the charms of Gilbert Arenas parking his Maybach or Ferrari on the right side of the court and getting buckets without stretching; or a hoop junkie, clout-chasing youngster like Kevin Durant earning a streetball crown before championship rings; or Shaquille O’Neal paying a visit as a spectator — in a full suit — and getting one lucky hooper an NBA tryout. When they were gone, Rawls had to learn that a foundation for sustained blacktop success couldn’t be formed from stardust.
“A lot of people were spoiled when the pros were coming,” Rawls said, including himself.
For a nearly six-year stretch, beginning more than a dozen years ago, NBA players — and those working their way up to those ranks — used to come down to hoop on humid, summer nights at Barry Farm. The no-frills, hard-as-its-neighborhood court in the heart of one of D.C.’s most deprived, crime-ridden communities provided two irresistible benefits: a good run and the possibility of some hood love.
But NBA stars don’t come around anymore. It’s been more than two years since Bradley Beal and Will Barton showed up as the last vestiges of a glorious, bygone, logo-stamped era, and Rawls doesn’t expect that to change anytime soon, if ever. With most Goodman League fans making it known they want some good games — with or without household names — Rawls has come to accept that. Because even if someone from the Washington Wizards or one of the many talents the region has pumped into the NBA decides to come down to Southeast and lace ’em up for the people, that magical, euphoric period won’t ever be duplicated.
“Normally, when you do stuff this long, there’s a dip in there somewhere. And I hit that dip, I want to say, right after Gilbert and them left,” Rawls said. “Of course, when the pros come, it’s super, super packed. But I’m at capacity every night, and we’re playing in that hot sun. I’m cool. I always told myself the fans, that feeds me. That’s where I get my energy. They still come out and support, and the game’s been good, so I ain’t got no complaints. It’s been a long, good run.”
Miles Rawls (Terrance Williams / Getty Images)Rawls is nearing the conclusion of his 23rd year as commissioner of this labor of love, and he isn’t sure how much longer the Goodman League will continue to service the community with free, family-friendly (with a hint of that pungent cloud of wacky tobacco in the air) summertime basketball. “This gentrification garbage,” Rawls said, and, unfortunately, crime from “these little fake neighborhood gangsters” who Rawls said don’t hold the same respect for some unspoken rules about times when peace should be maintained, could eventually force him to pursue the creation of an indoor pro-am somewhere else.
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But he’s hoping the league he once played in growing up with his buddies — when it was merely a neighborhood pastime known as Barry Farm Community Basketball League — and resuscitated in 1996 upon his return from a 12-year tour in the Army can hang on for a while longer. “I may be down there two years, tops,” Rawls said. “At least do 25 down there. If it ends at 25, I’m satisfied. I got no regrets. None.”
The playoffs are underway — with a new champion to be crowned this weekend — for the Goodman League, which has had its share of ups and downs over the years. It has lasted, however, because it has always stayed true to its purpose: Six nights a week of basketball in a safe, fenced-in environment where folks can just watch some competitive basketball — whether the game includes NBA All-Stars or a former high school legend who never got his shot at something greater — and have a good time “Inside Da Gates,” as the league’s famed motto states.
Rawls has been there every night, providing laughter with his offhand jokes, brutally honest play-by-play over the PA system and commentary. He opened up the competition to players outside the Barry Farm and Parkchester communities shortly after the talent decline became evident and big-time local products such as former NBA guard Sherman Douglas and Big East all-time leading scorer Lawrence Moten gave the league an established reputation. “The bump was like crazy,” Rawls said of the spike in interest. “Moten was an animal on both ends. Don’t say nothing. Give me the key to his Benz, get his work in, come and get his key back, walk down the alley, he gone.”
Fans would line up along the fences because there were no bleachers back then. And games would linger into pitch-black darkness because there were no lights. Rawls renamed the Barry Farm Community Basketball League the Goodman League in the early aughts after a former recreational center counselor, George Goodman, who was murdered in 1984. Within a few years, the program for which Rawls has been a dedicated pillar exploded into something iconic. Those Arenas/Durant-fueled highs were met by a crash to which Rawls has overcome, but only by so much.
When Arenas came along, with Wizards fame and All-Star cachet, and decided he would make regular appearances at Barry Farm, the league set a new standard for acceptable talent. Rawls remembers his relationship with Arenas forming when the mercurial guard discovered the smack-talking Wizards season-ticket holder (Rawls once famously heckled President Barack Obama at the lone Wizards game he attended while in office) happened to run an outdoor summer league. Arenas cold-called Rawls, asked if he could play and showed up that night in a pair of low-top Chuck Taylors.
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“And he got his ass handed to him,” Rawls said. “The next day, he called and said, ‘Can I play?’ Every day, he’d call. ‘Y’all got games today? I’m playing.’ That was a good stretch right there. It was lit.”
Arenas didn’t just play; he ingratiated himself with the fans, signing autographs for however long it took before driving off in whatever luxury vehicle he decided to bring that evening. Arenas also rarely came solo, routinely making sure that whatever Wizards teammates he worked out with earlier that day would join him for a little streetball. Other Wizards players, such as Caron Butler, Andray Blatche, Nick Young, DeShawn Stevenson, Dominic McGuire and Donnell Taylor, showed up and performed.
Looking back, Rawls is appreciative that Arenas was so committed but wonders if playing in those games on that pockmarked concrete — before corporate sponsors like Nike and Red Bull showed up to replace blacktop with something more forgiving on the knees — contributed to his never fully recovering from the 2007 torn medial collateral ligament that forever altered his career. Arenas would always make outdoor games part of his rehabilitation, which typically unsettled his employers.
“I told him, ‘That concrete is going to tear your knee up.’ But he was so caught up in the rapture and the love and the competition. That joker was coming down there killing,” Rawls said. “I said, ‘You don’t have to play no more.’ His knee never really got right again. I’m sure that concrete contributed big time to that because we didn’t have the surface that we have now. That was straight gravel, and you know how he was going. I said, ‘You can’t blame me. He was playing because he wanted to play.’”
Over a recent pregame meal at Busboys and Poets, Rawls came clean about a long-rumored injury involving another former Wizard, Blatche, who broke his foot the summer of 2010. Blatche denied that it occurred while playing at Barry Farm, and Rawls wouldn’t concede to anything when then-Wizards assistant coach Sam Cassell and others called for information. Nine years removed, he’s now got nothing to lose.
“Wizards was having nightmares when Blatche got hurt. Sam had just gone down there as an assistant. Blatche got hurt on a break by himself, and he buckled. He couldn’t play,” Rawls said. “They called me, asking me if Blatche played down there the day before, this, that and a third. I said, ‘Don’t call me about no Blatche. Ask Blatche.’ I think after that, they really started clamping down. But wasn’t no clamping down with Gil.”
Around the same time Arenas gave the Goodman League the outside recognition that Rawls never could have anticipated, the local area was producing some special talents, including back-to-back No. 2 overall picks Durant and Michael Beasley, Ty Lawson and Nolan Smith. Rawls made sure to schedule Durant and Beasley, then high school phenoms, two, possibly three times a week. They’d have no problem showing up, holding their own or simply besting grown men.
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“They were grown. They were grown,” Rawls said of Durant and Beasley, repeating himself for emphasis. “KD was an animal. The city talent, it ain’t like that no more. Jokers ain’t applying themselves no more.”
Not every great player at Barry Farm suited up in the NBA, and not every NBA player left a positive impression on the people. Rawls still shakes his head about the time Steve Francis, the Takoma Park product who starred at Maryland before reaching stardom in the NBA with the Rockets, decided he was going to bless Barry Farm with his presence.
“Steve came down here one day on the bs — fifteen bodyguards — and stunk the place up. Literally stunk the place up. And I told him when he decided to come, I said, ‘You’ve got to give me that Maryland Steve Francis.’ I said, ‘You can’t come down here bulljiving.’” Rawls said. “He come down there bulljiving, and the fans let him have it. Didn’t do nothing. They rolled him out of there.”
Kevin Durant has made an appearance at the Goodman League. (Terrance Williams / Getty Images)Superstar cameos were rare and drew large crowds from Barry Farm’s prideful residents. But people still come for the comfort of the connection, for the food and music and, for some, the chance to roll up something and smoke freely outside. And that’s what made those special nights — like the night O’Neal changed one participant’s life — more memorable. Rawls remains in awe that O’Neal visited his neighborhood, a place he always reminds guests as where he was “born and raised,” to catch a game. O’Neal was so impressed by the play of Brian Chase, a former Virginia Tech guard, that he scored him a tryout with the Miami Heat.
“Shaq came. Wore a suit down there. He was burning up that day,” Rawls said with a laugh. “That was big for the league and the neighborhood; with the poverty, you don’t see that.”
Durant was already establishing a solid local reputation before reaching the NBA but became a streetball legend the summer after his rookie year with the Seattle SuperSonics. In a duel that Rawls called “the best one-on-one” performance inside the gates, Durant outscored the late Gerald “P. Shitty” Brown, a product of West Baltimore, 62-49. Highlights can be found on YouTube, but those in attendance were able to elevate the performance — and participants — to mythical status through word of mouth.
The lure of competing at Barry Farm even got Nolan Smith suspended for the first two games of his junior year at Duke in 2009 because he continued to play pickup games down there even though the NCAA didn’t sanction the Goodman League at the time (it does now). Rawls is an employee at the Department of Homeland Security and remembers a chance encounter with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski a few years later. “I saw Coach K one day; I was working. I saw them get on the bus, and I got on the bus and I said, ‘I’m Miles. I run the Goodman League.’ He said, ‘Your Goodman League is a good league, but your league caused me problems,’” Rawls said with a laugh.
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Popularity for the Goodman League reached its apex in 2011 when the NBA lockout converged with Durant’s desire to work on his game and destroy everything in front of him. Those elements set up an incredible summer of grassroots charity games and streetball competitions. With an eager participant with all-NBA credibility in his backyard in Durant, Rawls found himself as the unofficial winner of summertime hoops as he organized games throughout the city and expanded to other parts of the country. The Goodman League famously staged two battles against the legendary Drew League from Los Angeles, including an overcapacity contest at Trinity College that brought out Durant, John Wall, James Harden and DeMar DeRozan, among other NBA players and streetball legends.
“That lockout was off the chain,” Rawls said, flashing a grin. “I still watch some of the stuff on YouTube, when we were traveling all over the place playing. That lockout was vicious. Tried to get that third game with the Drew League, but (Drew League commissioner) Dino (Smiley) was bulljiving. Dino didn’t want that whipping.”
Nike got behind something that began organically, under the slogan “Basketball Never Stops,” and the Goodman League received unprecedented exposure and support. The court was later renovated. Bleachers were installed. Some of the rough edges that gave Barry Farm its character were smoothed out. But instead of continued growth, Rawls met with the disappointment of dwindling star power. Arenas was dealt to Orlando in 2010. Weather prohibited Wall from participating three times — each in a scheduled duel against Lawson — and the Wizards were likely reluctant to approve after the injury situations with Arenas and Blatche. Beal let off some steam at Barry Farm after being cut from the FIBA World Championships in 2014, but Wizards players essentially stopped coming when Arenas departed.
“The team, they was really down on them playing outside after Blatche got hurt. That’s why John (Wall) never really played. He’d tell me he was going to play, and I think they were really riding him,” Rawls said. “Gil was, like, giving them his ass to kiss, like, ‘I’m going over here to play.’ Had the Michael Jordan ‘love of the game’ clause.
“If Gil was still there, those youngsters would’ve had to come down and get their feet wet. And they should want to get their feet wet. If you’re playing in a town and they got a summer league, you supposed to go get your feet wet. You’ve got to represent.”
Durant, once a mainstay, made his final appearance in 2013 — the summer before his lone regular-season MVP season — and hasn’t been back. Although Durant broke his foot in 2014, blaming it mostly on the wear and tear of his intense summer workouts and the outdoor grind, and spends little to no time in D.C. during the offseason, Rawls believes his slick-talking on the mic pushed him away. Rawls made a joke that he claims didn’t go over well when it got back to the eventual two-time Finals MVP.
“Opening day, place packed. A kid comes into the game, checks into the game. I said, ‘That joker got that Kevin Durant hair!’ I said right behind it, ‘I know all his little flunkies on the phone calling him, telling him that.’” Rawls said. “Since then, he never came back down there. He even did a Nike event, and Nike called me. ‘What’s this other park that KD wants to go to, instead of the Goodman League? I said, ‘That’s his buddy’s spot … I guess he mad at me over a joke.’”
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Rawls said he reached out by phone to discuss the situation but Durant denied that the joke had any influence on his not coming around to Barry Farm. When the conversation ended, Rawls wasn’t convinced. “KD did what he was supposed to do down here. I appreciate KD playing, the little bit of time he played when he was in the league,” Rawls said, though he is disappointed Durant was never able to bring Russell Westbrook or Harden to play at the Goodman League. “He didn’t donate to the league, but when I was doing my charity games, he played in all of them. I like the guy. I like him. KD just too sensitive.”
Rawls has come to accept that the outdoor runs that defined his youth, and that of many a player before and after him, aren’t necessarily where reputations are built. Players now have more access to indoor gyms and individualized training. AAU travel teams and college players prefer more structured games and workouts, making it less likely for the most promising prospects to be spotted playing pickup at places like Barry Farm. That change and the city’s plan to redevelop the community around the gates — most of the homes have been torn down in preparation for a mixed retail and housing project — have forced Rawls to adapt. His Plan B is to create an indoor pro-am that he says would be “a baby Drew League.”
“What I think is really hurting the outdoor stuff — the kids want to stay in the gym and work out all the time. That just ruined basketball, in my opinion,” Rawls said. “Like KD once stated, that’s where he got his toughness from, playing in the Goodman. They didn’t care about his name, even when he made the league. He got bumped going across the lane, too. Nowadays, guys don’t want to play outside. Even the high school division, some of the top guys, prospects don’t want to go outside. I’m like, what? We died to play outside. We ain’t had gyms.
“The league guys stopped coming; it took a little dip, and then it picked back up. D.C. is starstruck. I used to get emails. ‘Who playing?’ ‘Any pros playing down there?’ I wasn’t even responding to those emails. But the bleachers been good. The games been really good, so I’m cool with it,” Rawls said. “I take it with a grain of salt because it’s serving its purpose as far as keeping people out of trouble. That’s my main concern because I vowed not to worry about that, because I knew at some point, the league guys wasn’t going to come play outside no way.”
On a recent muggy night, Rawls shouted into the mic: “Enjoy the games while you can. When the new people move in, it’s no guarantees that the gates will be open. But there will be a league. You best believe that.”
(Top photo: Terrance Williams / Getty Images)
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