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11-21-2005, 08:41 AM
The New York Times
November 21, 2005
Tribes' Basketball Passion Turns Into Business
By SARAH KERSHAW
YAKIMA, Wash., Nov. 15 - The stands in the SunDome were unusually full Tuesday night when Yakima's minor league basketball team, the Sun Kings, bounded onto the court for an exhibition game a few days before the start of the season.
The crowd itself was atypical, too, filled with hundreds of members of the Yakama Nation, an Indian tribe that rarely mingles with the world outside its vast reservation about five miles east of here. But in a move that riveted tribes across the country and created a rift among Indians here, leading to the ousting of three tribal officials, the Yakama Nation became the new owners of the Sun Kings last spring.
And after Tuesday's game, the first at home under the new ownership, the Sun Kings signed an Indian player, a Sioux from Montana who had electrified the crowd with his dazzling shooting for the opposing team. The player, Richard Dionne, a 6-foot-5, 210-pound forward, is believed by officials to be the only American Indian on the roster of the Continental Basketball Association, a national eight-team league that can be a steppingstone to the N.B.A.
The tribal ownership of the team and the signing of Mr. Dionne, 24, who had been playing here for a nonprofit team not in the league, come as Indians are slowly making their way into college, semiprofessional and professional basketball.
Indians have passionately played basketball for decades on the crude courts of reservations, on half-court patches of Alaska's frozen tundra, or anywhere they can hang a hoop. Now, for the first time, tribes are looking to buy teams as they expand their reach beyond gambling and other traditional tribal businesses.
And up-and-coming Indian players, particularly on the college circuit, are popping onto the radars of minor and major league scouts.
"I had a ball in my hand since I was a baby," said Mr. Dionne, who grew up playing basketball on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana. "I'm trying to get my foot in the door."
The Yakama tribe, of 10,000 people, is the first in the nation to buy a men's professional basketball team. (After the purchase, the team's name was changed to Yakama, the spelling for the tribe, from Yakima, the spelling for the city.) The $140,000 investment caused a furor in the tribe, with many saying it was a money pit with few employment opportunities for tribal members.
Others, though, especially with the signing of Mr. Dionne, insist the team could become an important source of pride for the Yakama tribe and Indian nations elsewhere. Several Pacific Northwest tribes have already offered to become part owners.
"Having a C.B.A. team owned by a Native American community, owned by the 10,000 tribal members, is huge," said Carroll Palmer, tribal director for the Yakama government and a strong supporter of the purchase. "The newborn baby today that's enrolled in the Yakama Nation, he owns the Sun Kings. And the oldest man or woman here, they own the Sun Kings."
Mr. Palmer recently had T-shirts made saying "I Own That" on the front and "The Yakama Sun Kings" on the back. He said the shirts, along with the season tickets that were not big sellers in previous years, were beginning to sell briskly on the reservation.
Still, opposition to the purchase of the team, which prompted the recall of the three officials from the highest level of tribal government last summer, remains. Much of it stems from a sense that the ousted group had made the decision to buy the team without getting enough feedback from the tribe as a whole.
But there were also concerns about the viability of the team at a time when some of the tribal businesses, particularly a timber products company, were not thriving even as the tribe's casino profits remained strong.
The team's record last season did not help: the Sun Kings, who won the league championship three times over the last decade, tied for last place at 17 victories and 31 losses.
"The thing that I would have wanted to know was the feasibility of it," said Ross Sockzehigh, who was elected vice chairman of the tribe after the recall, adding that little investigation into the team's finances was conducted before the purchase. "For the Yakamas to consider owning a professional basketball team, I think it's premature."
Elsewhere in the country, the wealthy Mohegan tribe of Connecticut in 2003 bought a W.N.B.A. team from Florida, now called the Connecticut Sun. The team is the first not owned by the National Basketball Association; games are played in the tribe's casino complex. The Mohegans have not focused on recruiting American Indian players, team officials said.
Ryneldi Becenti, 34, a Navajo who was a star at Arizona State University, is believed to be the only American Indian to have played for the Women's National Basketball Association, with several different teams, including the Phoenix Mercury in 1998.
"As a native woman, when I was growing up, I never had any role models that excelled on the college level or professional level or in the Olympics," said Ms. Becenti, who has returned to her reservation in Window Rock, Ariz., where she coaches girls' basketball.
"To some of the youth here," Ms. Becenti said, "when they see their own color on TV, it's a big deal. I had a lot of fans come out and support me, proud to know I was representing the Navajo Nation. Just playing even two minutes for me was a dream come true."
In the N.B.A., the Phoenix Suns since 2003 have held an increasingly crowded American Indian basketball invitational in the summer to show off Indian talent, obscured for so long because of the geographic isolation of reservations and high dropout rates among Indian students.
The American Indian players have also exposed mainstream basketball to a uniquely Indian style of the sport known as rez ball, a faster and looser version with fewer timeouts, less dribbling and more passing.
"There are coaches that love that about the sport but also know they have to re-teach the native players," said GinaMarie Scarpa-Mabry, managing partner of the Suns' invitational.
American Indians, roughly 1.5 percent of the United States population, have had few famous athletes to call their own. The major exception is Jim Thorpe, the legendary Sac and Fox Indian who in the first half of the 20th century was a professional football and baseball player, as well as an Olympian.
Among modern-day athletes, many Indians are proud to note that Tiger Woods is part Cherokee; and Dwight Lowry, a Lumbee Indian who died of a heart attack in 1997, was a catcher for the Detroit Tigers.
While basketball is by far the most popular sport on Indian reservations today, with many tribes promoting it as a way to keep youth away from drugs and alcohol, at a professional level American Indians have historically made far more inroads in baseball, football, boxing and the rodeo. More recently, lacrosse, originally an American Indian sport, has also seen a resurgence among Indians.
American Indians were first exposed to professional sports before World War II, when thousands were sent to white boarding schools under a United States government program, a painful chapter in Indian history, said C. Richard King, an associate professor of comparative ethnic studies at Washington State University and the editor of "Native Americans in Sports," published last year.
By the time basketball had become a widespread, organized sport, Dr. King said, that era had ended, and Indian players were back on the reservations, their access to coaches and scouts again limited.
But as the American Indian writer and poet Sherman Alexie has often written, among sports, it is basketball that is most deeply tied to the dreams, aspirations and spirit of many Indians.
Several basketball coaches and scouts said that while there were still few professional American Indian players, that could change in the coming years; they noted that Hispanic players had made greater inroads into the N.B.A. in the past decade, a possible harbinger of the progress American Indians could make.
Coaches for the Yakama Sun Kings said they were keenly aware of the importance of promoting the team to the tribe. When the tribal council convenes later this month, another vote may be taken on whether the tribe should maintain ownership.
"Hopefully we'll win some of them over with the way we play," said Paul Woolpert, the team's head coach. "There's no question in my mind that we'll play an exciting brand of basketball on the floor."
The team's new logo features a band wrapped around a basketball with two feathers, replacing a flaming ball. And Mr. Palmer, the tribal director, said he would suggest to team and tribal officials that they start home games with an Indian prayer and traditional Yakama drumming, to go along with the Pledge of Allegiance.
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
November 21, 2005
Tribes' Basketball Passion Turns Into Business
By SARAH KERSHAW
YAKIMA, Wash., Nov. 15 - The stands in the SunDome were unusually full Tuesday night when Yakima's minor league basketball team, the Sun Kings, bounded onto the court for an exhibition game a few days before the start of the season.
The crowd itself was atypical, too, filled with hundreds of members of the Yakama Nation, an Indian tribe that rarely mingles with the world outside its vast reservation about five miles east of here. But in a move that riveted tribes across the country and created a rift among Indians here, leading to the ousting of three tribal officials, the Yakama Nation became the new owners of the Sun Kings last spring.
And after Tuesday's game, the first at home under the new ownership, the Sun Kings signed an Indian player, a Sioux from Montana who had electrified the crowd with his dazzling shooting for the opposing team. The player, Richard Dionne, a 6-foot-5, 210-pound forward, is believed by officials to be the only American Indian on the roster of the Continental Basketball Association, a national eight-team league that can be a steppingstone to the N.B.A.
The tribal ownership of the team and the signing of Mr. Dionne, 24, who had been playing here for a nonprofit team not in the league, come as Indians are slowly making their way into college, semiprofessional and professional basketball.
Indians have passionately played basketball for decades on the crude courts of reservations, on half-court patches of Alaska's frozen tundra, or anywhere they can hang a hoop. Now, for the first time, tribes are looking to buy teams as they expand their reach beyond gambling and other traditional tribal businesses.
And up-and-coming Indian players, particularly on the college circuit, are popping onto the radars of minor and major league scouts.
"I had a ball in my hand since I was a baby," said Mr. Dionne, who grew up playing basketball on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana. "I'm trying to get my foot in the door."
The Yakama tribe, of 10,000 people, is the first in the nation to buy a men's professional basketball team. (After the purchase, the team's name was changed to Yakama, the spelling for the tribe, from Yakima, the spelling for the city.) The $140,000 investment caused a furor in the tribe, with many saying it was a money pit with few employment opportunities for tribal members.
Others, though, especially with the signing of Mr. Dionne, insist the team could become an important source of pride for the Yakama tribe and Indian nations elsewhere. Several Pacific Northwest tribes have already offered to become part owners.
"Having a C.B.A. team owned by a Native American community, owned by the 10,000 tribal members, is huge," said Carroll Palmer, tribal director for the Yakama government and a strong supporter of the purchase. "The newborn baby today that's enrolled in the Yakama Nation, he owns the Sun Kings. And the oldest man or woman here, they own the Sun Kings."
Mr. Palmer recently had T-shirts made saying "I Own That" on the front and "The Yakama Sun Kings" on the back. He said the shirts, along with the season tickets that were not big sellers in previous years, were beginning to sell briskly on the reservation.
Still, opposition to the purchase of the team, which prompted the recall of the three officials from the highest level of tribal government last summer, remains. Much of it stems from a sense that the ousted group had made the decision to buy the team without getting enough feedback from the tribe as a whole.
But there were also concerns about the viability of the team at a time when some of the tribal businesses, particularly a timber products company, were not thriving even as the tribe's casino profits remained strong.
The team's record last season did not help: the Sun Kings, who won the league championship three times over the last decade, tied for last place at 17 victories and 31 losses.
"The thing that I would have wanted to know was the feasibility of it," said Ross Sockzehigh, who was elected vice chairman of the tribe after the recall, adding that little investigation into the team's finances was conducted before the purchase. "For the Yakamas to consider owning a professional basketball team, I think it's premature."
Elsewhere in the country, the wealthy Mohegan tribe of Connecticut in 2003 bought a W.N.B.A. team from Florida, now called the Connecticut Sun. The team is the first not owned by the National Basketball Association; games are played in the tribe's casino complex. The Mohegans have not focused on recruiting American Indian players, team officials said.
Ryneldi Becenti, 34, a Navajo who was a star at Arizona State University, is believed to be the only American Indian to have played for the Women's National Basketball Association, with several different teams, including the Phoenix Mercury in 1998.
"As a native woman, when I was growing up, I never had any role models that excelled on the college level or professional level or in the Olympics," said Ms. Becenti, who has returned to her reservation in Window Rock, Ariz., where she coaches girls' basketball.
"To some of the youth here," Ms. Becenti said, "when they see their own color on TV, it's a big deal. I had a lot of fans come out and support me, proud to know I was representing the Navajo Nation. Just playing even two minutes for me was a dream come true."
In the N.B.A., the Phoenix Suns since 2003 have held an increasingly crowded American Indian basketball invitational in the summer to show off Indian talent, obscured for so long because of the geographic isolation of reservations and high dropout rates among Indian students.
The American Indian players have also exposed mainstream basketball to a uniquely Indian style of the sport known as rez ball, a faster and looser version with fewer timeouts, less dribbling and more passing.
"There are coaches that love that about the sport but also know they have to re-teach the native players," said GinaMarie Scarpa-Mabry, managing partner of the Suns' invitational.
American Indians, roughly 1.5 percent of the United States population, have had few famous athletes to call their own. The major exception is Jim Thorpe, the legendary Sac and Fox Indian who in the first half of the 20th century was a professional football and baseball player, as well as an Olympian.
Among modern-day athletes, many Indians are proud to note that Tiger Woods is part Cherokee; and Dwight Lowry, a Lumbee Indian who died of a heart attack in 1997, was a catcher for the Detroit Tigers.
While basketball is by far the most popular sport on Indian reservations today, with many tribes promoting it as a way to keep youth away from drugs and alcohol, at a professional level American Indians have historically made far more inroads in baseball, football, boxing and the rodeo. More recently, lacrosse, originally an American Indian sport, has also seen a resurgence among Indians.
American Indians were first exposed to professional sports before World War II, when thousands were sent to white boarding schools under a United States government program, a painful chapter in Indian history, said C. Richard King, an associate professor of comparative ethnic studies at Washington State University and the editor of "Native Americans in Sports," published last year.
By the time basketball had become a widespread, organized sport, Dr. King said, that era had ended, and Indian players were back on the reservations, their access to coaches and scouts again limited.
But as the American Indian writer and poet Sherman Alexie has often written, among sports, it is basketball that is most deeply tied to the dreams, aspirations and spirit of many Indians.
Several basketball coaches and scouts said that while there were still few professional American Indian players, that could change in the coming years; they noted that Hispanic players had made greater inroads into the N.B.A. in the past decade, a possible harbinger of the progress American Indians could make.
Coaches for the Yakama Sun Kings said they were keenly aware of the importance of promoting the team to the tribe. When the tribal council convenes later this month, another vote may be taken on whether the tribe should maintain ownership.
"Hopefully we'll win some of them over with the way we play," said Paul Woolpert, the team's head coach. "There's no question in my mind that we'll play an exciting brand of basketball on the floor."
The team's new logo features a band wrapped around a basketball with two feathers, replacing a flaming ball. And Mr. Palmer, the tribal director, said he would suggest to team and tribal officials that they start home games with an Indian prayer and traditional Yakama drumming, to go along with the Pledge of Allegiance.
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company