Smoke from the barbecue grill drifts skyward, the smell of chicken hanging in still air as the sun sinks lower toward twilight. Thesounds of rap music and a basketball bouncing on asphalt blend with the easy laughter of folks gathered in the sticky swelter of late evening.
It is summertime in Southeast, and Barry Farms is ripe for the harvest.
The District’s best playground hoops can be found here, near the shores of the Anacostia on a pockmarked blacktop court inside a weathered chain-link fence at Barry Farms Recreation Center.
The George Goodman League, named for a longtime director of the center, draws teams from all over the District and on occasion NBA stars like Gilbert Arenas and Kevin Durant.
“There ain’t no telling who going to come down and play,” says Miles “Snapper Jones” Rawls, the league’s commissioner and play-by-play man. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see anyone come through those gates.”
Watching basketball at the “B.F. Coliseum,” as Mr. Rawls calls it, is a glimpse of the game in its purest form.
Four evenings a week during the summer, hundreds of spectators trickle in to watch such patchwork neighborhood teams as Face Mob and Big Mama’s Ballers do battle. One night, it’s 10 gangly teenagers throwing errant alley-oops and talking smack. On another, it’s an up-close-and-personal meeting with NBA all-stars that no front-row seat at Verizon Center could grant you.
Despite its growing fame, Mr. Rawls has made a conscious effort to maintain Barry Farms’ down-home feel.
“That’s the great thing about it,” says Irving Brady, a league co-founder who remembers how legendary former Georgetown coach John Thompson Jr. would come in the late ’80s and early’90s to scout local talent but end up laughing with neighborhood children in the metal bleachers. “It gives kids the opportunity to see guys they’d never get to see, and that inspires them to achieve.”
Anyone can play in the Goodman League, which runs from June to September, with a small entry fee and a team name.
Local urban clothing lines donate the uniforms, and Mr. Rawls makes a schedule each week featuring a Monday-through-Thursday slate of double-headers. He reserves Fridays for rainout makeups and makes sure only neighborhood enterprises are allowed inside the gates.
On this night a rotund, scratchy-throated peddler named “Rev” serves up chicken wings, pastries and snow cones from a small cart he pushes slowly through the crowd, and other vendors cook up fried fish, collard greens and mashed potatoes so buttery that they melt in your mouth. D.J. “Stormin’” Norman provides a soundtrack from his nearby van, and Mr. Rawls pays six children from the projects to clean up each night.
Mr. Rawls, who was born and raised at the housing project on Sumner Avenue Southeast and now works for the Department of Homeland Security, has watched Barry Farms basketball blossom.
“I started out announcing the games 30 years ago - with a bullhorn,” says Mr. Rawls, sucking on a raw lemon as he scrolls through e-mails on his BlackBerry. “Just to watch the league grow, to see the people come down here from different walks of life and different parts of town - I have been very humbled by that.”
The league began as a friendly wager among three residents of the Barry Farms Dwelling housing project in the 1970s. One man, who lived on the Eaton Road Southeast side of the housing project, bet his friend from the Stevens Road block that his street’s residents could beat the other’s in softball. A third man claimed that his boys on the Wade Road side could take both blocks down in basketball.
From then on, representatives of the three blocks battled each summer for bragging rights.
Softball has disappeared from the seasonal Olympiad, but the hoops have grown famous. The competition rivals anything in a professional arena.
“You got to play hard all the time; you got to make a name for yourself,” said Chris Wright, a current Georgetown Hoya and one of the many streetballing players at Barry Farms who have gone on to star in Division I college programs.
Two summers ago, those in attendance could see Durant and Michael Beasley - Mr. Durant was the second overall pick in last year’s NBA draft; Mr. Beasley is likely to be the top pick in next week’s draft - streaking down the court. The And 1 All-Stars, a barnstorming streetball team, make an annual appearance at the “Coliseum.” A sampling of this summer’s roster includes Brian Chase of the Miami Heat, former South Carolina star Tre Kelly and Towson forward Tony Durant, a shorter, sturdier version of his famous brother, who is scheduled to be back on the Farms “in the next few weeks.”
Washington Wizards stars Arenas, Caron Butler and Andray Blatche have been known to show up unannounced on sleepy midsummer evenings, and Shaquille O’Neal stopped by last July. Mr. Arenas was so impressed by the scene that he installed new rims and backboards and promised to replace the rickety bleachers in the future.
“When he first came down here, I don’t think he took it that serious and he got dunked on the first day,” Mr. Rawls says with a smile. “But the next day he came back and brought his ’A’ game with him.”
But the folks who frequent the Farms swear it is more than star power that keeps them coming back.
For every Arenas, there is a Bernard Byrd. Each night, after a long day of painting houses, the 36-year-old ex-con books it back to Southeast, stretches his weary legs and suits up for the B.F. Crazies.
Mr. Byrd, who grew up at Barry Farms, says the rec center is his favorite place to be. “This is where I learned to play,” says Mr. Byrd, who starred briefly at Ballou High School before spending most of the ’90s incarcerated for assault and armed robbery. “I know now that God gave me a gift to play basketball, and now I can share it with the people I grew up with.”
Like Mr. Byrd, most folks say it’s the fellowship that they value most. Every game finds James “Special” Black and his buddy “Seeds” beneath the basket. The two friends, like many others, sit in the same place with the same people every night.
Certain groups have been around so long that Mr. Rawls has names for them. The “Season Ticket Holders” occupy the folding chairs at center court. The Lane Mob - its members all live on Langston Lane - post up in the bleachers near the base line. Both sections “ooooohhhh” at every rim-rattling dunk and cackle at Mr. Rawls’ commentary.
Armed with a quick wit and piercing P.A. system, Snapper Jones keeps everyone humble - and in stitches. No one on the court or in the stands is safe from Mr. Rawls’ ridicule.
On a broiling night last summer, he jeered the cold-shooting Mr. Wright, a McDonald’s All-American as a high school player, by informing the crowd that McDonald’s had “made a mistake.”
He loves to single out spectators, commenting on everything from clothes to cars to cornrows. When he spots a certain mop-topped member of the crowd, he goes to town. “I didn’t know the Beatles were having a reunion tour,” says Mr. Rawls, the crowd erupting in laughter.
“He should have his own standup,” says Hugh Jones, known to And 1 fans by his nom-de-court, “Baby Shaq.” “You never know what you’re going to get from Miles.”
Like Mr. Rawls’ mouth, the games are fast-paced and packed with offensive fireworks. Former Temple standout David Hawkins and George Mason alumnus Lamar Butler routinely put 60 points on the board by halftime last summer. It is an atmosphere unlike any other.
“It’s real close,” Duke Blue Devil Nolan Smith says when asked how Barry Farms compares to the fabled Cameron Indoor Stadium. “If I can get [Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski] to come to D.C., this is where I want to bring him.”
At first, it’s hard to imagine the buttoned-down Mr. Krzyzewski in Southeast, standing beside the raw-boned men who hang on the fence, sipping from brown paper bags with the lonely-dog look in their eyes. But then you see their wizened scowls turn to wide smiles after a knee-slapper from Mr. Rawls or a no-look from Mr. Wright, and you realize that anyone who appreciates basketball or the bonds of a tight-knit community could love Barry Farms.
“This is people stickin’ together,” says D.C. Parks and Recreation worker Marc Mathis, who brings his 6-year-old-son, Markantony, to watch basketball and talk. “No fighting. No violence. There ain’t no nonsense inside these gates.”
It is why Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Kelly, who play professionally in Europe, come back each summer. It is why Messrs. Beasley, Wright and Smith once risked career-ending injuries to battle on the blacktop. It is why Mr. Byrd, after losing it all, returned to earn redemption. It is why Kevin Durant, just moments before the NBA draft last June, text-messaged a boyhood friend from the Green Room at Madison Square Garden.
Standing at the summit of the basketball world, on the cusp of NBA fame and fortune, he just wanted to know what the score was down on the Farms.
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