The morning of September 18, 2021—a Saturday—inspired little activity in Birmingham. A light rain fell. The sky was a depressing shade of gray. Wind howled ominously through the deserted streets. On the outskirts of downtown, however, sixty G League hopefuls had convened at Bill Harris Arena for the first ever Birmingham Squadron open tryout.
Tryouts are a longstanding tradition in the G League. Anyone over the age of eighteen is eligible to participate, as long as he pays the organization’s entry fee, which typically ranges from $150 to $250. G League teams are permitted to invite up to five players from their local tryouts to preseason training camp. Although a majority of the Squadron roster would be assembled in other ways, the stakes of this Saturday-morning event were still significant. Many notable players had emerged from tryouts in the past, going on to successful careers not just in the G League but also at the highest level.
Ron Howard was a standout guard at Valparaiso University, a midmajor school in the Missouri Valley Conference. After going undrafted in 2006, he struggled to find other opportunities to play professionally. He was twenty-five years old and prepared to move on from basketball forever. Money was tight, and his wife, Reesha, had just given birth to a baby girl.
“I had decided that basketball was done. It wasn’t for me. I knew I could play, but it just wasn’t working out. It’s not for everybody,” Howard said. “I had to pull my degree out and start getting the résumé together.”
Howard started applying for jobs—desk jobs and normal nine-to-fives. As he awaited responses, a friend encouraged him to try out for a new D-League team launching in Fort Wayne, Indiana—just a three-hour drive from Ron’s hometown of Chicago—called the Mad Ants. Howard agreed to go, but showed up an hour late by mistake, not realizing that Fort Wayne was in the eastern time zone. Still, he performed well enough to be invited to day two of the tryouts. Only one problem—Howard didn’t know that there was a day two. He didn’t have a change of clothes, didn’t have money for a hotel room, didn’t have friends in Fort Wayne. Seeing no other option, he raced the 160 miles back to Chicago, got roughly three hours of sleep, and drove all the way back to Fort Wayne while it was still dark outside. And somehow, he managed to play well again.
The Mad Ants went on to pick Howard in the seventh round of the 2007 D-League Draft. “I was a nobody,” he said, thinking back. “I didn’t have a name. I was just nobody.” Today, in the city of Fort Wayne, Howard is better known as “Mr. Mad Ant.” His number 19 jersey hangs from the rafters of the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, where the Mad Ants play their home games. He was with the organization from its inaugural tryout in 2007 to its first D-League championship in 2014, claiming an MVP trophy, three All-Star nods, and two Jason Collier Sportsmanship Awards over that span. Before Renaldo Major, Howard briefly held the D-League’s all-time scoring record. Upon retiring, he accepted a job—a desk job, finally—as the community development manager for the Mad Ants.
Several years later, Jonathon Simmons, a high-flying six-foot-six guard out of the University of Houston, found himself in a similar predicament. After going undrafted in 2012, he had no desire to walk away from basketball but needed a job to support his four daughters. He was skilled at cutting hair, which he did for friends on occasion, so he contemplated getting his barber’s license. Before making the career change, though, he traveled to Concordia University in Austin, Texas, and paid the $150 registration fee to try out for the Austin Toros, the affiliate of the San Antonio Spurs. Simmons clearly stood out among the players in attendance. According to Austin’s head coach Ken McDonald, the talent level at the tryout ranged from “guys that I can beat one-on-one to guys like Jon.”1
Simmons was invited to training camp and eventually made the Toros’ final roster. He spent the next two seasons in the D-League, improving and expanding his game. During the summer of 2015, he earned a two-year deal with the Spurs, where he became a steady contributor off the bench. His play in San Antonio led to a bigger contract offer from the Orlando Magic in 2017, worth $20 million. Prior to the Toros’ tryout, Simmons had been borrowing money to pay for his children’s diapers.
More recently, forward Juan Toscano-Anderson made the Santa Cruz Warriors after attending an open tryout in 2018. “He was the last guy to make our team,” remembered Kevin Danna, longtime play-by-play announcer for Santa Cruz. “He takes the court, he’s smart, he knows how to play, and he plays his ass off. He was a bench guy for us that year but he was, like, the reason we were winning games, in my opinion. Juan Toscano-Anderson was like the heart and soul of that team.”
Less than three years later, Toscano-Anderson would sign a standard, multiyear NBA contract with the Golden State Warriors, the team he rooted for as a kid growing up in East Oakland. “I’m super excited, obviously for myself to be on the team and continue to play basketball, but this is a life-changing contract,” he said, upon making the deal official, “a life-changing signature.”2
That’s precisely what tryouts offered: a potential life-changing opportunity, a glimmer of hope, a chance to resurface after falling through the cracks. As Mr. Mad Ant liked to say, “When a door shuts, try to see if the window is open.”
Of the sixty players gathered at Bill Harris Arena, some were residents of Birmingham; others had flown in from overseas. Their levels of experience varied greatly: high school, college, pros. A few guys openly admitted that they had never played in an organized capacity. They ranged in height from five feet nine to six feet ten and in age from nineteen to sixty-two years old. Yes—sixty-two years old.
When Kelvin Davis first picked up a basketball, the three-point line didn’t exist, the NBA was televised once a week, box scores were printed only in newspapers, and players wore shorts the size of boxer briefs.
Davis was born in 1959 and raised in the small town of Evergreen, Alabama, about 170 miles south of Birmingham. He grew up in a very different Alabama, one defined by racial injustice, conflict, and violence. Birmingham was regarded as the most segregated city in America during the civil rights movement, often referred to as “Bombingham” due to the number of racially motivated bombings in the area from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. In 1963 Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a predominately Black congregation, was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan, leaving four young girls dead. Outrage over the attack helped galvanize the struggle to end segregation across the United States.
Davis, who is Black, experienced racism on a daily basis as a child. He sat on a different side of the bus than the white kids, used different facilities, entered buildings through different doorways. Basketball was his refuge. He became a star at Evergreen High School and later played at Alabama State University. Though he always hoped to turn professional, that opportunity did not present itself until two decades later. At the ripe age of forty-seven, Davis was invited to try out for the Atlanta Vision of the American Basketball Association (ABA) after a chance encounter at an Atlanta Hawks game. In preparation, his training regimen looked like this:
Out of a pool of 150 people, Davis, a dad of five, somehow made the Vision’s fifteen-man roster. Local news was all over the story. “The oldest rookie” declared one headline. “LeBron James and Kelvin Davis should do a Nike commercial together because this weekend, WE WERE ALL WITNESSES!” Vision owner Quentin Townsend said after the team’s tryout.3
On weekdays, Davis, who also had a job as a paint contractor, got up at 3:30 a.m. to drive to Suwanee for 6:00 a.m. practice. His first pro basketball paycheck, which was mostly based on incentives, was for $42.09. “Of course, the other teams think it’s a stunt,” Townsend told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in February 2007. “It’s not. He’s earned his spot on the team. He’s legitimate. He’s following his dream.”
“My goal is to put that NBA uniform on and walk in that arena and watch America just go nuts because of this old guy who’s done something that’s never been done before in history,” Davis said to the paper. “I don’t care if it’s for a day. Just sign me to a contract. Let me do that because I have the faith to believe that anything that I go after is going to happen.”4
Davis spent two full seasons in the ABA before retiring at the age of fifty—well, not really retiring. Twelve years later, when he learned of the Squadron’s open tryout, he began training again. His faith remained strong. His dream hadn’t faded. The oldest rookie was ready to return, never mind that his children were old enough to register for the tryout themselves.
Squadron head coach Ryan Pannone admired Davis. Both are true basketball junkies. Pannone’s passion for the game is so pure that it comes across almost childlike. His enthusiasm is comparable to that of popular television character Ted Lasso, played by Jason Sudeikis in the Emmy-award-winning series of the same name. When players left puddles of sweat on the floor, it was Coach Pannone who raced over, towel in hand, eager to clean up the scene. Before placing an order at a nearby Starbucks, Pannone wandered Bill Harris Arena like a waiter working a section, checking to see if anyone else wanted coffee, then checking again, then checking one more time, then cracking a joke when someone inevitably ordered a complicated beverage like a grande caramel ribbon crunch frappuccino with almond milk and two shots of espresso.
Like Lasso, Pannone is a father, with brown eyes and scruffy facial hair. He is quick with a corny dad joke and prone to breaking into monologues, loaded with wisdom and life lessons. Pannone and Lasso have a few consequential differences, however. The latter admittedly knows nothing about the sport he is hired to coach. Pannone, on the other hand, knows an obsessive amount about basketball.
By the time he took over the Squadron, Pannone had been coaching for almost two decades, starting at Oldsmar Christian School—a high school in Florida—at the age of eighteen and continuing there while simultaneously managing the men’s basketball team at the University of South Florida, coaching an AAU program, interning for well-known trainer David Thorpe, and taking classes. (“The school part is debatable,” he later said with a laugh.) From the beginning, Pannone was determined to make a career in coaching work, regardless of the sacrifices.
“There’s never been a thought, It isn’t going to work out for me. It’s going to work out, one way or another, some way, shape, or form,” he said, before jokingly adding: “A lot of people give you advice, like, ‘Always have an option B.’ And that’s good for smart people. But if you’re stupid, there is no option B. You’re either going to make it or be homeless. So for me, at some point, I’m going to make it.”
With some freedom to recruit the players he wanted, Pannone built Oldsmar Christian into a powerhouse. His sole focus became helping his players reach the college level. The team was playing close to two hundred games a year, entering leagues in every season. Pannone crafted the schedule himself and pursued the best competition. If a top-ranked school was within a fifteen-hour drive, Oldsmar would make the trip.
Pannone created an email database of every Division I, Division II, Division III, National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), and junior college (JUCO) school in the country. He made highlight tapes for all his players. He took them to elite camps, where they would have exposure to college coaches and scouts. The team had mandatory study hall and SAT/ACT tutoring with Pannone’s wife, Sarah. Any player who had under a 2.3 core GPA was required to take summer school. Pannone preached structure, accountability, and discipline.
“I made it very clear how we were going to be,” he said. “If guys didn’t want that, they usually transferred out in the summer. But we had very few guys transfer out.” On the contrary, kids started transferring in to play for Pannone. A handful of them even lived at his house. Without financial support from Oldsmar, the team fundraised on its own.
That type of dedication and persistence has defined Pannone’s entire coaching journey. No matter what, he was going to make it work. When he sought to join a staff overseas, he went on Eurobasket.com, a website that covers international basketball, and combed for every American coach he could find. Then he contacted each of them, either by phone, email, or Facebook. Joe Whelton, who was coaching in the Chinese Basketball Association, responded, and Pannone soon became an assistant for the Foshan Long Lions. Since then, he has coached in the NBA Summer League, South Korea, Germany, Slovakia, Israel, and the G League, taking pay cuts to chase the best openings. His dream, like everyone else in the G, is to make it to the NBA.
“My whole career mentality is money is not going to be the reason why I don’t take a job,” he said. “If you look at all those jobs, my mentality was, once I got in, I would be able to prove my own value. And it’s like I tell coaches all the time, it doesn’t say on your résumé what your salary was. It says what your position was.”
Though he seldom raises his voice, Pannone does have a sterner side to him, at least compared to the overly positive, it’s-all-sunshine-and-rainbows Ted Lasso. Pannone is always honest, even if that means being a little harsh. He addressed the group to kick off the tryout, telling them, in blunt terms, that the Squadron had a “no asshole policy.” The team was planning to invite a couple of players to training camp and could guarantee that none of them, regardless of talent, size, or athleticism, would be an asshole.
What was Pannone looking for exactly? “A guy that defends, is unselfish, has a high IQ, and makes the right play,” he told reporters. “I hate selfishness. I hate selfishness in any part of the game. I’m looking for guys that make the right play, that know how to play, that defend at a high level, and that compete”—and that aren’t, under any circumstances, assholes.
Pannone was far more concerned with a player’s character than his ability—as he often said, “Everything is easier with high-character people.” So, priority number one was to identify those people. Pannone would watch film of prospective players and study details such as temperament on the bench, reaction to bad foul calls, body language, cheering for teammates. If he noticed sulking or complaining, he would save the clip and send it to Squadron general manager Marc Chasanoff. “See this?” he would say. “This is what we don’t want.” During the tryout, Squadron coaches knew to look out for that type of behavior. A crappy jump shot was a red flag, but it paled in comparison to a crappy attitude.
Players were immediately divided into six teams. They were taught a few standard offensive sets, which allowed Pannone to weed out the low-basketball-IQ bunch—as he assured the group, those who couldn’t remember the plays would be eliminated from contention—before scrimmages began. Games consisted of four ten-minute quarters. Squadron assistant coaches handled the substitutions for each team. The basketball was predictably sloppy. Fouls were hard fouls. Turnovers were ugly turnovers. Loose balls led to near-rugby scrums. The pace was unrelenting: back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. There were no long, drawn-out, methodical possessions like in an NBA game—just constant attacking. At one point, a player was sprinting back on defense, abruptly stopped, hunched over as if pummeled in the stomach by some invisible force, gazed up with an expression that said, uh oh, and vomited right in the middle of the court. He wasn’t the only person to get sick; thankfully, the others all made it to a trash can.
Aside from the fact that he wore glasses—not protective goggles a la Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of his idols, but real glasses—Kelvin Davis didn’t stand out much. Given that he qualified for the senior discount at the movies, that was a huge win. Davis kept up with the fast pace, grabbed a few rebounds, moved the ball on offense, stayed in front of his man on defense. During one possession, he recognized an opponent barreling toward the rim, slid into the paint, set his feet, and took a charge. The collision prompted audible gasps from the sideline, but Davis just popped up, flexed his muscles a bit, and let out a loud scream.
Teammates called him “Unc”—short for “Uncle.” One of those teammates was six-foot-one guard Xavier Moon, an Alabama native and the nephew of former NBA forward Jamario Moon. Xavier was twenty-seven years old and a three-time MVP and two-time champion in the Canadian Elite Basketball League (CEBL). Over the preceding weeks, he had tried out for three other G League teams.
Moon was dominant without forcing the action. In games that frequently spiraled into chaos, his poise stuck out like Davis’ thick glasses. He was under control, even when zipping past everyone else on the court, and could stop on a dime for pull-up jumpers. He checked all the boxes: unselfish—check; talented—check; lightning quick—check; athletic—check; high character—check. The question was less, “Is this guy good enough to play in the G League?” and more, “Could this guy be good enough to play in the NBA?”
Moon had bought out of a contract in Italy to uncover the answer to that question. “That’s my dream,” he said of the NBA. “This is it. I gotta take this opportunity while it’s on the table.” He gave himself a C+ for his performance in the Squadron tryout. Privately, Birmingham’s coaches were far more generous with their assessments.
Two players from the tryout wound up accepting invitations to training camp: Dylan Smith, a six-foot-five guard from nearby Mobile, Alabama, and Nate Bradley, a six-foot-four guard from Rochester, New York. The Squadron wanted Xavier Moon, of course. But so did the Agua Caliente Clippers, the G League affiliate of the Los Angeles Clippers. Moon worried that being so close to his hometown of Goodwater—about an hour drive from Birmingham—could present distractions. He ultimately agreed to join Agua Caliente instead, relocating to the serene, distraction-free city of Ontario, California.
Although he didn’t make the Squadron, Kelvin Davis succeeded at his larger mission. By participating in the tryout, “Unc” hoped to inspire others. He recognized that to be his life calling, touring as a motivational speaker and offering private coaching to young athletes. Whenever he spoke, he stressed the same message: never give up on your dreams, regardless of the obstacles you face.
“There are times when you’ll have to push yourself beyond boundaries and self-limitation,” Davis wrote in his autobiography, The Oldest Rookie. “Whatever your passion is, you must go after it with everything you have—might and soul. Nothing will come easy in life, but you must be proactive in your pursuit of your dreams. Hurdles were put on the racetrack to be jumped over.”5