Their Hoop Dreams won’t die

Leila Navidi

The Las Vegas Stars and the Elgin Racers battle for the tipoff before their International Basketball League game Wednesday at the Centennial Hills YMCA. The Stars ended the season with a 131-128 win.

By Ron Kantowski (contact)

Tuesday, July 1, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Leila Navidi

Stars players, from left, Julius Johnson, Eddie Shelby, Demario Butler and Elliott McGee rest during halftime of the Racers game. Most of the teams in the league are, like Elgin, from the region around Chicago or from the Pacific Northwest.

Leila Navidi

Stars player Eddie Shelby sits with his year-old son, Elijah, after the Stars' win against Elgin. Shelby combined with Demario Butler for 60 points in the victory.

On a hot Wednesday night, if you keep going on U.S. 95 north and make a left just before the Darkness on the Edge of Town (thanks, Boss) — and don’t zig where you should have zagged on the Frontage Road out there — you may discover the Centennial Hills YMCA. Then, if you make a hard left at the front desk and proceed down the brightly colored hall, to the Last Gymnasium on the Right, you also may discover the place where Hoop Dreams refuse to die.

This is where the little-known Las Vegas Stars of the equally little-known International Basketball League hoop it up from time to time.

This time, they are hooping it up against the Elgin Watches — er, Racers — from the Chicago suburbs.

Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” is playing during the game. The players, taking their cue from the music, I guess, are running up and down the court at Craig Breedlove speed. The basketball? It’s flying around like the monochrome blip in “Pong.”

Sometimes it goes in the hoop; a lot of times it doesn’t. The game continues at a whirlwind pace until the referee blows his whistle.

“Black ball,” he cries.

The game grinds to a halt. Players hesitate, not knowing what to do.

Both teams are wearing all-black uniforms.

•••

OK, so the IBL isn’t exactly the NBA. Or the CBA. Or the D-League. Or the E-, F- or G-League. It’s a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — and women. Everybody I will speak with is either pleasant or appreciative. Or both. Even the zebras nod “hello” as they head down the brightly colored hall in search of a drink of water at halftime.

According to the Web site, there are 18 franchises — er, teams — playing ball under the IBL banner, which on this night is sort of tacked up on the pushed-in bleachers behind the scorer’s table. One is called the China-Shanxi Zhongyu (loose translation: iron and steel). The Zhongyu, a professional team in the other CBA (Chinese Basketball Association), play all their games on the road, for reasons that should be obvious.

Most of the IBL teams are based in the Pacific Northwest or within a four-hour drive of Chicago. None is called the Flint Tropics, although there are teams in Grand Rapids and Battle Creek, Mich. Only one is owned by a black woman. “I believe in this city,” said Alexis Levi, chief executive of the Stars.

She sold her stake in an Internet streaming video company to finance the team and has more irons in the fire than a blacksmith on Red Bull. Next up: a children’s book on which she has collaborated with Cuba Gooding Jr.’s dad.

Levi, a native of the Bay Area who played college basketball at Cal State Hayward, thinks the Stars will be able to carve a niche where so many others have wielded only a dull knife blade. “I’m just so hardheaded,” she said before taking her seat on the end of the short Stars bench — just three subs — for the start of the second half.

She could have used a hard hat, too. Only 42 spectators have walked down the long hall to check on the Hoop Dreams that refuse to die.

One is a perpetually cute little boy who keeps trying to run onto the court.

“That’s one of our plays,” one of the Stars tells me after the game, as the cute little boy finally makes it onto the knee of his father. Eddie Shelby is a former Cheyenne High star and junior college teammate of ex-UNLV ace and current Phoenix Sun Marcus Banks who can’t come to grips with pushing his Hoop Dream aside.

“Until I’m unable to walk, until I’m unable to talk,” he says. “Until then, I’m gonna keep pushin.’ ”

He’d push all the way to China, were it possible. DaJuan Tate’s making $200K there, the Stars say almost in unison, and do you know he averaged 35 points a game for us last year?

The IBL minimum salary is about $50 per game. If a guy lives in Henderson, that will just about pay for a nonstop trip to the Centennial “Y.” But it’s enough to keep these shooting Stars riding the Dream Weaver train.

“When you’re a hooper, it just comes natural,” said Demario Butler, the ex-Rancho Ram, after he and Shelby combined for 60 points in a 131-128 victory that enables the Stars to close the regular season at 10-9. “I’m a basketball player.”

After what I believe was once a hit for Earth, Wind and Fire fades out, the Last Gymnasium on the Right goes silent. If you listen real close, you can almost hear a tiny thump ... thump ... thump ... as the Stars gather their belongings and head out into the Darkness on the Edge of Town.

It’s the sound of a Hoop Dream still beating.