Joe Dumars, a basketball Hall of Famer who has an affinity for players coming from smaller schools, posed an important question to McNeese State before committing to play college ball there in the early 1980s.
“I’m saying no to a handful of big schools,” Dumars recalled to The Athletic. “Will we play against the bigger schools in the country? They said, ‘Absolutely, those are money games for us, Joe.’ And that’s all I needed. I just needed the exposure against the bigger schools.”
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Dumars parlayed his time at McNeese into a remarkable NBA career, one that included championships in 1989 and 1990 as a player and another as a team executive in 2004 with the Detroit Pistons.
Dumars, who serves as NBA executive vice president and head of basketball operations, is a proponent of exposure to new opportunities for young people — on and off the court. It’s why he’s excited about the 2023 NBA HBCU Classic, which will feature Grambling State against Southern on Saturday afternoon in Salt Lake City as part of NBA All-Star Weekend. Tipoff is set for 4 p.m. ET, and the game will be nationally televised on TNT.
This is the second HBCU Classic as part of the weekend. Morgan State faced Howard in last year’s event. This year’s game will cap a series of events related to the NBA’s providing opportunities for students from historically Black colleges and universities.
Dumars said the Classic is about more than just a game between two long-time Southwestern Athletic Conference rivals. It’s about bringing the “ecosystem” of the programs to Salt Lake City and exposing students from historically Black colleges and universities to opportunities beyond the NBA.
The league has worked to provide the chance for HBCU players to be seen by representatives from the NBA and professional teams in other leagues with events like the Classic and the HBCU Showcase last summer during the Las Vegas Summer League. For Dumars, visibility is a top priority.
“That’s the big thing that the NBA is doing right now; it’s giving the kids at HBCUs exposure,” Dumars said. “Whether if it was in Vegas in summer league or at the NBA All-Star Game, that’s turned into this massive phenomenon, because it’s not just a game on Sunday. It’s the whole week now.”
The Classic extends for individuals off the court, as well. HBCU Event Intern Program: NBA All-Star is a professional development opportunity in which 13 students from 10 HBCUs will work in various roles during the week with the league office. The NBA All-Star HBCU Student Art Showcase will feature the artwork of eight HBCU students to be displayed at various venues.
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Dumars grew up in Louisiana and has friends on both sides of the in-state rivalry. One person who is not torn, however, is Bob Love, who played at Southern from 1961 to 1965 and was drafted in the fourth round of the 1965 NBA Draft by the Cincinnati Royals. Love became a three-time All-Star with the Chicago Bulls.
The rivalry between the Grambling and Southern football programs is well chronicled, with the annual Bayou Classic drawing thousands of fans and alumni at the Superdome in New Orleans. But even after an 11-year NBA career, Love — who still attends the football game when his schedule permits — fondly remembers his time on the basketball court at Southern, where he played against former Grambling star and NBA Hall of Famer Willis Reed.
“Those games weren’t quite as big as the football games, but it was exciting,” Love said. “It was a game where the big man in the conference (Reed) was going against Bob ‘Butterbean’ Love, the best shooting forward in the SWAC. And I enjoyed those days. I prepared myself all year to beat Willis Reed in those games.”
Love said HBCUs will benefit from events like the one this weekend because they will be seen by bigger audiences. He believes in the talent at HBCUs, given he and Reed played against each other, and the schools have produced stars for years. There hasn’t been a player from an HBCU drafted, however, since Orlando selected Kyle O’Quinn out of Norfolk State as a second-round pick in 2012.
“They need to play against major schools,” Love said of HBCUs. “They need to schedule against schools in the Big 10, the ACC. They need to get exposure because most of the HBCUs are located in small towns, and the scouts never get down there or they’re kind of reluctant to go into the small towns.”
Dumars acknowledges that “there’s been a drought” in drafting HBCU players.
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“Wish I could put my finger on it — why it has become more and more scarce that this has happened,” he said. “But I will say that historically, these institutions have always had really good talent, and there have been some great players that have come from HBCUs in the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball, so it’s not that there’s no history of this.”
It’s one of the reasons Dumars is pleased with the NBA’s investing more in HBCUs. He is happy to see several former NBA players coaching at HBCUs, including Kenny Anderson (Fisk), Reggie Theus (Bethune-Cookman), Bonzi Wells (LeMoyne-Owen) and Mo Williams (Jackson State). All took part in the Las Vegas showcase in July.
“These are institutions that have been pivotal and critical in the African American community for decades,” Dumars said. “Any time we can shine a light on these institutions, I think it’s well deserved.”
(Photo of Virshon Cotton: Johnnie Izquierdo / Getty Images)
