The Proviso West Holiday Tournament is known for giving Chicago hoops stars a platform to showcase their talents. The fans know it, the students at the schools who are playing know it, the college scouts who attend these games know it.
More importantly, the holiday tournament, which has been in existence since 1961, has a knack for turning Chicago-area hoops phenoms into legends. Some of the players over the decades have went on the star in college and have had Hall of Fame careers in the NBA, while some were immortalized by how they played at Proviso West.
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His contemporaries remember St. Joseph point guard Isiah Thomas scored 35 points in the tourney’s 1977 championship game against Fenwick. Glenbrook North’s Jon Scheyer, who holds the tourney’s record for most points scored, dropped 21 points in 75 seconds in a losing effort that made national news. Scheyer, who scored 52 points in the upset loss to tournament host Proviso West, once told our Jon Greenberg, “Not winning Proviso West is probably my biggest regret from high school.”
Glenn “Doc” Rivers (Proviso East), Hersey Hawkins (Westinghouse), Marcus Liberty (King), and Ronnie Fields (Farragut) all had memorable performances at the tournament which takes place between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
The Athletic spoke with fans, former players, and coaches who have vivid memories of the Proviso West Holiday Tournament ahead of Friday’s championship game between Morgan Park and Whitney Young.
Curtis Faulkner, a 2003 alum of Proviso East High School, has attended the tournament as a fan over the years. He remembers seeing players make names for themselves such as Evan Turner (St. Joseph), Dee Brown (Proviso East), and Charlie Moore (Morgan Park), Shelby Jordan (Hillcrest). The performance he remembers the most is Scheyer’s scoring binge in that 85-79 quarterfinal loss to Proviso West in 2005.
“Jon Scheyer’s team was losing and he just went on a unbelievable run,” Faulkner said. “Some people thought it was over and when he started to score those points the crown started going crazy. Proviso West is a great tournament. I’ve been to five or six of them.”
Faulkner remembers the finals in 2006 where Proviso East’s Jacob Pullen went up against St.Joe’s and Turner. St. Joseph won 59-58.
“You had St. Joe’s that lost to Proviso East three years straight and beat East three times that year,” Faulkner said. “East couldn’t stop Evan Turner.”
Von Steuben coach Vince Carter never got to play in the Proviso West tournament when he was a student at Leo Catholic High School. He attended games long before his Von Steuben team played in this year’s tournament.
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“In one year, the four finalists were [Chicago] Public League teams,” Carter said. “We’ve been playing in the tournament every year since 2007. Before I started coaching and teaching, I attended the games. I remember the King [High School] teams, the Proviso East teams and the Farragut teams. In those days, you went out there to see how the Chicago teams would do. It was a must see.”
Players who’ve starred in the tourney, who’ve left to go on the bigger and better things, have also came back to coach in tourney that has given so much to them.
Proviso West coach Michael Ingram starred in the holiday tournament for his alma mater when he was named to the all-tournament team in 1984.
“Just to win the tournament at the time, we had to beat King and Simeon,” Ingram said. “King was ranked fifth in the nation at the time and Simeon was ranked third. We had to beat both of them to win. King had Levertis Robinson, Marcus Liberty and Tracy Dildy at the time. The great players in the great tournament always shines through. Like this year, a lot of great players are on a lot of great teams.”
Ingram was the tournament’s MVP in 1984 and won it all in 1985, knows all too well how a series of great games can get a player noticed. He credits the tourney for propelling him to the University of Iowa and a basketball career in Europe.
Who was the best player he had ever saw play in the tournament? Former King High School standout, Efrem Winters, who went to the University of Illinois.
“You can definitely get yourself a nice spot off of the tournament,” Ingram said. “If your team wins and you play well for your team, it can pay off. That was the first time I ever saw a man play basketball. He was big, he was solid. He was a great player not many people talked about at the time.”
