RS2010@QUAI 54: Full Recap

The Rising Suns 2010 journey started about a year ago, all culminating with a one-week visit to the Quai 54 International Streetball Championships (June 21-29) in Paris, France. For our Rising Suns du Japon, the experience was awesome, challenging, difficult, heart-breaking, amazing, inspiring, and then some. Here’s a full recap of how it went down, with Rising Suns team organizer Jason Hutson’s inside views of the entire trip-- from start to finish:


Day 1: Travel to Paris
Still running around trying to get our funds in order, came up short on the fundraising and sponsorship-- not quite as bad as last year though... Anyways, looks like I will have to extend my credit limit and make sure we have enough money to survive the week. Running to the train station with 50lb bags and five minutes before my express train to Narita. Why am I always doing this?? I like the feeling of pressure situations, I guess. At the airport the team is all there waiting for me, and we fly out of gate 81. Hey, 81, that's us! Japan's country code and our organization-- Hope 81. Destiny for the Rising Suns du Japon! We have a stopover in Hong Kong, the team goes crazy when they see a Muji store... Last chance to buy Japanese snacks before we arrive in Paris.

Day 2: Welcome to Courbevoie
Yace meets us at the airport, and Antoine is with him already when he finds us. Big relief to see our 6'11" center there in Paris, ready to play. No missed flights, no lost baggage, everybody ready. Here we go! Ride in the Quai 54 van to our hotel in the north side of Paris called Courbevoie. It's right down the Seine river from the old Quai 54 court @ Levallois. Beautiful morning, we walk around the neighborhood, find a bakery and everybody buys some pan au chocolat. Antoine's excited about eating crepes while he's here.

Later, we walk along the river to Levallois court and try to get loose. Some of our guys play pickup. The pro guys don't want to play outdoors so they watch from the sidelines. One of our players leaves without letting me know first, which is frustrating since we don't get a chance to walk through our plays. We wrap things up and walk over to Yace's neighborhood in Genevilliers for kebab sandwiches and pizza for dinner on the patio. Play ball till 9:30pm, sunset dinner at 10:30pm, this is summer in Paris!

Day 3: Challenge Day
We have our first breakfast meeting, most of the players show up, talk about our week ahead, and try to see how the players are feeling. Jump on a bus and head to Stade Coubertin, a pro gym in Paris where we are supposed to have our first real practice run together. This is really key for us to start building our chemistry, especially since we couldn't go over our plays yesterday at Levallois. The gym boss at the front door tells Yace we can't use the gym. After our 10 guys trekked all the way across Paris to find out we don't have a gym, I'm trying to figure out why we came early to Paris if we can't get our team running together before the big tournament. Maybe we should have just arrived the day before our first game like everyone else...

Anyways we head over to see the new Quai 54 court at Palais de Tokyo and talk for a minute with the bossman, Hammadoun Sidibe. We let our players take in the court for a minute, then head back towards our favorite court at Levallois once again, and the Paris heat is burning. We stop and have lunch before practice, with a few guys heading off to eat at different spots. At my table is our main pro guys Antoine, Darin, Kenji and Yace. So I decide to hold an impromptu meeting to see what the consensus is about how we should attack on Saturday. "Let's just play our game/handle our business/pick our spots/run and gun/utilize our strengths from the Japanese players..." I want us to be more willing to run plays inside and use our big man, run a different style of game than "typical Japanese basketball" especially since most of our guys were experienced playing overseas and could bring a new international style game. That's my side of it, but I don’t think they are buying into it...and its almost game time.
We walk through some plays in the hot sun, it seems okay but it's just a walkthrough and game time is so close now.  By this time I was hoping to have our guys doing a lot more, so in my head I'm upset but outward >> I'm all positive, clapping and trying to keep the pace. We walk back to the hotel, it feels like a 10-mile journey to get anywhere in this part of town... No train station near the court or near our hotel.

At night we walk up the hill to Montmartre for player interviews with our French cameraman Olyouri. Antoine stays back at the hotel, his knee is killing him from all the walking. I don't blame him, and need to keep him happy for the game on Saturday. Players have that fresh look in their eye when we get to the top of the hill, and see the sun setting over the Paris skyline. These are the priceless moments, maybe even more so than the game itself (?)

Day 4: Off day + World Cup Dinner Party
We have plans to meet Hope 81 Creative Director Kurosaki-san for a special team dinner in St. Germain, and since we've done all that walking across Paris the first couple of days, I decide to give the guys a much needed day of rest. Later I find out the guys all go shopping and walking all over Paris, so they're even more tired than yesterday!!? What the hell... Just before heading over for our dinner, I get a call from Kurosaki-san explaining that he unfortunately missed his flight and the team dinner will now be up to me. My wallet is empty, credit card maxed out, team struggling to get in a rhythm with so many schedule changes already the first few days... So I go ahead as planned, tell the team we're going to have the dinner anyways, and I will cover 15 euros toward the final bill at the restaurant for each person. We watch Japan win their match 3-1 against ? and I'm struggling to break a smile because I feel like I'm falling off a cliff. But the team eats, celebrates, and goes back to the hotel happy. Nobody says thank you, but I don't care. I just want to win. And I’m willing to pay the price. And I did.

Day 5: Team Practice with George Eddy
We have our breakfast, a few guys are missing again. I'm trying to keep the players focused but by now the lobby is jammed with all the players from different countries and we are all spread out, no team unity. Just eating and a quick 2 minute meeting to say that we are going to practice at 11... I'm agitated and not feeling any chemistry at this point. At least we are going to have a gym. Trying to reassure myself with that, but even Yace is telling me we might not actually have the gym after all, so we might go all the way across town on the bus and get denied at the front door again. This is making me nuts, but I just keep going... And we sneak in the back door at the gym. No problems. It's a beautiful sight. Hardwood floors. Dribbling, shooting, shoes squeeking. Finally, the Rising Suns get a solid run together. The day before the big game. Sounds rediculous to me now that I write it. Our first full run together comes 24 hours before we are going to represent Japan at the biggest international tournament on the planet!? George Eddy, the French hoops legend is there, and he makes all my fear go away momentarily. He starts talking, and coaching, and challenging our guys to “make the extra pass!!” It's good karma to play with this guy, I think. He's like Marv Albert and John Wooden mixed together. Knows the game like nobody else. We wrap up the practice like we did las year, with a game of horse. Darin steps up first and gives him the best challenge he's had in years. Still the king. He wipes out all our guys and we have a good laugh. Nice bonding for our team. I ask George if he would like to be our special celebrity guest coach-of-honor... he cordially says no, but might come and watch us from the stands.

Later that afternoon I push Antoine to help get our team together and try to build a little more sense of unity before tomorrows game. He says we've been through a hard week of mental and physical tests, with all the schedule problems and walking walking walking. Nobody complained, everybody battled through it together. So if we can fight through that adversity together, we're that much closer as a team than we were at the beginning of it all. I told him thanks for the feedback, and that it was probably the only positive thing I had heard all week. And from someone I didn't expect to hear it from, honestly. Thanks for the wakeup call. We'll see if it's enough to get us through tomorrow...

In the evening we head back down to Palais de Tokyo for orientation, and to pick up our uniforms, shoes etc for the tournament. Its like a boxing match, stare down, toe-to-toe with all the other teams. Once again, like last year, we are the smallest. The other teams are towering over us, but I feel a little more confident now that we have a real center. Then we all head back to the hotel, some getting dinner, some just too tired to walk anymore and go straight to bed.

Day 6: Game Time!
We're scheduled for the 6th game of the day, so we know we can relax and not rush over the court like we did last year. Don't wanna get too burned in the sun, but also don't want to miss the action on the court either. I head over early with ST and Nina, we get our wristbands and the chaos begins. I try to chill backstage for a while, in the shade. Talking with some other ballers and organizers, shoot some video of legends like Kadour Ziani of Slam Nation and Nicolas Batum from the Portland Trailblazers. It's unreal to be here, and great to do some networking for my organization, but I've got to keep focused on our main task. Hope my teammates are doing that, too. I really don't know if we are at this point. I feel like we've almost been in Paris too long, like we are too relaxed. The feeling a team has when they sweep through their round of the playoffs and have to wait a week before their next series starts. We have some time to kick back around the court and watch the games, eventually Chris Paul makes his entrance and sits down right in front of us. I pass him a Rising Suns sticker and he looks it over for a while. Then we go up to the interview area on the Palais rooftop, for the Quai 54 DVD shooting. Meet La Fusion/French star player Ali Traore and talk about how much he loves Japan. A couple hours before game time, I'm getting nervous but I know I'm most likely not going to play unless there is a freak accident or serious foul trouble. This year is all about our Japanese players and they will get all my playing time unless absolutely necessary. I've got to make the decision, and not be floating around in the middle. So I'm the coach. That's it. Just before we go to our bench, I huddle the guys up one last time and scream:"this is our homecourt, let's hold it down, play defense, rebound and keep our turnovers low. Control the ball and keep the turnovers low..."

There's only so much I can say or do in this situation. For one, half of these guys are pro and they know more than me about what it takes to win. I'm just an organizer with big dreams. It's up to them to handle the game once the opening tip goes up. And for another thing, I spent all week and all month and all of the past year trying get most of these guys mentally prepared for battle. Speech after speech about believing in ourselves, trusting our teammates, committing to the goal, hustling with all we've got for the entire game... Now it's up to us. Lets win for Japan!

Before our game starts, the 3 point shootout is going on, and Darin is in it. He hits 12 points, and would have made it to the finals if he hit just one more shot. He got in a pretty good rhythm though, maybe it was that warmup against George Eddy in horse?

Once the game finally starts, we get things going right away with Antoine hitting a jumper and Darin hitting some free throws. After a few minutes it's 7-7 and it looks like we are going to have ourselves a good battle. Then I blink and it's suddenly 13-7. I call timeout and try to get our guys to regroup, telling them we need to cut that lead in half with a couple of defensive stops. The calls aren't going our way, and we continue to foul every play. Antoine gets bumped on a lob, then screams at the ref and gets a tech. I try to pull the refs attention away from him, because I don't want our only big man getting tossed from the game. I yell at the 12-year old ref for a while to no avail (yes, for some reason there’s a 12-year old referee in this game), and feel ridiculous for doing it in front of all those fans. Going into halftime it's becoming a blowout. We go back to our starters and give it another shot. More fouls and more turnovers. I think we're on about a 10-minute scoreless streak and it feels like an eternity. Down 27-7 at one point, I call another timeout and put in more subs, thinking something has to give. Where is the heart? Where is the energy? Why is the other team getting all of the calls? We battle back a little towards the end, fighting for respectability. Final score 37-24, and we are a bunch of confused players heading back to the team warmup area to figure out what the hell just happened. A complete breakdown for the world to see. Handle our business, just play our game, none of that works in a top level environment like Quai 54. We need set plays, defensive strategies, better communication. I tried to get these guys to realize that, but it never materialized. We just panicked and got wiped out in a matter of a few minutes. End of story. End of Rising Suns 2010. At the end of the night, I walked over to thank Hammadoun for another year, no talk of the refs or anything negative. He shot back at me and said we need a new coach, meaning I didn't do my job to keep our team in the game. That was something to sleep on... he might be right.

Day 7: Bounce Back
The next morning I felt sick from losing and decided to skip breakfast. I also felt sick enough about my job as player/coach of the Rising Suns to officially fire myself from the position (on facebook, anyways) and start looking for a replacement coach ASAP. Then I wandered down to the lobby around 11:00. Tried to talk with Yace and a couple of other guys about what happened but we just complained about the weak foul calls and didn't look at the rest of the game, how we got blasted by the other team and couldn't assert ourselves once they had control of the game, the crowd and the refs. I was planning on wandering around Paris for the afternoon and making it over to Palais de Tokyo for the dunk contest and championship game. When I came out of the hotel elevator I found all the Dunk contest participants waiting for their ride. The top dunker Guy Dupuy called over to me, saying I looked like a German dunker with the same name I had on the back of my jersey... Milkman. I guess there’s another Milkman who was doing 360 dunks at a previous event. Anyways Kadour invited me to join them in the dunker van and went straight to the tournament. The tournament is why I’m here. Not to shop, not to sight-see, not for anything else. And this way I wouldn't walk around feeling bad about yesterdays game. Just try to get over it as fast as possible and try to enjoy the show. Saved by Kadour!

The games were better Sunday, the crowd bigger, music louder, uniforms brighter, everything was more intense. I wanted to be out there playing instead of fighting for a seat on the sideline. Instead, I made the most of the opportunity to network with some of the Jordan brand directors, talking hoops fashion in Asia with the shoe guy Octavio. Really nice guy, and he saved me from dehydration by giving me one of his water bottles from the VIP section. Seriously, thank YOU!

Back to the action, I tried to watch how the refs were calling the games compared to ours. It was a lot more intense and they were definitely letting them bang down low. Then in the finals, Dirty South (USA) vs La Fusion (France) it suddenly became a game of tight calls and very little contact. Strange how it all went down, the USA team was as confused as we were yesterday. What just happened?? Ironically, I watched the game with two girls from Belgium, supporters of the team who knocked us out, who were now cheering for the USA because Belgium eventually got knocked out by France. It's all about who beats who. They were the only ones in the place screaming when the USA scored. They were having fun, and making me laugh, which was a nice way to finish it up. Trophy ceremony to the winners, a few photo opps with the organizers and friends, and it was all over.

I caught a ride back to the hotel with the USA team, listening to them talk about the calls and that somehow gave me a feeling that hey, at least we weren't the only ones getting screwed here. For it to happen in the finals though, that must have hurt a lot more. Later I found out the winning team was going to get a free trip to the big Nike World Basketball festival in NYC later this summer. For some reason, nobody knew about that until after the finals were over. Anyways, we lost in the first round. It didn't concern us one bit.

Returned back to the hotel, cleaned up, then hit the afterparty with the team from England. Walking into a club with the majority of the guys 6'5" or taller, I was feeling short (or average) for the first time in my life! I got to say what's up to Chris Paul again, then Tony Parker. They both made me feel tall again. Ended the night walking home at sunrise, sat down at the hotel breakfast buffet next to Kadour -- who was just waking up or just going to sleep, not sure which. Had some burnt toast and orange juice and went to bed. Not the best day of my life but maybe the most interesting 24 hours.

Day 8: Louvre and BBQ in the 93
Woke up feeling drained and wanted to sleep more but this was an important day on our schedule. Most of the other guys were making other plans to go off on their own. I didn’t feel like forcing them to join me for the trip to the Louvre so I just left it up to everyone, and as it turned out only Antoine was willing to go with me. So I made it a “Me & Antoine @ the Louvre” mini-documentary and followed him all over the museum, Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Sphinx, etc., and finished things up with an interview about his experience at Quai 54. He wanted to head back to the hotel to do laundry, and I needed to do some last minute shopping, so we went our separate ways. Then I rendezvoused with some of the other guys at Genevilliers station for our team BBQ at Youri’s house. He invited us all out for one last get-together with him, Yace and Barbak. We were hanging around in the backyard garden, listening to music, eating some good BBQ, it was a great way to finish off the week. More than half of our team showed up, which was better than I expected. ST and Nina went off to Disneyland, Lono and Antoine were doing their own thing. I finally was able to relax and forget about the loss a little bit. And knowing that the week went by without any major problems or conflicts, our players were safe, I guess it was important to just look back at all the effort we put into building the team during the year...the journey is the reward. Not just this one week in Paris, but the other 350 days leading up to it. Not a complete loss.

Day 9: Back to Tokyo
Got to get moving and make sure we are all heading to the airport, Antoine is on a different flight, and as usual, I don’t know if we are going to have the car to help us get there. Players are down in the lobby, ready to go. That’s good. Driver is there too, that’s great! We take a team photo in the parking lot of the hotel, because we didn’t take one at the tournament this year for some reason. Jam all of our bags in the trunk and make it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. I shoot a few follow-up interviews to get the players’ reactions about Quai 54. Nobody seems to feel the loss too badly, except ST. I know he took it the hardest, as the captain returning from last year’s team. It felt like everyone was just there in Paris as an individual, not as a team member, not really as a Japan representation. And we were not prepared for the physical style play in Quai 54 at all. How do you counter that for next year? Bring physical players, and maybe show up two days before the tournament (not five days!). We were too relaxed, almost as if mentally we were on vacation by the time we hit the court for our game.

First leg of the flight back, randomly I end up sitting with ST and Darin next to me. I say maybe its a good sign, and destiny, to have the three of us sitting together. Its my first choice to have them both as co-captains for next year, and give them the duty of organizing a better team. I ask them straight up, can they build it? They say yeah, probably, but the answer does not sell me 100%. Perhaps I’m not selling the value of the Rising Suns project to them 100% either. I need a break, we all do. That was a hard-luck journey this year. By the time we get back to Narita, it feels like this might be the last time I see all these guys in one room, so I give one last speech. I ask them to please remember the whole story, when talking about the trip to their friends and in the media. I remind them that Hope 81 worked hard to bring them to Paris, so please focus on some of the positives, and give some credit or thanks to us if possible. Last year, we got back from Paris and nobody said anything about Hope 81, as if it were some free trip that they were given from the basketball gods... anyways, thank YOU players!

Home sweet home. Its good to be back, and definitely time to regroup and rethink the way we do our grassroots player development project. Starting with personnel, recruitment, clinics and camps, etc. All in all, I think we’ll be back in Paris next year with an even bigger, stronger, better team. That’s all I can hope for. These are the hardest days, and still only the beginning for the Rising Suns team.

Tags: Rising Suns, Hope 81, Tokyo, Japan, Paris, France, Hammadoun Sidibe, Michael Jordan, Quai 54, Asia, BJ League, JBL, Darin Maki, Antoine Broxsie, Kenji Hilke, Shuji Takei, George Eddy, Kadour Ziani, Nicolas Batum, Tony Parker, Chris Paul, NBA, Guy Dupuy, Nike, Foot Locker, House of Hoops