Couch: 20 years later, the Moneyball Pro-Am has become a staple of Lansing summer nights

LANSING – Had Desmond Ferguson’s conversation with Tom Izzo gone differently 20 years ago, the Moneyball Pro-Am summer basketball league never would’ve gotten off the ground.

All the games, the dunks, the crowds, the interaction between fans and players — everything it’s become over the past decade — began with Ferguson’s idea, inspired by his time in Detroit’s famed St. Cecilia summer league, and became a reality as soon as Izzo was on board.

“I went out (to Michigan State) and sat down with Izzo and told him what I was trying to do. He blessed it,” Ferguson said of their 2004 conversation. “Obviously, here, the pro-am isn't what it is without MSU guys. Now once you get there and see other guys playing from Lansing that played high school here, college guys, overseas (pros) … but MSU makes it go.”

“I thought he was nuts,” Izzo said. “I didn’t think he could get it going. … I said, ‘Sure, my guys will play in it.’ ”

Two decades later, they still are.

Between then and now, a lot of time and sweat — some of it in gyms without air-conditioning — has gone into creating the vibrant setting that exists today on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at Holt High School.

The Moneyball Pro-Am you see in 2024 has come a long way from that first summer and those fledgling early years — when it moved around from Everett and Sexton high schools to Harry Hill and then to Pattengill Middle School (which is now Eastern High School), with games on weekends and in front of crowds that ranged from fairly robust to countable on two hands.

“Ten folks. And that might have included who was keeping score,” Ferguson said of the pro-am’s smallest crowds.

Among the earliest memories: “Being on my knees with painters tape, taping a crooked NBA 3-point line,” said friend and longtime area high school coach Rod Watts, who was part of the foursome that ran the pro-am back then, along with Corie Muhammad and Famoun Washington.

They handled everything from gym setup to bathroom cleanup, including playing if a roster was short a player.

The quality on the court wasn’t any less then. Beyond MSU’s players, Lansing had more high-end local talent than it does today. Ferguson, who’d starred at Everett before playing collegiately at Missouri and Detroit, was in his prime and was coming off a brief stint with the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers in 2004.

Also taking part that first summer: Fellow Everett legends Brent Scott and Carl and Charles Thomas, who’d each touched the NBA themselves and were either still playing professionally overseas or had just finished; East Lansing’s Thomas Jackson, who was early in his pro career; Sexton’s Ron Banks and D’Quarius Stewart, who finished his season in Mexico days before joining a team; Waverly’s Justin Ingram, the freshman of the year at Toledo months earlier; Western Michigan stars Levi Rost from St. Johns and Ben Reed from Battle Creek. Mateen Cleaves played when the Flint pro-am was on hiatus.

And MSU provided Paul Davis, Alan Anderson and Chris Hill, among others, including incoming freshmen Drew Neitzel and Goran Suton, who was coming off a state championship at Lansing Everett.

Over the years that followed, Draymond Green, Oakland’s Kay Felder, Okemos’ Johnathan Jones and Everett’s Derick Nelson — the league’s all-time leading scorer — became staples of the pro-am at one point or another. Green was a big proponent of the league, making appearances for a couple years after he began his NBA career. Local kids who grew up watching the games, such as Denzel Valentine and LaDontae Henton, became players in them.

And the Capital City Summer Pro League, the CCSPL, became the Moneyball Pro-Am, named after its founder, Ferguson, and his Moneyball Sportswear company. Ferguson’s nickname, “Moneyball,” was given to him in the mid-1990s by AAU teammates Kevin Garnett and Robert “Tractor” Traylor.

“Every time you’ve got to say ‘CCSPL’ or ‘Capital City Summer Pro League’ … it was too long," Ferguson said. "It’s like, ‘I’m funding it. We’re wearing Moneyball jerseys. Let’s call it the Moneyball Pro-Am.’ ”

Four or five games on Saturdays and Sundays became three on Tuesday and Thursday nights as the pro-am found an ideal home at Aim High in Dimondale, where from 2014 to 2019 it went from a somewhat off-the-radar gem to must-see summer entertainment, with packed crowds in an intimate setting, boosted by the Miles Bridges years.

“That just helped take it to another level,” Ferguson said.

The pro-am’s latest home — the sizable and comfortable gym at Holt High School — fits the league’s growth. It’s been there the past three summers, after a two-year break during the pandemic.

Teams are no longer named after colors, but sponsors. They no longer have coaches. They sub themselves in and out. Rosters are larger, so they always have enough players, which was an issue in the early days, especially when the league collided with July weekends.

Ferguson’s game-day team of workers has turned over and grown. There are new volunteers, though it's still a family undertaking — including his wife, Celia, and her twin sister, Rose, and Desmond and Celia's 8-year-old son, Deuce, who can often be seen sitting next to Desmond at the scorer's table. The league now brings in enough money to at least cover its costs, while still being free for fans.

What it’s become for Lansing is a source of pride for Ferguson, even if half the crowd doesn’t understand the correlation between the Moneyball Pro-Am and Moneyball Sportswear, which he began in 2002. That apparel brand is much larger than the pro-am, making most of its revenue from team uniforms — basketball, track and field and soccer, especially.

“One of the privileges for me as an individual and as a business is being able to be involved with our community,” Ferguson said from his year-old Moneyball Sportswear headquarters, which he intentionally built to be an anchor store in a depressed area on Lansing’s near west side. “And the pro-am has grown to a point where so many people look forward to it.

“People may or may not be able to make an MSU game, but they get a chance to come in the summer, get autographs, get their pictures, get a chance to talk to the players, see these guys are human and everything else.”

Izzo: ’Des did me a favor, too’

Ferguson’s love of Lansing was a big reason to start the pro-am. But he also simply wanted a high-level summer league in his hometown for himself and other pros, a league he could play in without traveling during his offseason — be it after his stint in the NBA in 2004 or when he was home from overseas, where he played professionally in 11 different countries.

He’d picked the brain of Glover Earnest, who ran the St. Cecilia league in Detroit, which featured NBA players every summer. Ferguson knew Lansing had the basketball inventory to make a league happen with college guys and overseas pros — as long as he had MSU’s players.

Ferguson had known Izzo since the early 1990s, when, as a teenager, he’d played in pickup games at Jenison Field House with the MSU players of that era. Izzo even recruited Ferguson toward the end of Ferguson’s high school career, including watching Everett beat Sexton in the 1995 district championship game. But Izzo already had Morris Peterson and Jason Klein signed in his first class, two guys who played Ferguson’s position. And Ferguson, at the time, wanted to leave his hometown to play college ball.

Izzo might not have been sure if Ferguson could get the pro-am rolling, but he liked him and, back then — before college coaches could work with their players in the offseason — thought it would be another way for his players to play against good competition over the summer.

“This is also where the community gets to know (our players),” Izzo said. “So Des did me a favor, too, whether he realizes it or not. He’s a good guy. Like, if he saw one of my guys acting like a jerk, he’d say something or call me. I appreciate him. And it gives our guys a chance to go out and be a little goofy (on the court) sometimes. People enjoy it. And as long as my guys are good to those people, then it’s a win, win, win.”

That fan-player interaction at the Moneyball Pro-Am is one of the reasons the league has found its place in the Greater Lansing sports landscape. Young kids feel comfortable approaching players for autographs. Older fans don’t feel out of place asking for a picture. That began to take hold in the years at Aim High and when Tum Tum Nairn was in MSU’s program.

“Tum Tum really interjected that into the program,” Ferguson said. “Like he made sure of it. I’ve even seen him grab guys (saying), ‘No, y'all gonna (do this).’ … And that's been a point at MSU, to make sure that you take pictures with folks. I think from a fan standpoint, they really look forward it.”

For several years, that was passed down from group to group, with young MSU players seeing how older players connected with the crowd. Then the pandemic hit. Not only did it put the pro-am on pause for two summers, it also broke that lineage. In 2022, when the league re-started, Malik Hall was the only MSU player who’d ever participated in the pro-am. So Ferguson went over to MSU for a team meeting to explain what the Moneyball Pro-Am was. MSU reaffirmed its commitment.

“It was a re-introduction for me,” Ferguson said. “Because (those players) didn’t know anything about me.”

The charm of the early years

In the early days, part of the lure of the pro-am for local stars, especially those playing professionally in other countries, was being able to perform in front of friends and family that rarely got to seem them play anymore.

Former Everett star Brent Scott, who had played a year with the Indiana Pacers in the 1990s, was coming off a season in Spain in 2004. He played in the Moneball Pro-Am's first three seasons, paying for a team as a way to support Ferguson.

“There was no internet (live stream) or any way my family could see me,” said Scott, who’s now an assistant coach for Penn State’s men’s basketball program. “It was an opportunity for me to come back home and for my mom and my brothers and sisters to see me and for my friends to come out to games. I wanted to support Des. But I was also excited to have a pro-am.”

They only needed one side of the bleachers at Everett back then. For the playoffs one year, they pulled out the other bleachers to help create an atmosphere. Derick Nelson’s father was on the in-game microphone in those days. Ferguson’s mother and young brother helped, too.

“It was all hands on deck,” said Watts, who ran the scoreboard — and occasionally forgot to add points to it as he got caught up in the action.

In one game at Sexton, Scott questioned whether Watts was cheating him out of points. Scott’s older brother, sitting in the stands, didn’t realize that Scott and Watts were friends and that it was accidental. Things got a little testy.

“I’m just a guy who loves basketball and I’m getting caught up in the play and forgetting to put points on the board,” Watts said, laughing. “Brent had to come in and break it up.”

They look back at those days fondly.

But there were also times when Ferguson nearly pulled the plug. He was struggling to get a commitment from players on summer weekends. Guys who were supposed to show up didn’t always. The crowds were sometimes tiny.

Ferguson was reinvigorated by good seasons at Pattengill in 2012 and ’13, which featured Denzel and Drew Valentine and Adreian Payne, among others. Then he moved the league to Aim High and to weekdays — and boom.

The growth included a women’s league for two summers, which also featured MSU’s players. And, on the men’s side, an attempt to get the University of Michigan’s roster involved. Former Sexton star Saddi Washington, then a Michigan assistant coach — who’d spearheaded the involvement of Oakland’s team when he was a coach there — thought it might be a good experience for the Wolverines' players. Saddi had known Ferguson forever. Ferguson often refers to himself as the fourth Washington brother, having grown up closest with Famoun.

“Well, it was an idea. It didn't really stick,” Saddi, who’s now on MSU’s staff, said of having the Michigan players play. “We got guys to come that first night. Maybe (Derrick) Walton and maybe another kept coming.”

It was the first summer of Bridges in 2016, however, that’ll forever be the summer that hooked many fans.

“Draymond helped take it to another level. And then Miles took the baton and took it to a whole other level,” Ferguson said. “He was just that all-star, pro-am type player that’s exciting to watch. We were getting national attention. People were driving up from Ohio and Indiana to see games.

“I thought nobody could be as exciting as Miles. But then you get Coen Carr and the things he did last summer were crazy. Now it’s just the consistency, in a sense maintaining. Because I don’t know how much bigger it can get.”

Ferguson's all-time Moneyball Pro-Am team if he had to take five or six guys in their primes to compete in another Pro-Am: Felder, Green, Denzel Valentine, Bridges, Payne and Devin Oliver.

“But Johnathan Jones and (Derick) Nelson have to be in there. (Shayne Whittington) from Western Michigan, he was nice, too,” Ferguson said.

The choices get hard. That's what happens after 20 years.

His original crew — Watts, Muhammad and Famoun Washington — are no longer running the scorer’s table or cleaning the building. But they’re proud of what the pro-am’s become, what Ferguson has done.

“I definitely marvel at it each year,” Famoun said. “It’s just amazing to see the growth from where we started. When I go to the gym now, I see a couple of familiar faces from those early years when we first started. … It feels good to know that you played a part in the early growth and helping to maintain the league during those early, tougher years.”

“He never stopped,” Watts said of Ferguson. “That's what you have to admire about him. You look at him and you look at where he is today with Moneyball Sportswear, people are wearing it all over the country. … That St. Cecilia league made such an impression on him, he wanted to do the same thing for Lansing. What I really like is, from the beginning, it’s been a piece of Lansing.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Couch: 20 years later, the Moneyball Pro-Am has become a staple of Lansing summer nights