Work to drive out park basketball

Tyrone Kelley sneaked behind the defense, took a pass on the baseline and guided the ball onto the metal backboard, where it bounced off and went through what was left of the net.

Shirtless because of the heat and humidity that hung in the air Tuesday evening, it was evident Kelley, 31, carried a few extra pounds. Still, he ran to the other end of the court, grabbed a defensive rebound, fired a pass to a streaking teammate who quickly scored another basket for Kelley’s team.

A few moments later, Kelley shot a long-range jumper for a 3-point basket.

If it seemed like Kelley and the other players on the court in the shade of the Interstate 630 overpass were playing like there was no tomorrow, they were.

After 31 years, Tuesday night was the last time for a while that Kelley or anyone else will play basketball at one of two courts under the Interstate 630 freeway at Kanis Park in Little Rock. Perhaps forever.

“They’ve been playing out here for years,” Kelley’s girlfriend, Tasha King, 29, said while she glanced up from her cellphone to take in the action from the concrete picnic table that passed for the court’s grandstand. “They’re upset, so they try to come here every day now.”

They won’t go there any time soon. On Wednesday, city crews removed the basketball goals to make sure of that.

It was part of the many preparations underway for the past couple of weeks as workers geared up to widen a 2.5-mile section of I-630 that runs right over two side-byside basketball courts where legions of pickup games have been played over the years, featuring some of the city’s best players.

Work is scheduled to begin Monday on the $87.3 million project to widen the interstate between Baptist Health Medical Center and South University Avenue.

The courts had seen better days. The posts once were painted in bright red and white stripes when the twin basketball courts and an adjoining volleyball court were built in 1987 for $10,000 in the unused section under the freeway adjoining Kanis Park at North Rodney Parham and Mississippi Street.

Back then, the white backboards gleamed. They appear to be bare metal now. The underside of the bridge deck was coated with light blue paint that has blackened with grime over the years. The court itself is made of the same “green quality material” used for tennis courts.

Back then, two former members of the Harlem Globetrotters traveling professional team with Little Rock ties, Hubert “Geese” Ausbie and Tom “Cochise” Brown, held a weeklong basketball clinic for boys and girls before participating in a ceremony to dedicate the courts on a July day 31 years ago.

In the years since, some of the city’s best basketball players developed their game in the cacophony of traffic noise at the Kanis Park courts that have been compared to famed outdoor courts such as Rucker Park in New York City, where Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Julius Erving and Chris Mullin honed their basketball game.

Joe Johnson, who starred first at Central High School, then the University of Arkansas and then in the National Basketball Association, is among those who are Kanis Park alums.