Live Oak legend returns to Manhattan Beach basketball tourney
Live Oak legend Robbie Edwards returns to the iconic Manhattan Beach hoops tournament. Photos
Gramps avoided the dreaded cramps and they all became Live Oak champs.
After fighting their way through the early rounds of the annual Live Oak 3-on-3 basketball tournament on one of the hottest days of the year, the father-and-son-plus-one team known as Dad and Gramps had a clear strategy going into the finals Friday afternoon.
“We wanted to get Gramps some rest and make sure he ate a couple of bananas so he didn’t cramp up,” “Little Stevie” Rich said moments after he led his team to a no-contest championship game 11-2 win over the all-German team known as Flo and Friends.
But the undisputed star of the tournament was Little Stevie, a former El Segundo High School player who has the quickness to get to the hoop if you play him too tight and the sweet outside shot to burn any defender who plays off him in an effort to take away the drive. He also plays with a competitive edge that sometimes erupts into trash talking and physical play. But that don’t-call-me-a-bitch approach fit in well with the physical and emotional intensity displayed by most of the Live Oak players this year. Several players were driven to, thrown down on or simply crashed to the hard asphalt courts, but they all got up to play on even though some of them had to limp their way down to the traditional post-tournament watering hole, the Shellback Tavern at the bottom of Manhattan Beach Boulevard, where the city meets the sea.
Flo and Friends, meanwhile, brought something new to the Live Oaks hoop scene, which has been holding 3-on-3 games every Friday afternoon and Sunday morning for almost 50 years: three players from Germany who converse with each other in German but play together like they’ve been watching tapes of the San Antonio Spurs for the last 10 years.
They also held another distinction: whereas all the other teams were formed through the traditional draft process held at the Shellback last week, the captain, Florian Pertsch, asked Commissioner Goldstein if he could team up with two friends, Chris and Udo, whom no one had ever seen play. After Flo assured Goldstein they were no better than he was, Goldstein gave his permission.
As the tournament progressed Friday afternoon, there was some grumbling among other teams that Flo and Friends was a stacked team that should have had to go through the draft process like everyone else. But as Goldstein pointed out, they made it to the Finals by working their way through the consolation bracket.
“It wasn’t a stacked team, because they lost in a preliminary round and came through the consolation round to the finals,” Goldstein said.
Under the tournament’s two-losses-and-you’re-out rules, a team’s first loss sends them to the consolation bracket. And the winner from the consolation bracket advances to the final against the winner of the regular bracket, with the stipulation that the consolation winner has to win two games in the finals, whereas the other team only has to win one game, in recognition of their having won the regular bracket without a loss.
However, those complicated rules did not come into play in the finals because the Dad and Gramps team was so dominant. Flo started the action with a 10-foot jumper to give his team a 1-0 lead, but it was the last lead the Germans would hold.
Little Stevie answered with a power drive to level at 1-1, Gramps threaded a beautiful back-door pass to a cutting Goldstein to grab the lead at 2-1, and the rout was on. The Germans played hard and smart, but they simply had no one athletic enough, quick enough or strong enough to stop Little Stevie. He stuck a 15-foot right side jumper, Goldstein drilled a 10-foot baseline jumper and it was quickly 4-1.
The rout picked up speed when Little Stevie hit a reverse layup off a get-out-of-my-way drive and followed that with a beautiful spin move that produced an easy layup to make it 6-1. Goldstein nailed another baseline jumper and little Stevie hit two more outside shots to pump the lead up to 9-1.
Flo finally answered with a 10-foot jumper, but that was the German’s last gasp. Little Stevie unleashed two more unstoppable drives and suddenly it was all over and there was a new champion with Live Oak bragging rights for the next year.
While the Finals wasn’t as exciting or competitive as it has been in past years, the early rounds produced the usual quota of tight contests, physical confrontations, blocked shots, crazy shot attempts and even crazier made shots. Highlights included the brutal, physical matchup that featured Tom “OG” Hansen’s rugged rebounding, Scotty “Syracuse” Talbot’s driving scoop shots and and John “Hook Shot” Arfin’s glue-guy game versus the long range bombing of Fat Phil Ortiz and Teddy “Freddy” Seeds in a first round match-up. The first round is two out of three, so by the end of the third game both Hanson and Talbot fell to the court in victorious relief and exhaustion.
But this tournament was about much more than who won or lost. It was really about renewing old friendships and making new ones. It also marked the return of a Live Oak Living Legend, Robbie Edwards, who started playing there in 1975 and was a regular for the next 40 years. He moved to Memphis, Tennessee a year and a half ago, but returned to the Beach Cities specifically to play in this tournament. For Edwards, 67, it was a day of catching up with old hoops buddies like Eric “Big E” Goldbach and Mike “The Butcher” Foley and reflecting on all those years and all those Live Oak games and all those buckets and rebounds – including his three Live Oak tournament championships.
“It’s so great to be able to hang out with all the fellas again,” he said. “This is such a great group of guys and Live Oak is a very special place.”
Also making an emotional return was Chris “C-Pal” Palisan, the varsity coach at La Quinta High and a Live Oak regular for the last decade. He tore his Achilles tendon last month, and showed up at the tournament riding on a medical scooter with his lower leg heavily bandaged and elevated. A two time Live Oak champion, the 42-year-old Palisan said it was no fun watching the action from the sidelines and vowed to make a comeback.
“I’ll be back,” he said. “And I’ll be competing for a third championship.”
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