This past Saturday the Death Machines crew traveled out to the CHEW Playground in South Philadelphia to witness the Red Bull 2on2 Revolution Tour. Once we got there it didn’t take long to realize this stop on the tour was going to be a little different from the New York stop the week prior. Not to take anything away from the New York guys, but it was quite obvious that the competition bar was going to be raised significantly at this event. The first thing that stood out was the sheer size of the guys that were participating, and not to mention they came with loads of spectators, which always adds to the intensity at an inner-city basketball court!

Red Bull always gets the event going right away, they don’t waste any time at all. First round for Team Death Machines (Justin Lieth / Chad Timberlake), was against a physical and sizable opponent but we seemed to walk thru that game rather easy. Then came round 2 (we were obviously the more physical and dominant team of this game), however there were some referee issues, and some miscommunication between the officials and the Event Staff, some of the calls didn’t go in our favor, add that to a opponent that didn’t miss a shot, not to mention the crowd roaring in favor of the obvious underdog, and you have a disastrous 2nd round loss for us. This only adds fuel to our fire, we will be back in Baltimore this weekend, and hopefully we can pull off a good run in that tournament!

We did not let the loss of our team from the tournament dampen our spirits, and we decided to stick it out in the heat, in anticipation of who was going to win this battle. The tournament was stacked with talent which included Philly basketball legends Bo Kimble, Lewis “Black Magic” Lloyd, Antoine “Do Dirty” Brown, as well as former DII Player of the Year, Tayron Thomas, not to mention the DM guys Justin Lieth and Chad Timberlake, who just came off of a big win (winning the JSBL Championship / respectively being the top scorers of that game). When it was all said and done, the 2 teams left standing were E2 (Ed Breswell & Ellis Gindraw) and Blue Magic (Jarrett Kearse & Wayne Marshall). If you ask me this game should have been a walk in the park for Blue Magic being that they outsized they’re opponents by a combined 2 1/2 feet, however to everyone’s surprise on Saturday it quickly became the E2 Show, slashing & shooting, out-rebounding, & putting on a dribbling clinic, while they were cruising their way down main street for that $2,000 check. My write up wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention Boobie Smith, who is the MC for the Red Bull Revolution events, he’s an unbelievable talented, and a legend in his own right, who knows exactly how to get the crowd motivated while also adding comical insults, and inspiring comments for the people on and off the court. It wouldn’t be the same without you Boobie!

Philadelphia I have to hand it to you: You guys, hands down, know how to put on a great basketball event, it was refreshing to witness how much your city supports its players, even the mayor (Michael Nutter) was there to support his local teams! That goes a long way!

Next stop, August 7th at the Cloverdale Playground in Baltimore.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 5th, 2010 at 7:43 AM and is filed under Exclusive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.