2023-06-26 21:22:48
By Communications Department Jun 26, 2023 10:22 p.m.
Did you know ? In the 1980s, Manchester United had its own basketball team…
At the time, the Red Devils basketball team played at the Stretford Sports Centre; it had been launched with the aim of attracting the country’s best talents, many of whom later became naturalized Americans.
During this period, Manchester United basketball players have faced a multitude of major European sports teams, such as FC Barcelona or Real Madrid, also with the aim of assimilating the right models for creating a basketball workforce. , like those set up among many football clubs on the old continent.
One of the players involved from the beginning of the “franchise” Jeff Jones confided in us on this subject, in 2008…
“It was a great time to get involved in basketball in this country,” he recalled then.
“To be associated with Manchester United has, of course, boosted the popularity of the sport enormously here and for the players it was an incredible opportunity to understand what this club stood for.”
In the past, every week, around 1,500 people came to the Center in the hope that one day the club would win the championship in this sport, a day that would finally come in 1986.
“After winning the title, we were able to parade onto the pitch before a league game at Old Trafford and the crowd went wild,” he recalled.
“The league was very strong, with teams like Kingston, Livingstone, Portsmouth and Solent Star all competitive. But we won trophies, we played in Europe in prestigious matches against the biggest clubs on the continent. We were even discussing the possibility of building an arena just for the basketball team.”
The Manchester United basketball team was, at the time, equipped by Adidas and sponsored by Sharp.
Despite the title and a surge of attention for him, the basketball experiment soon came to an end in Manchester, as local shareholders began questioning Edwards about the diversification he had then planned, end of the decade…
“We are doing everything we can to keep the team going,” he told The Times on the eve of a shareholders’ meeting in January 1988. “Little by little, we are bringing down the losses.”
But, despite everything, the board did not flinch and ended up opting for the cessation of activity of the club’s basketball team, wanting to concentrate all its financial efforts for the inevitable rise to glory of the Red Devils footballers.
“It was great while it lasted,” Jones told us twenty years later. “Still, we’ve come close to taking basketball out of the minority sports category here.”
One of the Mancunian basketball players of the time John Amaechi (on the left in the photo) even became an NBA Hall of Famer afterwards!
MANCUNIAN NBA LEGEND
The greatest achievement of the Manchester United basketball team, beyond its national title, will forever be that of having succeeded in producing a local talent that quickly caught the eye of the NBA. .
“I grew up in Stockport,” NBA Hall of Famer John Amaechi told us in 2006.
“All my mates were more County fans but I didn’t care. I knew Manchester United was bigger than that and that’s when I started my basketball career for the other Red Devils, the basketball franchise. I remember there was even a time when they thought about building a pitch at Old Trafford but it never happened. We were forced to play at the Stretford Sports Center instead and for two years I walked past Old Trafford almost every day and it haunted me.
“So much so that when I came back from the United States, I almost bought an apartment that overlooked above. In the end, I thought to myself that this might not be the most relaxing place to live on a Saturday!”
For information, John Amaechi made his debut in the NBA against none other than… Michael Jordan, one of the greatest legends of this sport.
After his short stint at United, Amaechi went to play high school in the United States before eventually finding himself drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers from Penn State.
Then, John left to harden in Italy, Spain and Greece, before returning to the new world at the Orlando Magic.
For the record, his inclusion in the NBA Hall of Fame is mainly due to the fact that he managed to score the first points of the entry into the second millennium of the NBA.
After this incongruous fact, he continued to roam across the Atlantic on the side of the Utah Jazz, then in Texas, with the Houston Rockets.
“My retirement was a real highlight for me, as was my inclusion in the Hall of Fame,” he told us at the time.
“In the United States, everyone knew London. Everyone knew Manchester United too, especially in Florida, where I played when I played in Orlando. There was a large expatriate population there, so everyone watched football matches there. For me, it was good to watch football with the English, it especially allowed me to stay in touch with England.
“I was still able to watch many games”, he reassured us then, before vaguely evoking one of his most precious memories, his first game with the Cavaliers …
“But I especially remember my first match which almost put me in cardiac arrest. It was against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, so I tried to play it cool when my face appeared on the large Jumbotron with my name lasered on the floor!”
By Communications Department Jun 26, 2023 10:22 p.m.
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