Where's Budd Bailey? Watching the eXtreme

The eXtreme and the Royal Ballers get started in an ABA minor-league basketball game in West Seneca.

By Budd Bailey

When someone puts a “Buffalo” on a uniform of almost any sporting team, it creates some curiosity in me. I’ve been at a variety of such sports over the years, checking out the competition on local venues. It’s fun to drop in and see what the fan experience is like at such events.

However, minor-league basketball somehow eluded my presence. Work got in the way for years, and that’s my excuse for not watching the Buffalo 716ers. They played from 2013 to 2016, and in the last season hired Ernie DiGregorio to be the team’s Director of Operations. But the Buffalo eXtreme has managed to hang on, at least so far. It’s been tough to catch their games. I was all set to go on a Sunday night two years ago, but a massive snowfall in West Seneca convinced me to postpone an appearance. Last year, a scheduled game that looked like a possible choice for a visit disappeared from the schedule without any notice.

This time, though, everything worked out nicely. The eXtreme did indeed host the Rochester Royal Ballers at the XGEN Elite Sports Complex in West Seneca on Saturday night. That’s in spite of the fact that a season schedule available at the front door had the team playing the South Bend Bison. (That franchise seems to have fallen part sometime around late September, based on the stoppage in Facebook posts.) At least this time, there was a game.

First, a little background. The squads play in the American Basketball Association, not to be confused with the ABA that was the NBA’s rival in the 1960s and 1970s. This version of the ABA still has the distinctive red, white and blue basketball that caught on quickly more than 50 years ago – more than the league itself did. If you go to the league website, many of the news stories are devoted to expansion teams that will begin play in less than a year. In the meantime, there are more than 100 teams scattered about the country that are league members. The eXtreme has 13 home games on the schedule this season. The season runs from October to February, plus playoffs.

We – I brought along my friend Jack, a former basketball official - walked through the door a half-hour before gametime, paid $10 for a general admission ticket, and took a look around. XGEN is designed to help the development of young basketball players. The company seems to be taking the minor-league basketball business seriously, at least in comparison with other teams in the ABA. The eXtreme has a web page that contains a numerical roster and statistics, along with a way to order souvenirs. Rochester has none of that.

The building doesn’t have a great deal of space for seating. There were a couple of rows of folding chairs on three sides of the court, and a few rows of bleachers went down a sideline. It looked as if the crowd was in the vicinity of 250 to 300 people on this particular night, which might have been 75 percent of capacity.

The league’s website does have standings listed, and they revealed a clue about Saturday night’s game – it might not be much of a contest. Buffalo had an 10-0 record going into the game, and was ranked first in the entire ABA by, um, someone.  The Royal Ballers had a 1-10 record. This was not a good sign for our hopes that the game would be competitive.

Sure enough, it wasn’t. The eXtreme jumped out to a 20-6 lead after five and a half minutes of play, and the Ballers never got any closer than that. Buffalo used an interesting technique of dividing its squad in half, so that two groups of six players carved up the playing time for the night just about equally. Call it two-platoon basketball.

Games at this level are often high-scoring affairs, since no one wants to see a deliberate offense slow down the pace of the game. At one point, someone kicked the electric cord out of the socket of the 24-second clock, and no one would have noticed if it stayed unplugged. There were plenty of three-point shots and some dunks along the way. The officials decided it was better to let some things go once the outcome was decided.

The eXtreme had a 45-23 lead at the end of the first quarter (12-minute periods), took the foot off the gas to lead 76-57 at halftime, and pulled away to a 115-88 lead after three quarters. From there it was a question of how many points the team could score combined, and the final answer was 266 – a 147-119 win for the home team. Give the Buffalo squad some credit; former St. Bonaventure player Ryan Gallo, the eXtreme’s coach, has his team passing the ball quite well, which led to some easy baskets. If 147 points seemed like a lot, and it was, Buffalo had a 180-58 win over the NH Kings on November 1. Glad I missed that one.   

The league website did post half of a box score posted (nothing about Rochester), although the numbers were a little suspect. Buffalo probably didn’t go 42 for 45 on two-point field goals, a percentage of 93 percent. Eight eXtreme players were in double figures, with Jon Park scoring 23 points and Rodney Hawkins putting up 21.

What was the quality of play like? Perhaps Division III college ball. The most familiar name on the roster is Javon McCrea, a three-time all-conference player at the University at Buffalo from 2010 to 2014. Javon exited as the Bulls’ all-time leading scorer. He’s 33 or so now, and still hooping. Marcus Feagin was an all-Western New York pick when he played high school ball in Niagara Falls in 2007-2011. John Ivy played in college for SUNY Brockport, Quran Dubois is from Niagara Falls and SUNY Canton, and Lovell Smith turned up on the rosters of McKinley High School and Buffalo State in his younger basketball days.

Yes, the game could have been much more competitive. It would have been nice to have a little more context about both teams and the league, since it’s hard work collecting even a little bit of information. But the players were pretty good, and they were even friendly. One said to hello to us as he walked by before the game. For $10, it’s a nice night out for hoop junkies.

Besides, fans can even have the chance to have the most unique view in basketball. They can sit on a “mezzanine” that’s a little more than 10 feet up and a few feet from the basket. You too, for perhaps the first time in your life, can be “above the rim.”    

(Follow Budd on X.com via @WDX2BB)

Note the red-white-blue basketball just below the rim - only feet from our seats.