In-your-face ball: Janisse's new passion a sensation on TV
, 8/26/03
Jelani Janisse knows basketball purists may chuckle, or maybe cringe, or maybe tear at their hair and run around in circles about the game he's playing these days.
Fine by Janisse. The former Kansas guard is a true believer with a newfound passion, and he's not afraid to hang his convinction out there like an alley-oop pass.
"I tell people that I grew up playing basketball all my life, and I loved it," he said. "I still play basketball recreationally, but now I have a new love. And that's SlamBall."
OK, basketball traditionalists, go wild. SlamBall? Basketball on trampolines? Players in pads? Taped games and a marketing strategy seemingly plucked from the smoking crater that was once the XFL?
Yep, SlamBall, the Oesterized mix of basketball, football, hockey, extreme sports and gymnastics that debuted last year on TNN, which has become Spike TV. A four-on-four basketball game at its base, SlamBall is played on a 94-by-55-foot court with four trampolines on either end. Among dozens of rules pulled together from various sports, player-to-player contact is allowed, the court is enclosed and face-offs are held.
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Robert Beck/Spike Tv
Jelani Janisse prepares to throw a ball down against a member of Team Diablo during a recent SlamBall match.
It's a few galaxies away from KU, whose ties to the infancy of basketball and adherence to fundamentals led to the adoption of "Old School" as a marketing slogan last year at the same time Janisse was boinging around in SlamBall's first season of telecasts.
But Janisse, speaking in reverent tones, believes he's on the ground level of the next big thing in sports.
"You look at arena football and the success it's had, and I see SlamBall as revolutionary," he said. "Just look at the way the ratings are going."
For the first telecast of the second season, anyway, SlamBall was a hit. The Aug. 6 show drew 2.29 million viewers, including 604,000 men ages 18 to 34. Numbers in that demographic topped Fox's Saturday baseball game of the week, many NBA regular-season games on TNT and ESPN's Thursday night NCAA football game.
SlamBall's Monday game airs after WWE Raw, and it's marketed in a similar vein. The eight teams have names like the Rumble, Steal and Mob. Players are given over-the-top hype, as evidenced by Janisse being billed as a "Kansas Jayhawk sensation" on Spike TV's website despite averaging 0.6 points for KU from 1997-99.
But for all the roller derby-meets-Vince McMahon trappings, the game's originator envisions a day when SlamBall goes more mainstream.
"In 2005, we're going to launch a league and there are going to be teams in different cities," said Mason Gordon, who created the game in 1999 as an intern at a Los Angeles production studio. "We've got a very innovative business plan, and we're going to take advantage of some of the things about major sports that aren't working."
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Robert Beck/Spike Tv
Former Kansas guard Jelani Janisse is passionate about SlamBall.
Gordon said the involvement of former Philadelphia 76ers president and minority owner Pat Croce, who serves as a venture partner and studio commentator for SlamBall, has given the fledgling sport a shot of legitimacy in its bid for growth.
SlamBall, however, will have to make a full-court run to be considered fully legit. The entire second season already has been played, for instance, with previously unaired games being telecast on Monday nights and reruns on weekends. That's led to questions about whether the outcome is scripted, but Janisse and Gordon insist it's not.
"Nothing is predetermined," said Janisse, who plays for the Rumble and got into the game when a former AAU coach encouraged him to participate in tryouts before the first season. "Nothing is scripted at all in this sport."
So let the purists be skeptical, or maybe dismissive, or maybe downright contemptuous, Janisse said.
"As much as I love this sport, I'd play for free," he said. "It's going to be huge. Right now, the surface is just being scratched."
