FAMILIAR FOES: Lamont “MoMo” Jones will square off against friend and rival Kemba Walker when Arizona battles Connecticut tonight in an Elite Eight matchup. (AP)
ANAHEIM, Calif. — There is the story you hear on the street, the story you read in the newspaper and the story you see on TV. We will leave it up to you to decide which one is true.
This is fact: Harlem’s Lamont “MoMo” Jones of Arizona and The Bronx’s Kemba Walker of Connecticut share a bond — a bond cemented in the hardscrabble streets of their neighborhoods where some get out and some don’t.
When Arizona and Connecticut take the Honda Center court tonight some 3,000 miles from home, there might be a pregame hug between these stellar point guards. Then they will go at it like jackhammers tearing up the macadam.
MoMo vs. Kemba. Arizona vs. Connecticut. The City of Point Guards sends two of its finest for a primetime showdown just south of the City of Angels.
Final Four, here we come.
“I think the player that doesn’t take it personally will have a better chance to win the game,” St. John’s director of basketball operations and former Rice coach Moe Hicks said. “There’s a lot of emotion involved.”
Here’s where it gets a little gray because this relationship is all about emotion. There is love and respect between Jones and Walker and an edgy measure of competition.
It first surfaced when they played on Team Roc as sixth and seventh graders at an AAU tournament in Washington. They were both mighty mites. Jones was stronger, Walker was quicker.
Years later, Louisville coach Rick Pitino came to Rice for a 5 a.m. practice. Word was he was there to see Walker. He left offering Jones a scholarship that night.
“There was no me against Kemba,” Jones said. “There was never a Momo against Kemba. People made it seem like that. That’s just what people do.”
People certainly do like to see friends get nasty with one another. See: “Desperate Housewives.”
The possibility that MoMo and Kemba might have their own show, “Desperate Point Guards of NYC,” was too irresistible for some after Jones transferred from Rice.
Never had such an elite player left Rice. Hicks had managed star backcourts before — Kenny Satterfield and Andre Barrett, for example.
“MoMo wanted to be the man,” said one person close to the situation. “With Kemba there, there wasn’t going to be a man.”
Jones rolled his eyes. Couldn’t people see through his eyes, just once?
He never knew his biological father and his stepdad, Clarence Sims, the big-hearted man who gave him his “MoMo” nickname because the kid never stopped balling or talking, had been shot dead just blocks from their Harlem apartment.
“I didn’t want to leave,” Jones said. “I had something at Rice that was special beyond basketball. It was something magnificent that a lot of people don’t get, a true team, true brothers. I felt like I messed it up, but I had to get my head straight.”
Yesterday Jones said he and Walker have been speaking throughout the weekend. Walker said they haven’t spoken. When asked if Jones ever beat him 1-on-1, Walker drove.
“Never,” he said. “He knows that.”
Jones and Walker will be reunited tonight. Their heads are straight, their games tight. As far as they’re concerned, that’s the story.
“It’ll be a lot of New York out there,” Jones said. “When we play on the court together, whether it’s against each or with each other, it’s just a dynamic burst of New York flavor.”