Bowman shines in Pro-Am finale

In years past, players with NBA backgrounds regaled the Pro-Am floor at Kezar Pavilion, with several such players on each team’s roster. This season, there were just four players with NBA experience listed among the league’s eight teams. Of those players, Bowman was the only one with staying power.

“It’s a pride and a joy just to help the community come out,” Bowman said of playing in the Pro-Am for second straight year. “Getting everybody back to where they was, and showing love and support. Not just us, but family and friends.”

Not only did Bowman prove SF City’s top player this year. He opened the Pro-Am’s championship week by being named the league’s MVP and scoring 27 points last Monday in SF City’s Game 1 win over Dream Team, 108-102 in overtime, to set the tone for the best-of-three series.

From there, Bowman was held relatively in check in the scoring department. While he showed up with a team-high 11 rebounds Wednesday in Game 2, he totaled just 15 points in a 98-82 loss. It was more of the same through the first three quarters of Friday’s Game 3 championship finale, as he entered the fourth quarter with 16 points and the contest deadlocked at 73-73.

Then Bowman flipped a switch. Pivoting off the role of pass-intensive point guard, the 2023 Pro-Am MVP turned up the aggression and finished at the cylinder to the tune of five made field goals and 17 points in the quarter, amassing a game-high 33 points on the night to lead SF City to a 107-101 victory, and the Pro-Am championship.

“Ky, he’s a real nice guy, he wants to be a team player,” SF City head coach Carl Jacobs said. “We tell him to be aggressive … and we tell him: ‘That trap, it’s not that strong.’ I say if you beat it, now we’re 5 on 3. So, I told him, sometimes be aggressive. Because we were beating the trap, throwing it back out, which was not beating the trap. … Once he started being aggressive, then he realized.”

Dream Team — coached by Jefferson High School legend Bryan Thomasson — was playing at a disadvantage, with one of the team’s top players, forward Sayeed Pridgett, taking leave after Wednesday’s game due to a prior commitment playing in an international event. In Game 2, Pridgett lit up the Kezar crowd with a game-high 36 points.

“Sayeed is one of our best players,” Dream Team center Te’Jon Sawyer said. “Basically, our mentality was just: next man up. We’re basically a young team, so we’ve got to have our younger guys step up. We didn’t get what we wanted at the end of the day, but we felt like we played hard today.”

The Dream Team box score was a thing of beauty. Paced by Deshawn Parsons’ team-high 25 points, all five starters scored in double figures. Sawyer — a 6-7 center who transferred to Montana State in 2023 out of City College of San Francisco — added a yeoman’s effort, totaling 21 points and a game-high 16 rebounds.

But in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter, Bowman converted an and-1 to give SF City a 78-76 lead, and the eight-time Pro-Am champs never looked back.

“Ky is a great player,” Sawyer said. “He’s a pro. It’s hard to stop pros. We have to adjust to how he plays. So, he was basically our main focus. Make other people score. And they beat us today by doing that.”

Both teams stayed true to their main rotations of players. On the Dream Team side, reserves Malik Merchant (College of San Mateo) and Pearse Uniacke (San Bruno native, transfer from CSM to SF State) each saw brief cameo rotations onto the floor. But the SF City reserves were much more impactful, much in part to 6-6 forward Armani Collins starting the night on the bench.

Collins started every game this season until Friday, Jacobs said. He finished Game 3 with 14 points, including two momentous 3-pointers in the fourth quarter.

“He wasn’t feeling it coming off the bench,” Jacobs said. “So, maybe that little anger right there … boosted him a little bit.”

Collins’ dagger 3 came with four minutes to play.

With SF City leading by 96-91, a quick inside-out touch pass found Collins all alone near the corner. There was some artistry involved in the setup, as it was the same spot on the floor where, four years ago, Bowman had knocked down the final shot of the Warriors’ 121-110 home loss to the Phoenix Suns that fateful night of Curry’s injury.

Sawyer hurried out from the post, but his attempt to defend was late, and Collins — the former Stuart Hall and CCSF standout hasn’t played in-season since his senior year at Bethune Cookman in 2018-19 — locked and loaded to give SF City a 99-91 advantage.

“It’s honestly just time to show up,” Collins said. “I haven’t hit no 3s all week, and I finally hit some 3s. So, I knew it was time to go in.”

Dream Team got it as close as 99-95, but Bowman added five points down the stretch, and Collins finished off the scoring by knocking down a pair of free throws.

De’Rajee Austin finished with 14 points, and Lewis Hayes added 10 for SF City.

“My team, they got things going for me,” Bowman said. “So, when they got things going, it just helped me get the energy going and get to the basket.”

In his second year on the Pro-Am, Bowman played for Dream Team last season in the league’s first year back from the pandemic. He switched to SF City this season but dismissed the notion of there being any sort of rivalry between the teams.

“We’re just our here to ball,” Bowman said. “We’re just here to play. That’s the best thing for us is to come out here and play against each other, and make sure we’re getting better. So, coming together, this team we’ve got is more of a family than a team. So, we’re going to stay together from here on out, as the summers go on and as the years go on. Just keep on combining our team and hopefully keep on pushing the positive energy with each other, and hopefully help each other build.”

Sure enough, there was no indication of a championship win at the final buzzer. The two teams simply hugged it out among themselves, then lined up for postgame high-fives.

The most noteworthy on-court celebrations came from the fans, particularly from the many youth spectators in attendance, who were welcomed to shoot around on the court during timeouts and other game breaks. Hustling out onto the court for super-abbreviated stints, kids enjoyed playing their own versions of beat the buzzer, some pumping fists and pounding chests when they’d hit a good shot during intermissions.

This has long been the mission of Pro-Am director Jon Greenberg, who founded the league in 1979 at the Potrero Hill Recreation Center, before it moved to Kezar 10 years later. To open the full world of basketball — from college, to the international game, to the NBA — to the inner-city youth of San Francisco.

“It’s a culture,” Bowman said. “It’s bigger than a basketball game, it’s a culture. Just having people here on a Friday, it’s really a blessing to not just us, but for them to actually come out and see guys who play overseas, guys who play in the league to actually showcase their skills in front of them. Not a lot of people get that opportunity to go to these big-time games. So, us coming out just helps them — whether it’s kids, just helping them to be able to see where they can get in life. Helping the youngsters. So, that’s big for us.”