Mike Perry wasn’t sure what to say. Team White Mamba’s head coach had just called timeout after they went down 19 points to Uptown Basketball with less than 10 minutes remaining in the MADE Hoops 16U championship game, and they needed an answer. They needed a spark.
Then came the voice of Tony Gallo.
Gallo, who runs White Mamba’s North Shore division, was on the bench for the title game in Baltimore, Md., and he spoke up in the huddle. He told them to fight, and then he thought outside the box: He told them to start chirping to the other team. It was certainly unorthodox, but it was embraced.
“He was like, ‘We need to change the energy. We need to start talking (expletive),’” Perry recalled. “I was like honestly, Tony, I’m all for that right now.”
The team – a cast of overlooked, yet confident players who had come together for a common goal this spring – didn’t need much convincing. In that moment, it was the empowerment they needed. They played loose, with an edge, and picked up the energy. When Conor Chi hit a 3 and started screaming after, they felt the tides turning. They started chirping and clapping on the defensive end, and it was clear their opponents didn’t want the smoke. White Mamba was feeling like themselves again.
“I turned to my dad on the sideline and I was like, ‘Watch, we’re about to come back and win this thing,’” said Raul Cruz.
The comeback was on. Mamadou Camara and Freddie Bacon neutralized Uptown’s primary ball-handlers. They pressed 94 feet. White Mamba strung together stops, got every rebound and capitalized offensively. Cruz, their do-it-all point guard, made the right plays. They put themselves in position, then delivered the knockout blow.
In the waning minutes, they trailed by two when Chi drilled a corner triple to give them the lead. Moments later, Hunter Peabody followed with a heavily-contested 3-pointer to put them up four. Dagger.
“We took their life,” Perry said. “We knew.”
The comeback was finished. The energy was completely shifted. In less than 10 minutes, White Mamba engineered a 27-point turnaround to win, 74-66, and claim the 16U MADE Hoops championship, one of the top independent AAU circuits in the country.
“Anyone can talk when you’re up 10, but it’s like, if you’re talking when you’re down 20 in the championship game with 10 minutes left?” Perry said. “You have to have some big cahoonas to do that. Our guys, we have a confident group.”
White Mamba had rightfully been confident all spring. Even when they went down in the championship game, they had no reason to think otherwise.
“It was like, why lose that in that moment?” Cruz said. “I think that’s what brought us back, our confidence in ourselves that we’re the best team on this circuit.”
Perry, in his first spring with the program, knew he had a special group from the beginning. He and program founder Brian Scalabrine put together the squad, which was mostly a collection of players who were overlooked on their prior teams. Chi was the only returning White Mamba member. From the jump, they had a chip on their shoulder.
“No one wanted any of these guys,” Perry said. “We got all these guys because they were all misfits from their prior teams. … They believed in us and we believed in them, and just seeing their growth the whole year, they never wavered with their confidence.”
In May, when White Mamba went to its first MADE Hoops tournament of the spring in Baltimore, Perry saw the potential. He realized they were different. They were hitting 3s at a high rate, they were beating good teams on the circuit, and he felt like he was coaching on autopilot. There was a natural bond among the group. Some of them had known and played with each other before, and being collectively overlooked brought them closer. Most importantly, they gave teams fits on the court. They meshed perfectly together.
“I think everyone bought into their role,” Cruz said. “We didn’t really have any egos on our team. Everyone wanted to contribute in any way they could.”
They had Camara (Salem, Mass.), the Malden Catholic star who’s a pest defensively and can get downhill on anyone offensively. Chi (Westwood, Mass.) and Peabody (Andover, Mass.) were automatic from deep. Perry humorously described Bacon (Colchester, Vt.) as an “unathletic Bruce Brown” – a defensive menace who’s always in the right place offensively. Jack Mullins (Westwood, Mass.) was their 6-foot-7 Swiss army knife with an ability to impact the game inside and out.
And then there was Cruz (Dorchester, Mass.), who was named MVP of the tournament and was Perry’s dream guard as a coach. A dynamic playmaker, the 6-foot-3 guard from Nobles is as reliable as they come and does things on the court that can’t be taught. He's conductor that consistently made the right plays and calmed down his team in stressful moments. Perry likened him to Kyle Lowry, Andre Miller and Rajon Rondo, some of the steadiest guards in recent NBA history.
“He doesn’t really make mistakes, (he’s) damn near flawless,” Perry said. “When I don’t know what to say in the timeout, I give him the clipboard. He’s literally an extension of the coach. …
“He’s playing chess, and the defense isn’t even playing checkers. They’re playing Sorry.”
White Mamba rarely slipped up this season, but Perry identified a pair of losses to Team New England during the first weekend in July as defining moments. After the second loss, there was some finger pointing that needed to be talked about. But they rallied together at the right time.
During their championship run in Baltimore, White Mamba knocked off Sideline Cancer in the Elite Eight, which Cruz called one of the most satisfying wins of the season. White Mamba had lost to them after blowing a lead back in May, and they beat them convincingly by 21 in the rematch.
That gave them extra confidence in the championship game. Even when they went down big, they never panicked. They knew big comebacks were possible – they experienced the opposite feeling in that first Sideline Cancer loss in May – and knew they could pull off their own. Throughout the spring and summer, White Mamba never backed down from a challenge. They saved their biggest one for last, and were rewarded with a trophy.
“I think they were riding for each other, and they were all in a similar situation,” Perry said. “(They knew) these top teams didn’t want us. They all could relate to that. These dudes were coming to prove something, like the whole season. They wanted all the smoke. Whoever they played, they wanted the best. …
“I’m just so happy for them, knowing who they are and the situation they came from, I don’t think they thought they’d be in this position. … It’s pretty surreal. They were lightning in a bottle all season.”
