Green Dot Decade - Part 1: Origin Story
- Chris Larson
- Jul 4, 2020
- 3 min read
This summer marks a decade since the formation of the Green Dot Ballers. The team here at greendotballers.com decided to commemorate the occasion with a retrospective on the club. Today we start with part 1, telling the origination of the franchise that would go on to dominate the 2010s.
The Green Dot Ballers were founded by Chris Larson, Demond Shepard and Mike Reamy in the summer of 2010. Chris had spent the previous decade playing in the City of Alexandria Basketball league, first joining the Keltics, circa 2002 and then founding the BearingPoint Bombers in 2005. Both of those teams saw success, first Larson joined a strong Keltics team that ruled the competitive division of the City of Alexandria League, winning titles in 2002 and 2003. After that team broke up in 2004, Larson started a team comprised primarily of friends from work and their extended group of friends. That team peaked in 2007 with a championship of its own for the Black and Gold. After another year of the Bombers, that team broke up and Larson did not field a team in 2009-2010. Meanwhile, Larson and Shepard met through a project at work and compared notes on their basketball resumes. That conversation sparked interest in forming a new team to enter into the City of Alexandria field.
Demond Shepard played at the Naval Academy in the early 2000's and discussed with Chris how it would be good to get back to playing again. He offered that he could bring some of his teammates that played at Navy. Chris was missing the league and re-connected with Mike Reamy who had been a BearingPoint bomber at one point and ran in similar basketball circles. They finally decided to all come together to enter a team in the 2010 summer session. That team would feature the three founders along with Shepard's fellow Navy alum Quintrell McCreary, as well as Deloitters/Bombers Yoon Ji, Sean Lublin, Lee Cheyne and Seth Bailey.
The newly formed Green Dot Ballers immediately put the league on notice that any team interested in winning the City of Alexandria league over the next decade would have to go through them. A seven game winning streak started the season and after a semi-final win over G-Men (the first of many such playoff defeats at the hands of the Ballers), the Ballers found themselves in the championship game against VSE.
In what would turn out to be a familiar template for the Ballers, the championship game was a tightly contested affair that came down to a couple of key plays at the end of the game. GDB pushed out to a six point lead with less than five minutes to go and then went on the fast break with a chance to go up eight and likely lead to a VSE timeout. However, an ill advised behind the back pass on the break, turned a likely two into a turnover and VSE came down and hit a three to cut the lead to a single possession.
The game ultimately played out to overtime, where the Ballers failed to get their leading scorer, Quintrell McCreary, the ball during OT. With less than 15 seconds left the Ballers made another costly turnover on a poor pass from Chris Larson, that resulted in two free throws and a three point lead with one possession remaining.
On the final play, Larson's attempt at a three pointer was dislodged by the VSE defender before a shot could even be released. The Ballers, so close to reaching the top of the mountain, would have to wait their turn into 2011.
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