Christensen keeps hoop dream alive with Globetrotters

Scooter Christensen, who played on Bishop Gorman's 1997 state high school championship basketball team, holds Guinness World Records for the longest time spinning a basketball on one's head and nose. While these skills may be frowned upon at the dinner table and church, they have served Christensen well as a seven-year veteran of the Harlem Globetrotters, who make their annual Orleans Arena appearance at 7 p.m. today.

In 2002, when he was mostly known as Shane Christensen, before he could spin a basketball on his face for six seconds, Christensen played 27 minutes in Montana's 81-62 loss to Oregon in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Arco Arena in Sacramento, Calif. He scored six points against the Ducks' Cool Hand Lukes, Jackson and Ridnour, who each scored 18.

No offense to the Washington Generals, but those essentially were to be Shane "Scooter" Christensen's last three field goals as a competitive basketball player.

In an effort to Keep the Dream Alive, he did what a lot of guys in his situation do, which is to briefly hook up with a minor league team in the Dakotas. He also played for a couple of Las Vegas teams in the 37th and 38th incarnations of the old ABA, which looked nothing at all like Dr J.'s old ABA, or Connie Hawkins' old ABA, or even Billy Paultz's old ABA, other than these didn't last long, either.

So Christensen took a job with the Phoenix Suns, breaking down videotape. When the Suns learned he could play a little, he became a part-time practice player. He would mimic the style of Allen Iverson, before the Suns played the Sixers, careful not to make too many shots or make Steve Nash mad in other ways.

But one day when he was scrimmaging with the Suns he made enough shots to impress a Globetrotters scout, who happened to be watching. That was seven years ago, and now Christensen is like 12,000-0 against the Washington Generals and has witnessed or taken part in the confetti in the water pail bit roughly 12,000 times as well, in 50 countries including France.

He said the food in France was fantastic, and so were the people. And here you thought the Generals' 100-99 victory over the Globetrotters in 1971 was an upset.

It was the last time the Generals, who were calling themselves the New Jersey Reds in those days, beat the Globetrotters. The Trotters, as the story goes, lost track of the score and time, found themselves down by 12 with two minutes to go and could not recover by playing "normal" basketball. The crowd in Martin, Tenn., was stunned. Said Red Klotz, the Generals' star: "They looked at us like we killed Santa Claus."

Christensen mentioned that unimaginable defeat during an assembly in the schoolyard of Marshall Darnell Elementary School in northwest Las Vegas on Friday afternoon. The school kids looked at him as if he were Santa Claus and the Pied Piper and SpongeBob SquarePants rolled into a red, white, blue and yellow warmup suit.

The school kids didn't want to hear about losing to the Washington Generals. They mostly wanted to know if Christensen had ever played against Michael Jordan or LeBron James or President Obama, in that order, and they wanted him to dunk the red, white and blue ball he was holding in his hand.

Christensen demurred, primarily because he's the Trotters' new Fred "Curly" Neal, known not for his dunks but for his dribbling prowess, which explains the shaved pate. But then he spun the basketball on his head and on his nose, and the school kids began to scream in delight, much like my brother and I when Santa Claus would leave a Schwinn Sting-Ray or even a G.I. Joe with the "kung-fu grip."

This is the Globetrotters' 86th season, and judging from those screams, it's still about the kids.

"Jerusalem was nice, and playing for troops in Iraq in 2006 was pretty cool," Christensen was saying in the schoolyard. "I had a chance to play on an aircraft carrier, when our F-16 came down on a moving ship in the Mediterranean Sea, I believe. Somewhere over there. All I know is they said, 'See that little sparkle down there in the water?' And then we landed on it."

And then the school kids were jumping up and down on him again, and one had attached herself to the leg of his blue warmup pants and would not let go.

This little girl told Shane "Scooter" Christensen that she loved him. Like the confetti in the water pail bit, these are moments that never get old.

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.