Hoopdarshan 97: Lakers & LeBron championship recap with Vinod Muthukumar

The Lakers are 2020 NBA Champions! In Episode 97 of Hoopdarshan, Kaushik Lakshman and Karan Madhok invite Vinod Muthukumar - Maharashtra basketball tsar & co-host of the Patel and Kumar NBA Show - to discuss what this championship means in Lakers lore, appreciate LeBron’s consistent greatness, AD’s game-changing addition, Jimmy Butler’s inspiring moments, and more.  

Vinod Muthukumar is the Director of Business Development at KOOH Sports Private Limited, who have launched a number of products and programmes to help younger kids in India get better access/sports training. He also launched the Elevate Basketball Academy. He has been behind the organising committee of so many basketball events in Maharashtra, has been a regular commentator - and most recently is the co-host of India's only NBA Talkshow, Patel and Kumar.  

    

Hoopdarshan is the truest voice of Indian basketball, and since we're such hopeless fans of the game, it will become the voice of everything basketball related we love, from the NBA to international hoops, too. On every episode of Hoopdarshan, we will be inviting a special guest to interview or chat to about a variety of topics. With expert insight from some of the brightest and most-involved people in the world of Indian basketball, we hope to bring this conversation to a many more interested fans, players, and followers of the game.

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Elevating the Game: Elevate Basketball Academy begins professional training center in Mumbai

India's success and failures have been conducted yin and yang with the efforts of the public and the private sector. Where the government failed it's people, the people stepped up and created their own success.

And in basketball - where for decades the world's second-highest population has yet to take a notable step forward - we're finally going to have someone step up and help provide the professional training and support required to turn India's potential into reality.

Elevate Sports - who have been supporting basketball in the country for several years - partnered with Global Sports Partners (GSP), an internationally recognized sports consulting company, to launch India's most professional basketball training Academy in Mumbai. The first center of the Elevate Basketball Academy opened up at the Indian Gymkhana in Matunga on February 1. With international basketball experts and coaches at the helm, the Academy aims to track and hone grassroots basketball talent from around the city and help them realize their hoop dreams.

Elevate have been organizing and supporting basketball events in Mumbai for a long time, particularly the annual crowd-pleasing Savio Cup and Ramu Memorial Basketball Tournament, both of which are some of the most professionally-conducted basketball championships in India.

Elevate have entered an initial three-year partnership with GSP to launch the Basketball Academy. Vinod Muthukumar, the Managing Partner of Elevate Sports, has expressed their plans to launch many more centers after Indian Gymkhana in the city over the coming weeks.

Unlike a conventional basketball academy, the aim for Elevate will be to identify talent from different parts of the city and provide them a structured training programme with special emphasis on fitness, diet and conditioning. Muthukumar said that they will be targeting school programmes, with participating kids initially paying a fee. "At a later stage the kids will be selected based on their performance to form an elite squad where the training will be more intensive," added Muthukumar, "By targeting schools, we get a ready bunch of kids and we shall be also be targeting the nearby vicinity kids to join the academy."

The total programme will include health and nutrition information, a fitness plan, as well as basketball training

Perhaps the most important aspect of the Academy programme, and one which sets the academy apart from many other Academies and school basketball programmes, is the opportunity to be coached by USA trained coaches - brought together by GSP - using coaching styles and methods employed by the preeminent basketball nation in the world. The coaches have been selected and trained by USA coaches who have 30 years of experience coaching all age groups in multiple countries and at various levels.

Once fully operational, Elevate-GSP will take its advanced methods to schools across the country and establish academies there. In the long run, this would serve as a model to groom talent at the grassroots level and prepare youngsters for the future proposed Indian professional basketball league.

The Academy promises to use a 'player-centered' approach to training and coaching. The focus will be on individual skill development through a personal, one-on-one basketball instruction programme. The academy aims at enabling players to be able to move through the system and as they do so pick up the tactics and skills to move on to the next level. It will embrace all aspects of player development to build the better person, the better athlete and ultimately the better basketball player. The one-on-one instruction, along with group/team training, will give them the opportunity to instruct students of all ages, backgrounds, and skill levels (6-17 years old) while accomplishing the task of individual skill development advancement.

On signing up at the Academy, a player will undergo an initial player profile to evaluate and record their fitness level, basketball skills level, and goals for their progression in the Academy. Each player would be and given an individualized program,e to follow. The players would undergo regular 3 month reviews, always identifying their progress and areas to continue working towards their goals along their sports journey and beyond! Players will train for up to 5-10 hours a week around their academic timetable.

At least 10 percent of the student admissions at the Elevate Basketball Academy will be reserved for talented players from under-privileged backgrounds.

Looking ahead, Elevate plans to market players from India and present them to team owners and college athletic departments primarily in the USA. Elevate will work closely with these players to create a player promotion kit which would contain a video of their game and highlight their talent through a presentation and also publish them on our website so that scouts could view their profile and select them for try-outs. The eventual aim is to place the players in the NBA and the NCAA Division One Teams, and other leagues within Europe and Asia that offer great opportunity to market Indian talent.

Elevate are aspiring to be India's leading sports solutions company. Currently, they provide services in event planning and management, basketball talent scouting, television and web-enabled sports production, and now, the Academy.

GSP is an internationally recognized sport consulting company with strategically placed representatives throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The company work at all levels of sport, including Professional, Olympic, Club, University and Recreational.

Hopefully, the Elevate Academy's mission - to produce skilled, motivated, and athletic basketball players in India - can come to fruition soon so that some of those talents can start breaking into India's national squads and of course, fulfill every basketball fan's dream of seeing an Indian one day play for the world's best basketball leagues. The Academy could motivate others to start taking sports like basketball more seriously and professionally in India.

2011 Ramu Memorial Tournament starts in style; Holders IOB eke out close victory

Mumbai’s most-storied and oldest hoops competition, the All India Ramu Memorial Basketball Tournament (RMBT) at the Indian Gymkhana in Matunga, got off to an intriguing start on Sunday, April 10th as the holders IOB (Chennai) held on for an intense, close victory over the underdog Cochin Customs side. The hosts, Maharashtra, saw their Women’s team dominate South Western Railway for a comfortable 16 point victory.

The RMBT, which is now in its 27th edition, is being sponsored by United Phosphorus Limited (UPL). The tournament has a lot of history in the city of Mumbai, as it started off in the mid-1960s as a local, inner-city competition, and in the late 70s became the All India tournament that it is today. For a period of 13 years between 1993-2005, the tournament was discontinued, but it has gained momentum again since 2006 and has once again become an essential part of Mumbai’s hoops culture.

One of the men’s teams that has always been successful at Ramu have been the Indian Overseas Bank – Chennai (IOB), who have won it three times in the last five years, including last year’s edition. Featuring the likes of Hareesh Koroth, Abhilekh Paul, Mihir Pandey, and the legendary S. Robinson, this team rolled in with high expectations but had a surprisingly slow start against Kerala’s Cochin Customs side. In a tight game throughout where neither team could take a huge lead, IOB survived to win 64-63. Paul scored 23 for the winning side while Pandey added 20 to go with 10 rebounds. For Cochin, Eudrick Perreira (17) and S. Monish (16) were the high scorers.

The first game of the tournament was a rousing victory by home side, Maharashtra Women, against South Western Railway from Karnataka. Smruthi was at her unstoppable best for Maharashtra, scoring 31 points as her team got off to a strong start. They held on to a comfortable 13 point lead at the half and maintained a steady tempo for the rest of the game to win 72-56. Manisha Dange added 17 for Maharasthra, while Savitha had 20 for South Western Railway.

The last game of the night was an encounter pitting several Indian superstars against each other – Western Railway Men came out to the court to battle Punjab. Western Railway wanted to stamp their dominance early, as they held on to a 10 point lead after a defensively strong first quarter and kept the lead uptil halftime. Punjab made a comeback in the third, but in the end, their efforts weren't strong enough from stopping Western Raiwlay from racing away to a 71-65 victory. Gagan Deep Singh was the star of the show for the winning side, scoring 18 points and grabbing 15 rebounds. Jagdeep Singh, who was named 'Best Player' at the previous night's All Star Game, kept up his good form with 28 points and 8 rebounds for Punjab, but it wasn't enough to secure a victory.

Vinod Muthukumar, the tournament director, was encouraged by the start to the competition and was looking forward to more interest from the public over the next week. “This year of the RMBT will be a little different and we are hoping to add more excitement and fan interaction,” said Muthukumar, “The Men’s competition, for instance, will see the eight participating sides in two groups, and the best two teams from each group will then play in another round-robin pool. This way, the crowd will get to see more competitive games.”

The organisers of the tournament are also putting in an extra effort this year to reach out to the fans. The tournament will be shown live throughout on local Mumbai channel YOUSCOD 18. The Semi-Finals on 16th April and Finals on 17th April 2011 will be telecast live on Doordarshan and the Finals will be broadcast live on DD along with live running commentary on All India Radio's FM Gold.

Muthukumar added, “We are also using our website – ramumemorial.com – as well as our Facebook page, as essential tools to share photos, results, and news.”

This is also the first year that the US-based side Shooting for Success (SFS) will be taking part in the RMBT. SFS have been a crowd favourite at Mumbai because of their appearances at the Savio Cup. They are considered to be one of the favourites to lift the crown, along with IOB and ONGC.