How to Win a Million Dollars Playing Basketball

During a tryout with the Cleveland Cavaliers last summer, Errick McCollum heard something that sounded both too good and too strange to be true. A. J. Slaughter, a former Western Kentucky guard, told McCollum about a single-elimination event he played earlier that year called the Basketball Tournament, TBT for short. The winning team shared $500,000; every other squad got nothing. Slaughter had been one of the many unlucky losers in the inaugural tournament, and yet he couldn't stop talking about it.

When McCollum returned to the U.S. this past February, after leading China's professional league in scoring with nearly 40 points per game, he decided to put together a team, called Overseas Elite, for the second TBT. This year, the tournament's prize increased to a million dollars and the field grew from 32 teams to 97. Unchanged was the fact that every squad but one would walk away without a penny. The risk was the risk. The reward was the reason McCollum and his teammates were at Fordham University in the Bronx last weekend, competing.

McCollum, the older brother of Blazers guard C. J. McCollum, assembled his squad with the help of his agent, Andrew Morrison. Morrison had long since overcome his initial misgivings about TBT after attending games the year before in Philadelphia. "If somebody's throwing up $500,000, you assume it's going to be fake," said Morrison, who was a reserve forward for Bucknell University when it won first-round NCAA tournament games in 2005 and 2006. "It wasn't. I was really impressed by it."

Morrison helped convince nine players to join the roster and gin up the 100 online votes that, in lieu of an entrance fee, earns teams a slot in TBT's field. Anyone can participate as long as they're at least 18 years old, willing to give up their amateur eligibility, and not currently playing in the NBA. The open format was the brainchild of TBT founder Jon Mugar, a former Division III player who gave up his job as a comedy writer two years ago to devote himself to TBT full time. The tournament was filled with former college stars who still compete professionally—in other words, players like those on Overseas Elite, who were all in their twenties and playing in the NBA Development League or in leagues outside the U.S. The team got the necessary votes, and the third seed in TBT's South regional.

The opening game was scheduled to take place in Atlanta on July 10th. On July 9th, Overseas Elite still hadn't practiced. Morrison had firm commitments from only four players: McCollum, former St. John's guard Paris Horne, former Texas guard Myck Kabongo, and former Saint Joseph's center Todd O'Brien. McCollum and Horne made plans in case their teammates bailed and they had to forfeit. McCollum considered heading with his girlfriend to the Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio. Horne planned to stay home in New York and get in some pickup games. Around midnight, Morrison convened a group chat and told the foursome to fly to Atlanta—the team had a fifth. Later that day, Travis Bader, a former Oakland University guard who holds the NCAA Division I record for most career three-pointers, scored four points for Oklahoma City in a Summer League game in Orlando, then hopped on a flight to Atlanta, arriving 45 minutes before Overseas Elite's tipoff at 4 P.M.

"I didn't think I was gonna play," Bader said. "Morrison picked me up and he just said, 'You're gonna have to play.' I'm thinking, 'OK, I'm gonna play five, 10 minutes.' He's like, 'No, you're gonna have to play. You're our fifth guy.'"

Bader didn't show any signs of jet lag, scoring 14 points in Overseas Elite's 89-83 victory. The team had no subs for the game, which consisted of two 18-minute halves with a 35-second shot clock.

McCollum, who played at Goshen College, a tiny NAIA Division II school in Indiana, was the team's architect and arguably its most valuable player. Two days later, with Overseas Elite trailing by five points late in the third-round game, McCollum kept the million-dollar dream alive, scoring seven of the team's next nine points, including a step-back three that gave the team a 66-63 lead it wouldn't relinquish.

The next weekend, Overseas Elite won two more games, earning a berth in the semifinals and allowing some time for reinforcements to arrive—the rest of the original nine-man roster for TBT. "We didn't cry or complain," said Horne, who played in Japan last year. "We just used our motto: survive and advance."

For their final two games, Overseas Elite had eight players: McCollum, Horne, Kabongo, and Bader were joined by Horne's former St. John's teammate D. J. Kennedy, former Arizona guard Kyle Fogg, former South Carolina center Johndre Jefferson, and former Wayne State center Shane Lawal. The day before the games, Lawal flew in from Paris, where he had been trying out for the Nigerian national team.

"I hopped on the plane," said Lawal, who played in Italy last year. "The whole time, I'm just like, 'Million dollars, million dollars, million dollars.'"

O'Brien was the only one of the original nine who didn't play down the stretch: he had signed a contract with a professional team in Poland and didn't want to risk getting injured. Instead, he sat on the bench and helped coach the team alongside Colin Curtin, the best man in Morrison's wedding and the director of men's basketball operations at Hofstra University.

In the semifinals, Horne and Kabongo scored 16 points apiece as Overseas Elite cruised to an 84-71 victory over City of Gods, a squad that featured former NBA lottery picks DerMarr Johnson and Michael Sweetney and three other NBA veterans. Kennedy, who played two games with the Cavaliers during the 2011-12 season, was the only Overseas Elite player with NBA game experience (he's also the one most likely to play there again, having averaged 13.8 points and 7.5 rebounds for the Houston Rockets' Summer League team in Las Vegas last month). And yet, once again, Overseas Elite survived and advanced, leaving them a win away from a million dollars—or a loss away from heading home with nothing.

"We've been in situations where you're overseas and if you don't win this game, your paycheck might not come," McCollum said before the final. "That's a little different. Your owner would come in and they're a week late paying you. They're like, 'Win the game.' I think that's more pressure."

Still, the money would mean a lot to both Overseas Elite and Team 23, their opponent in the final and TBT's reigning underdog story. Team 23 started as the No. 13 seed in the West regional and proceeded to win each of its games by at least 11 points, even though no one on its roster had NBA experience. A few guys on the floor in Sunday's final made a decent salary playing basketball, but all knew their careers were short and parlous; there were not many guaranteed contracts in the house. They welcomed an opportunity to play for a million dollars in Fordham's Rose Hill gymnasium, in a game televised on ESPN. Around a thousand fans turned out for the game; among them were dozens of Overseas Elite's friends and family members, many of whom hadn't been able to travel around the world for the players' professional games.

With 54.8 seconds remaining and Overseas Elite ahead, 65-60, Kabongo called a timeout after getting double-teamed near half-court. He also swung his arm at a Team 23 player who had reached in to force a turnover. Both benches cleared, and the referees—all battle-tested veterans of top-tier college basketball—had to break up the skirmish. The refs crowded around the monitor and reviewed the melee. No fouls were called.

"There's a million dollars on the line," Kabongo said. "The other team wants to do whatever they can to throw us off the game. It's going to happen in a game like this."

When play resumed, Kabongo threw an errant inbounds pass and Team 23's Davin White, who finished with a game-high 34 points, nailed a corner three to cut the deficit to two. Team 23 was only down 67-65 when it regained possession with 10 seconds left, but never got off another shot.

When the buzzer sounded, Overseas Elite celebrated on the floor as confetti fell from the rafters and DJ Khaled's "All I Do Is Win" blared from the loudspeakers. The team posed at half-court with the million-dollar check that they would split. Each player received between $55,000 and $107,000, depending on how many games he played. The 139 fans that had voted Overseas Elite into the tournament were rewarded, too, with money or a free TBT championship T-shirt. Morrison's wife, Lexi, won $5,000 because she had secured the most fan votes.

After the game, Morrison was already planning ahead. "They're all on two-year deals," he said, laughing.

For all the talk about repeating next year, everyone on Overseas Elite knew they might never play together again. This time next year, they may be playing in an NBA Summer League, or for a professional team that won't allow them to compete. Things change, especially in the lives of basketball players on the game's margins. That it was so fleeting only made the moment that much sweeter. They would wake up the next day in the hard, harrowingly contingent professional lives they had going into the tournament; until then, they'd enjoy themselves. McCollum said they might have dinner together. "Sizzler, probably," Curtin joked.

There were discussions about what they'd do with the money. McCollum planned on investing his share with his financial adviser, who attended the games. Horne said he'd donate some to his church. Lawal said it would help pay off his mortgage, but that he was also planning to splurge on a luxury item before rejoining the Nigerian national team in Paris: "I'm upgrading my seat to first class."