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Phillip "Hot Sauce" Champion Signs with Spyders

January 27, 2009 - American Basketball Association (ABA) News Release


College Park, GA. King streetballer Phillip "Hot Sauce" Champion has inked a contract to lay for the new ABA expansion team, the College Park Spyders. Duane "Spyder" Hughes, president of the team that will begin play next season, said that the signing should make ABA history.

"This signing reminds me of when Julius Erving first came into the ABA with the Virginia Squires," said Hughes. "There were no trumpets blaring or fanfare. The Squires executives knew just what they were doing though. They were signing Mr. Excitement. The same with Earl "The Pearl" Monroe when the Knicks got him in a trade with the Baltimore Bullets. The papers were all questioning whether Pearl's streetball, one-on-one style would work with the Knick consummate team system. Doc went on to become the face of the NBA-ABA merger and Pearl cemented his enshrinement in the Hall of Fame with an NBA Championship as the ultimate team player as he toned down his game."

Champion, whose six year run on the AND1 Mixtape Tour scored the highest television ratings, is equally eager about the upcoming season. "I just want to be an asset to the ABA as I was to AND1," he said.

Glenn Toby, CEO of the team, added that Hot Sauce joining forces with the Spyders is a win-win arrangement. "I have spent most of my sports career on the other side of the table. I have played an important role in the building of many successful teams by supporting, managing and negotiating to bring the team and talent together. When you are able to engage an athlete at the level of talent that Hot Sauce has with a new team like the Spyders, you have a recipe for success."

Optimistic about where the ABA and the College Park Spyders are headed, Hughes says he encourages the players to play their game. "I told Sauce just to be himself on the court. Basketball is basketball when you are born with God-given gifts. I just want him to use what God gave him. Like the ABA of old, people will come to see something they have never seen before, on any level of the game. That's what the great ones do - he continued. "They create, improvise, and mesmerize. There will be doubters, as there were in those cases. That is our challenge as an organization, that is Hot Sauce's challenge as a player who will be lading the expansion team. In my talks with him, I am confident that he will rise to the occasion and prove that he is every bit the ball player that his unique skills say he is. At the team president, GM and coach, he already knows that he will not have to look over his shoulder every time behind his behind the back pass goes sailing out of bounds. I got his back. I just want him to be himself and let his talents speak for itself."

Hot Sauce and the College Park Spyders will take the court this fall. For more information, visit www.spydersbasketball.com or www.abalive.com.

Note: OurSports Central no longer actively covers the American Basketball Association (ABA) as a professional league due in part to its inability to publish and play a schedule and the transitory nature of many of its teams. For information on professional minor leagues, please see OSC's basketball section.



American Basketball Association Stories from January 27, 2009


The opinions expressed in this release are those of the organization issuing it, and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.


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