CONVERSATION
Until 2020, basketball fans came from all over the Bay Area to San Francisco’s Kezar Pavilion to enjoy high-level hoops for free at the summer SF Bay Area Pro-Am Basketball League.
Local greats, including Steph Curry, would join teams and run fast breaks up and down the hardwood in the Haight-Ashbury gym. Kids in the bleachers would scramble onto the floor during time-outs to launch a few shots. The league was a rite of 41 straight San Francisco summers, and it should be again.
But like Bay to Breakers, Carnaval, the Pride parade, and many other local crowd-gathering rituals, the Pro-Am has just been canceled for the second straight summer. “It’s 100 percent because of COVID,” says Monica Wiley, director of the women’s league.
This year’s cancelation hurts even more. Wiley had hoped to capitalize on the excitement around the Stanford women’s NCAA championship run this spring, and the overall rise in viewership for women’s college and professional basketball.
The men’s Pro-Am gets much of the attention, with rosters that have included NBA and college greats (and Bay Area locals) like Jeremy Lin, Damian Lillard, and Aaron Gordon.
The women’s league, added in 1995, has also had plenty of local talent, including former Stanford star Nneka Ogwumike and former UC Berkeley standout Layshia Clarendon, both currently in the WNBA.
Wiley, a Fresno native, was a point guard for Cal from 1989 to ’92. With her help, the Cal team in 1992 beat second-ranked Stanford, soon which went on to win its second championship, and made the NCAA tournament twice. She was a three-time Pac-10 All-Academic team selection.
While Wiley won’t be able to organize action on the court this summer, she’ll see plenty of action in court: She’s a judge in SF Superior Court and supervises the Unified Family Court.
After graduating law school from Howard University in 1995, Wiley clerked at the Superior Court then became a deputy city attorney. In 2009, she became the second African-American woman to serve on the SF judiciary. She also teaches advanced trial advocacy at Hastings College of Law and serves on the faculty for the California Center for Judicial Education.
All told, she played in the Pro-Am for 14 summers before moving on to coaching. The Frisc caught up recently with Judge Wiley to talk basketball, law, and how two canceled summers of hoops have only cranked up her competitiveness.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
The Frisc: How did you first wind up in the SF Pro-Am?
Monica Wiley: I wasn’t interested in playing professionally overseas, but I was looking to play competitively. It helped me to transition from law school back to the area. I liked that the Pro-Am simulates college games — they have referees and coaches and all. I started at age 26 and kept playing until I was 40.
As for being league director, I was hoodwinked and bamboozled into the job. But seriously, the previous director stepped down three to four years ago, and I stepped up to keep the program viable. You want to provide opportunities to do this.
What’s the bigger job, being a judge or running a basketball league?
Being a judge is much harder, and the decisions are more impactful in people’s lives. I work in the Unified Family Court, so that’s families and children, it includes juvenile justice and juvenile dependency.
What do you mean by juvenile dependency?
These are proceedings to determine whether a child’s parent or guardian is abusive or neglectful. The juvenile court may temporarily or permanently remove the child from the parent’s home. If temporarily, the court can order monitoring and services to the family with the goal of returning the child to the home. If a child is permanently removed, the court may terminate the parent’s rights and another family can adopt the child.
The league director thing is what I do for fun. I have to get insurance, make sure we pay the refs — all of that is a lot easier than what I do during the day.
Isn’t it a conflict of interest to be both league director and coach?
There’s no conflict of interest in me coaching and being the league director. I actually made the motion, and I ruled on that. [Laughs]
What’s coaching like?
Coaching has been fantastic. I think I’ve been a coach for 15 years in the Pro-Am and even had a three-peat (2007–09) with a team that had Natasha Vital and Ashley Walker, who’s going into the Cal Hall of Fame. It’s fun to remain engaged with Cal and interact with players as well as meeting players from other schools. We’ve had players from San Jose State, USF, Stanford.
Any good stories from all these years coaching?
The last year that the league was up and running was 2019. We had a great team, San Francisco City, with Fran Belibi and Haley Jones who were entering freshmen at Stanford. I also had Mikayla Cowling and Asha Thomas from Cal. We had lost the championship to Bay City the past two seasons. This was the year. We beat them twice badly in the regular season.
That same summer, I coached a flag football team and convinced my girls to play in the tournament. The next day was the Pro-Am championship. Three girls couldn’t play because they were too sore. It was totally my fault, I was a bad coach. We were all obviously upset we lost. Leaving the gym, we said “‘Next year!’” Now it’s going to be 2022, but we’re coming back.
How has the women’s game changed over the time you’ve worked in the Pro-Am?
The game has become a lot faster and more physical. I’m 5 feet 5 and a half. I wouldn’t be able to play Division I today.
Plus, there’s such a focus or specialization. I played basketball, softball, and volleyball, and ran track. Nowadays, you’re on an AAU basketball team that travels, and the parents pay for it. People have specialty coaches for strengthening and performance … I didn’t. I didn’t even know until my junior year of high school that I could get a scholarship to pay for school. It’s more of a business now.
We’re all dealing with transitions. How do you feel about SF and the Bay Area in this time of uncertainty?
There are so many different facets. There’s the criminal justice lens, the social justice lens. I tend to be optimistic. I’ve had a couple of friends who left the Bay Area and it’s tough to see that. We’re losing good people, but I think the bay is going to be OK. We still have institutions like Cal and Stanford, and there’s diversity and a great cultural scene.
When the Pro-Am does get up and running — and it will next year — I want people to come out and support it. There are fun games to watch, good players. It’s a good way to spend an afternoon.
Kristi Coale (@unazurda) — Cal ’87 — is a San Francisco-based freelance writer and radio producer who writes about homelessness and more for The Frisc. She was the recipient of a USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism 2020 Impact Fund grant for her homelessness coverage.