LOS ANGELES — A boy who spent the weekend popping up from his seat to mop the court wore headphones nearly the whole time.
One of the videographers sitting next to him had earbuds in for seemingly the entire afternoon.
But it was hard to imagine either one drowning out the atmosphere that has kept people coming to the Drew League for more than five decades.
The pro-am league completed the second week of its seven-week regular season Sunday evening at King/Drew Magnet High School, with the men’s league in its 53rd season and the women’s league in its 38th.
“The people coming down here love the atmosphere,” former Drew League player Butch Smiley said. “The NBA players coming down here love the atmosphere. We even had Chris Brown, the singer, come down here. … The atmosphere down here is cool. It’s good vibes.”
The 16-team men’s league played eight games over the weekend, with three teams moving to 2-0 and three falling to 0-2. In perhaps the upset of the weekend, reigning men’s champion Hometown Legends fell to All In, 91-78, ending a six-game winning streak that dated to July.
Former Fresno State center Terrell Carter, the league’s 2025 Defensive Player of the Year, had a double-double with 17 points and 10 assists — the most assists recorded by a player in a game this season — for Hometown Legends. But All In had a double-double of its own from former Long Beach State center Chayce Polynice, whose 17 points and 11 rebounds helped dull any edge the defending champions might have had.
The eight-team women’s league played four games over the weekend.
This is the first season in which two women’s games are being held on each day of competition throughout the regular season, Butch Smiley said.
“We experimented with it last year,” Smiley said. “But this year we went all in on this stuff, and so now it’s on a regular schedule.”
While the Drew League has drawn national attention through appearances by LeBron James, James Harden and Paul George, league owner Dino Smiley said NBA players aren’t eligible to join until Wednesday. Dino Smiley, Butch Smiley’s younger brother, added that collegiate players have only recently been able to join teams this season.
The most entertaining portion of the summer may still be ahead, but neither Butch nor Dino Smiley takes the program for granted. What started as a way for a South Central Los Angeles community to build camaraderie has grown into something neither expected to last this long, let alone reach this size.
“One thing we’re proud of in Drew League, we have a professional crowd,” Butch Smiley said. “Everybody’s friendly, everybody gets along, don’t nobody trip — and I think that’s what kind of blew the NBA players away when they first came down here.”
Butch Smiley, 68, started playing in the Drew League at 15. Dino Smiley started helping keep score at 14 before eventually taking over the league at 24. Now, his daughter, Chaniel Smiley, is the league’s commissioner.
The Drew League is not just for players. Dino Smiley said it also serves as a training ground for NBA and NCAA Division I referees.
Public address announcer Jorge Preciado, who got his first PA gig in 1997 at Charles R. Drew Middle School, the league’s home until 2006, said calling Drew League games in the summer is therapeutic.
“Whatever I’m going through during the week, it gives me a getaway,” Preciado said.
Preciado, who didn’t play basketball in high school, said the Drew League is where he gets to vicariously experience the lives of basketball players.
For officials like Jai Graham, however, the league is more than somewhere to stay busy.
Despite experience in the WNBA and a current job refereeing Division I men’s basketball, Graham said she makes the effort to return to the Drew League every summer because she credits it with helping her land a job in the NBA’s developmental league in 2009, springboarding her career.
“I will always referee the Drew League until I can’t referee no more,” Graham said. “This is like home for me.”
While Los Angeles, and perhaps the entire planet, has its attention turned to the World Cup — and soon the 2028 Olympic Summer Games — Dino Smiley said it’s actually the summer of 2028 he’s looking forward to most.
“I would love to see a little bit more of the very top, elite players coming in all at the same time,” Dino Smiley said. “It’s going to happen. I think once the Olympics and all of this stuff ends, everybody will be here.”
The Drew League is off for Independence Day weekend, July 4 and July 5, but resumes play July 11 and 12.