ESPN story features Louisville's Dirt Bowl

This story was originally published in July of 2014.

It was the Kentucky Colonels' Artis Gilmore versus a teenage Darrell Griffith on a 1970s day at Shawnee Park's Dirt Bowl.

At least as Cornell Bradley remembers, "Griff just went up over him, man, and dunked it on him," the Dirt Bowl's emcee said. "And when he dunked on him, the crowd went wild."

That's not how Gilmore remembers it, or at least that's what he told ESPN in a lengthy story published Wednesday on the decline of playground basketball across the country.

ESPN's Dana O'Neil and Myron Medcalf highlighted Louisville, for the Dirt Bowl and those type of moments – pros against high school kids, or the college game's best against the neighborhood greats – for an article that made the website's front page.

Why the decline of playground basketball? Indoor courts are safer. Organized basketball results in scholarships. And there's no Griffith versus Gilmore moments of embarrassment.

"I don't have anything to prove out here," University of Louisville forward Montrezl Harrell told ESPN. "I don't have nobody to go against out here. My competition and my goals are playing against guys that are in college."

Still, they play on at the Dirt Bowl now that Mayor Greg Fischer brought it back in 2012.

New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore and Philadelphia received their own ESPN features as well. Louisville was by far the smallest city on the list thanks to its famous tournament each summer.

"It used to be a gang-infested environment to where there was a lot of shooting and people just couldn't enjoy themselves," Larry Woods, who helped operate the tournament in the 1990s, told ESPN. "But now it's changed to where we've got a lot of protection down here. We're really enjoying ourselves this summer."

Jonathan Lintner can be reached at (502) 582-4199. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanLintner.