Free Smoke clinch Palm Valley regular season title with a week to spare
Tyler Gibbs
Some teams suffer from a championship hangover the season after they reach the ultimate peak of winning a title. It can be hard to manufacture motivation once you’ve already achieved the goal that every team strives to reach.
That has not been a problem for Free Smoke this season (fitting that they defeated Hungover Hoopers in last year’s championship game). Team captain, Tyler Gibbs, is back with a new squad and has them thriving. Free Smoke defeated Alwayz Reppin 114-97 on Sunday to improve to 6-1, This puts them two games ahead of the second-place team, Applying Pressure, and clinches the fall Palm Valley regular season title.
This won’t mean much, as you don’t hang banners for regular season records. Free Smoke and Gibbs will still have their eyes set on repeating as the Arizona State Draft Tournament champions by the end of the season, but this will help them get a high seed entering that tournament.
“It feels good, but we still got work to do though,” Gibbs said in a post-game interview, confirming the significance of a regular season record.
Not only has Free Smoke not had any side effects from last season’s championship run, but they have been crushing opponents. They have won their six games by an average of 16.2 points, and their one loss came by one point, giving them an overall point differential of plus-96.
It’s a little easier for teams to not succumb to a championship hangover in a draft league, as there’s typically only a couple players that return from the prior season. This brings in new players that may have never won a title before, adding motivation for returning champs to get one for their new teammates.
Gibbs drafted Andrew Curiel and Benjamin Garman from last season’s team. Those three make up for three of the team’s top four leading scorers, with Curiel’s 32.3 barely edging out Sean Boston’s 32.2. Boston joins Keonte Belton, Brandon Hayden and Chris Walker as the new faces on this season’s team. Of those four, only Walker has won a championship before.
There are two weeks before the start of the fall draft tournament, and Free Smoke will likely have a top-four seed. They’ll be favored to make a deep run, and possibly the favorites to win the championship for a second straight season. The tournament is too unpredictable to expect a team to go back-to-back; we’ll see if Free Smoke is capable of defying the odds.