NBA players educate, get education and open eyes at annual camp for Arab and Israeli teens

By Mark Murphy, Special to SI.com

OTISFIELD, Maine -- The morning basketball clinic was over, NBA players and campers had finished lunch in an old wooden dining hall straight out of Meatballs, and now it was Ghassan Faqes' turn to school the pros.

Detroit Shock star Andrea Stinson schooled Seeds of Peace campers on the art of defense. Ray Amanti/NBAE

The 17-year-old Palestinian was a participant at the annual Seeds of Peace camp in August, a gathering designed to bring Israeli and Palestinian youths together, and a master of the cup game, a complex, rhythmic series of turns and rotations of a drinking cup punctuated by hand claps. His audience at an outdoor picnic table on this warm summer day included L.A. Lakers rookie Jordan Farmar, Andrea Stinson of the WNBA champion Detroit Shock and Nicole Thomas, the wife of Washington Wizards forward Etan Thomas, who wisely stood back and assumed the role of a spectator.

Farmar, though, had no such reluctance. The former UCLA point guard had just dazzled the young Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, Egyptian and Somali campers at the clinic's dribbling station, and the cup game was merely another challenge in dexterity. But Farmar should have known something was up when Faqes was introduced to the group by his nickname, "Trouble,'' a moniker given to him by the counselors, and one Faqes declined to explain with a bemused smile.

Faqes took his audience through the first half of the routine. Farmar, like the rest, needed three more reps before getting the sequence right -- if not with Faqes' speed and flair. Then came the second half, and an equally difficult routine that had Nicole Thomas and Farmar eventually flapping their hands in frustration. So Faqes went over it more slowly until Farmar demanded one last try and then blurted, "I've got this down, I know I've got this down.''

He wouldn't be the first. Two years ago Brent Barry was so taken by the game he learned at the camp that he brought it back to the San Antonio locker room, where he reportedly taught it to the entire Spurs team. As the NBA prepares to tip off its season next week, those involved in the camp look back fondly on their experiences.

The Ramallah-born-and-bred Faqes, like Ghassan Salama, an Israeli-Arab from the town of Taybeh, and Yael, a 17-year-old Israeli girl from a town near Jerusalem, emerged as the educators during Seeds of Peace's annual NBA basketball clinic. The Seeds of Peace camp, held on the pristine grounds of an old summer camp approximately 40 miles inland from Portland on the bank of Pleasant Lake, was founded 14 years ago by the late journalist John Wallach. His goal was to bring Israeli and Palestinian youths together to share stories and differences in an idyllic summer setting far from the stormy conditions of life back home in the Middle East.

Arn Tellem, the Los Angeles-based agent who started bringing his NBA clients to the camp five years ago, had attended the retreat as a youngster when it was still a sports camp for boys known as Camp Powhatten. As much joy as the players bring to the campers with their annual visit, basketball wasn't Tellem's main objective.

"We all look at our little world so myopically,'' Tellem said. "NBA players live in an environment where they can stand to learn a few things. This is the fifth year we've done this, and every year the campers say how fortunate they are that the players come up here to see them. But this has a profound impact on all of the players.''

This summer's camp was held during a particularly unstable time, as Hezbollah bombs rocked cities in northern Israel, and Israel reciprocated with air raids and a push of troops into southern Lebanon.

B.J. Armstrong, the former Chicago Bulls guard who took part in this year's camp with Farmar, Thomas, Stinson, Celtics forward Brian Scalabrine and Trailblazers rookie LaMarcus Aldridge, was taken by what he found at the camp. "We talk about war, but these kids have lived it,'' said Armstrong, who like Thomas and Scalabrine was back for his second appearance at the camp. "The thing I've learned from this is that I don't know anything.''