James Naknakin vows he's not the kind of coach who'll berate or scold his players if they take risks on the court and miss shots. "You won't see me shaking my head at you," he tells 11 teenage boys.

At a Night Hoops basketball practice in late March, Naknakin sits on the hardwood of the Ray-Cam community centre gymnasium and talks to his roster of 14- and 15-year-old boys about a star guard who tempted a low-percentage shot during an NCAA semi-final. Tying the basketball reference to a lesson about self-esteem and confidence, Naknakin said afterward, "I want them to learn they have the strength to do everything they think they can do." Shoot, he encourages. You won't score if you don't.

After the chat--just brief enough for Naknakin to hold court amid a squabble of tittering boys, some determined, others distracted--one of his charges mimes a jumper from the half. "What'll you say if we miss?"

Another jokes, feigns an answer: "You suck!"

Naknakin is serious. "Never," he says. "Shoot from anywhere you think you can score."

Night Hoops celebrates its 15th season this year and the league, which counts 23 junior and senior teams for boys and girls in Vancouver and Burnaby, begins play-offs this weekend with a championship tournament April 16.

The program, founded in 1996 by a Liberal MP, targets at-risk youth who are referred to the league by counsellors, teachers, social workers and probation officers. Each senior boys team makes a Saturday night road trip to Burnaby Youth Custody Services where they play a crew of imprisoned juvenile offenders who are rewarded with two hours of basketball for good behaviour during the week. "Constructive recreation" is the language used to describe Night Hoops, a powerful and important sports league for troubled kids and basketball lovers alike that fosters self-respect and smart decision-making along with fitness and team spirit.

Games are held every Friday and Saturday night, giving kids a reason to get off the streets on the weekend and leaving it up to them to make responsible decisions about their behavoiur, habits and associates. Night Hoops provides an alternative to street crime and an antidote to loneliness.

Take Mark Clayton.

"I wasn't in a gang but I was hanging out with guys who were," says the 18-year-old Britannia graduate. His circle of would-be perps was drawn to guns, weapons and, as he put it, "Anything that could cause a person harm."

He drew the attention of police, one officer in particular who Clayton says followed too closely for too long. He said the attention was excessive; he felt stalked, provoked and now smiles at his own commitment to work in law enforcement.

"I always wanted to be a cop as a kid. I've had troubles in the past with some of them, but I know they're not all ass holes," says Clayton, who has a cautious, protective edge about him that's expressed in calm phrases and brevity.

A Grade 12 student at Britannia, he wants to turn his negative encounters with one officer into a career in policing that leads to positive and constructive encounters with teens and young adults.

Night Hoops is run out of neighbourhood community centres--Edmonds, Champlain Heights, Kerrisdale, Kensington, Marpole, Collingwood, Thunderbird, Strathcona, Ray-Cam, Britannia--and rivalries between competitors spring up as if NBA arch-nemesis.

Coaches are drawn from the community, occasionally because they are youth service providers but increasingly because they are one-time Night Hoops players, like Naknakin who's playing in his final season with the Ray-Cam senior team, and who is giving back and thinking ahead.

At 19, Naknakin is only a few years older than the high schoolers he's coaching on the junior Ray-Cam team. As a coach, he chooses an on-court drill and an NCAA Butler Bulldogs reference, which he brings up during one of the seated huddles that start each practice.

All Night Hoops coaches run mandatory life skills workshops and discuss indelicate and sometimes personally frightening or uncomfortably familiar topics like addiction and drug abuse, bullying, marijuana and divorce. Mixed in with violence, loss and trauma, discussions also touch on topics such as nutrition, respect, the importance of sleep and volunteerism. One coach held a session on the history of St. Patrick's Day.

In the 2010/11 Night Hoops handbook, a workshop on addiction provides coaches with discussion questions ("What are your thoughts about dependence issues?") and lists 11 classes of drugs, from amphetamines to opiods and caffeine, and data about substance dependence as well as treatment options.

A case study labelled "The story of talent gone bad" outlines the fall of baseball's 1983 National League rookie of the year and New York Mets slugger Darryl Strawberry, whose marriage crumbled later in the decade amid abuse, cocaine use, gun violence and infidelity. Although a dated cultural reference for today's teens, the example has relevance for anyone whose family is embroiled in domestic abuse.

When Naknakin graduated from Britannia last year, he was the first in his family with a high school diploma. One of his older brothers dealt drugs. The other was an addict. Both had been arrested. Naknakin, who's determined to make his parents proud and set an example for his younger brother, pushed for the expansion of Night Hoops two years ago and his senior Ray-Cam team won the championship in its inaugural year.

"Sports is key for a lot of people in a community like this because it brings people together," says Naknakin, who lives in subsidized housing adjacent to the Ray-Cam co-operative housing development near East Hastings between Raymur and Campbell avenues. "I've been there my whole life. I haven left because I feel like I have an obligation to try and help change this area." He says coaching neighbourhood kids is one way he can open their world to wider possibilities.

"This area that we live in, it's a lot of drug dealing, prostitutes, you know. It's something that is around us 24-seven and we can't control it but the best thing to do is try to teach them to get away from that. There's other things you can do to get out of this area."

Basketball, he says, offers immediate bonding and instills pride in the Ray-Cam players. The team sport bolsters self-esteem. "Often the kids are smart enough not to get involved with that sort of stuff. It shows that they hang out in the area that they come from--this is what makes a person. The people that often come from this area, they move on and they become great people because of the struggles they had to grow up with. Night Hoops, it helps out with that a little bit more."

The success of Night Hoops has much to do with accountability.

"Players are responsible to their teammates, they're responsible to their coaches, they're responsible to the centre they represent," says Steve Anderson, the program's articulate and dedicated manager for the past six years. As a youth probation officer, Anderson joined Night Hoops as a board member in the second year of the program. He is respected by the players and is a constant, tireless booster for the redemptive power of sport.

"Working from the corrections end, trying to correct behaviour and make changes was a lot more challenging than working in prevention, giving kids something positive to do in a constructive, supportive environment," he says. "When you know there are people who care about you and you know there are people you're responsible to, you're more likely to make better decisions. And some of these guys don't have the opportunity to play on a school team so this is their one opportunity to wear a jersey and feel proud of being part of something."

Night Hoops has no skill requirements, no one is cut and no one is charged to play. In 15 years, more than 4,000 teenaged boys and girls have donned a jersey and hundreds have worn the basketball shoes donated through a charitable program run by SportChek. Federal cuts in 2002 meant Night Hoops lost its annual $450,000 budget and now operates with $60,000 to $75,000 to pay the salaries of two part-time staff, hire referees and purchase other sports equipment and supplies. Nearly two dozen coaches are given a $500 honorarium for their work and the Vancouver park board makes available an estimated $40,000 worth of gym time through the year.

Those courts, says Kavita Dhillon, are invaluable. When she showed up to coach her first practice with the Kensington junior girls team, she spent the evening with only one player.

"Now we've moved up to nine players," says Dhillon. How'd she do it? "Just from talking to girls who showed up to watch, asking, 'Do you play? We have a team, we have space. Come on out.'"

Dhillon, whose Kensington team gained more players when the girls league was reconfigured, came to basketball through the YMCA and was never considered at-risk, a term Anderson says is imprecise and perhaps indefinable. "It wasn't a question of keeping me off the streets at night," says Dhillon. "I love basketball. And I wasn't old enough to go anywhere else."

There are players like Dhillon and 11-year-old Malia Terry, who plays with girls three years older on the Britannia team, who show up on Friday and Saturday nights just because they want to work their skills, compete and be part of a team. There are others like Naknakin and Clayton who matured into their ability to make smart choices in the face of harmful or illegal temptations in search of temporary escape and diversion.

Then there are the boys at Burnaby Youth Custody Services. For the 12 young offenders who are rewarded each week for good behaviour, the two-hour basketball game is a welcome reprieve. The game clock stops at 9 p.m., precisely, and the boys return their borrowed jerseys, shared high tops, and prepare for overnight lock-down.

Visiting teams must clear security and can't enter the prison without meeting strict protocols. The imprisoned teens' transgressions range from theft to murder, and a warden reminds visitors that some of these kids have committed violent crimes.

On a rubber-floored gym without a three-point line, guards are the only spectators. The jailed teens slip off their ministry-appointed Velcro shoes and elbow each other to get at a pair of donated Addidas that fit. Some boys are built like men--tall, muscled, tattooed, bearded--while others are skinny with mere wisps of facial hair growing like lichen on the narrow curve of their jaw.

One black-eyed scorekeeper who slouches is so pimpled, his face will be forever scarred. He mocks the racial slur inked onto the knuckles of another inmate's hand. Another player says he has competed with the provincial basketball program; his skills are unquestionable and his attitude wins the applause of teammates and opponents alike. When he begins to cheer the visiting Britannia team, the game becomes a friendlier exchange and initial antagonism wanes.

One of these jailed teens played with a Night Hoops team in South Vancouver and says he might return to that neighbourhood community centre after his sentence for theft is up in May. He laughs at the thought of visiting the prison once he's released. "For kids on the outs," he says about teens who are not behind bars, "maybe they hang out with their friends, maybe they think of basketball a little more. I chose to do something else that got me into worser trouble than if I'd hung out with a different set of people."

Anderson says Night Hoops is unique. "We bridge the divide between custody and community. There's very few programs that will involve kids both who are locked up and those who are free to do what they choose."

Anderson doesn't know if the imprisoned boys will join a Night Hoops team when they are released from jail. That's just how he wants it to be. "Whatever trouble they might have at home, at school, coming out of custody, those aren't labels that we attach to them. Those are labels we want to remove and give them a reason to think of themselves differently, to think of themselves in more positive terms and of being part of a team," he says from the sidelines of a game that saw the locked-up teens run up the score and frustrate Britannia before cooling their heels enough to turn the contest into a surprising exchange of rambunctious praise.

"We don't judge these kids on anything other than them wanting to come out and play."

mstewart@vancourier.com

Twitter: @MHStewart