“Anybody that was anybody passed through St. Cecilia’s,” says Earl “The Twirl” Cureton, a two-time NBA champion (1983, 1994) during his 12-year playing career. Cureton, who is now a Community Ambassador for the Pistons, grew up in Detroit and first hooped at St. Cecilia’s legendary gym (“The Saint”) in the mid-1970s.
“It definitely was the proving ground,” he adds. “That’s the place where you had to go play. Coming out of this city, if you didn’t come through there, then you weren’t real.”
In the wake of the devastating 1967 Detroit Riots, Sam Washington—the athletic director at St. Cecilia’s—was determined to create a safe haven for kids. Washington opened up the doors to St. Cecilia’s gym and before long it was attracting some of the most talented basketball players in the area. At a time of tension and unrest, the modest facility—located near I-96 in west Detroit—had a unifying effect on the community, and became a symbol of the city’s resilience.
Hall of Famer Dave Bing was the first NBA star to play at The Saint, using the gym to work out amid a contract dispute with the Pistons. As the years passed, everyone from George Gervin to Magic Johnson to Isiah Thomas to Jalen Rose and Chris Webber graced St. Cecilia’s court, drawing huge crowds that packed into the cramped space.
“You would go in on a Saturday morning at 9 o’clock and you wouldn’t leave until 10 o’clock at night,” Cureton recalls. The former big man started his NBA career with the Philadelphia 76ers, but would return to Detroit every summer for The Saint’s pro-am league.
“Once I got to the pros—we won a championship in Philly—I couldn’t wait to get back to St. Cecilia’s in the summertime,” Cureton continues. “We would see each other in the League during the season and we’d all be saying, ‘Okay, who’s going to win The Saint this year? You won an NBA championship, but you gotta go back and win The Saint.’”
The list of greats to make appearances at The Saint goes on and on: Dave DeBusschere, Rudy Tomjanovich, Spencer Haywood, Jimmy Walker, B.J Armstrong, Joe Dumars, Derrick Coleman, Steve Smith, Shane Battier. One summer, Bernard King even flew in with a team from New York just to play at the mecca of Detroit hoops.
In early November, the Pistons unveiled their 2022-23 City Edition uniforms, which pay tribute to St. Cecilia’s. Designed in collaboration with Creative Director of Innovation Big Sean, who went to basketball camp at The Saint as a kid, the new threads are green, just like the walls of the iconic gym. The shorts feature a replica of the stained-glass window that adorns the front entrance of the building, and the jerseys include the same quote—“Where stars are made, not born”—that is inscribed on the hardwood floor.
“It was like the Drew League in Detroit before the Drew League,” Big Sean says about the summer league at St. Cecilia’s. “[The gym] is just a part of the community and I think it’s kind of been slept on these past few years so I’m glad it’s being highlighted. I’m glad we were able to pay homage with these uniforms. This was my first time designing anything like that. It was a big deal for me.”
Not too long ago, the Detroit rapper was just a fan sitting in the nosebleeds at The Palace of Auburn Hills during the 2004 NBA Finals. He remembers waiting outside one of the arena’s gates with his brother and seeing Richard Hamilton—clad in a fur coat and chains—hop in his Range Rover after the game.
Designing the uniforms was “a full-circle thing,” Big Sean tells SLAM. “It’s major for me. I’m grateful. I feel like I’m doing it not just for me—I feel like I represent a lot of people from the city of Detroit. I represent my family. It feels good to just be able to put a little bit of our signature on it.”
Big Sean’s actual signature appears on the jersey, as well as a trio of gold stars that represent the organization’s three titles.
“It was easy just because we had a vision. We didn’t want to go too extra. I kind of wanted to keep it clean, keep it classic,” Sean says about the design process. “And that colorway is so classic. First of all, that’s my high school colorway—that green and white. That’s MSU. That’s Wayne State, Eastern Michigan, so many schools around the city. My brother went to Eastern Michigan. A lot of my family, friends went to MSU. I went to Cass [Technical High School]. It just kind of had a lot of meaning, the green and white. And then we added the blue. I loved how the numbers were shadowed on some of the other uniforms, so we added that and made it blue, just to represent the blue-collar history of Detroit.”
In addition to rocking the uniforms throughout the season, the Pistons are spearheading efforts to renovate St. Cecilia’s. SLAM’s parent company, JDS Sports, recently pledged a $250,000 grant to help kickstart construction, joining the Detroit Pistons Foundation and the Knight Foundation.
“I love the storytelling around this jersey, but it’s not just the look-back storytelling,” says Alicia Jeffreys, Chief Marketing Officer for the Pistons. “I think it’s the future of The Saint that we really want to put out into the world. We want for the next several generations of kids in this neighborhood to be able to have a safe place to play ball. Restoring The Saint is just as important to us as restoring the Pistons on the court. We have to do both of those things in tandem.”
Photos courtesy of the Pistons.
