What's happening on the hardwood in the City of Pontiac is downright tragic.

Both the Phoenix girls and boys hoop squads are just getting pummeled every time out, sometimes struggling to even put up remotely respectable efforts (the girls lost 71-3 recently, the boys only managed 25 points versus Clarkston in a 70-25 shellacking late last week).

This is a slow death, the painful demise of one of the state's great basketball meccas for decades and decades.

The district will most likely close at the end of the year or at the very least the high school will be turned into a charter school.

The rich legacy, the storied tradition of 'Yaktown B-Ball'in is over. The rest of the winter is merely academic. There will be no miraculous resurrection. The Pontiac Hoop Kingdom has crumbled to the ground, shattered into a million pieces before our very eyes in a mere two years.

I hope the young ballers from the area these days understand the significance of their breeding ground, even if they end up playing in neighboring towns likes Waterford, West Bloomfield, Auburn Hills, Bloomfield Hills and Walled Lake (the school districts that will probably be the destination for Pontiac students if the district does indeed shutter).

It was THE spot in the OC for excellent basketball, the most competitive and intense atmosphere you could find outside of the PSL (a demise of which is a whole other story, though not nearly as sad or dire as what is going down in Pontiac right now).

Those days have passed.  While it wasn't that long ago that TEAM ROGERS was winning back-to-back Class A state tiles, it seems like it was 100 years ago.

The memories are all that we have left.

RIP!!