Slam City coach Walter Webb offers a simple but powerful vision for the players in his program: “training the overlooked to compete against the overrated.”

Those are fighting words for Slam City, one of the top youth boys basketball teams in the country competing in this weekend’s Jr. NBA World Championship Mid-Atlantic Regional in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. The tournament will bring together the top 13- to 14-year-old boys and girls teams from a very competitive basketball region (Delaware, D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia).

Led by one of the top players in the class of 2022, Jarace Walker, Webb’s team has the requisite star power to go deep into this tournament, but every piece of the supporting cast is a leader and player who fits that category of once being overlooked. This is a team built not just around Walker, but on defense, teamwork, and blue-collar grit.

 Watch the Jr. NBA Mid-Atlantic Regional LIVE on FloHoops this weekend!

Perhaps no player embodies this Slam City spirit more than current New York Knicks center Kyle O’Quinn. When the big man was with Slam City, Webb gave him a simple choice: eight or eight.

“I gave Kyle a challenge when we were training him,” Webb told FloHoops over the phone. “You can work for eight dollars an hour, or you can work for eight million, but you’ve got to make your mind up now.”

O’Quinn held just a single full scholarship his senior year, and basketball wasn’t his first love — or even his second.

“Football, I would say, is my second love,” O’Quinn told The Undefeated last year. “Baseball is my first.”

O’Quinn’s entrance into basketball was one more of circumstance than choice and, as Webb remembers, the path was anything but easy for the big man.

“His sophomore year he decided to get it together, and now he’s in the NBA playing with the Knicks,” Webb said. “He’s not just in the NBA — he plays a significant role. [He has that] driving force of knowing you have a chance, but it gets to how much work you put in.”

Slam City, along with the other boys and girls teams competing this weekend, will have the added benefit of participating in a life skills session led by former NBA player and Villanova University star Alvin Williams to reinforce important values to be carried both on and off the court.

“So often kids are extremely talented, extremely gifted, and it appears that those are the only ones that have an opportunity to be successful, but being a coach at a lot of different levels does involve teaching and developing players to have a high basketball IQ, to play together as a team.”

With a trip to Orlando to compete against the top youth teams from around the world on the line, Webb wants his team to focus on limiting turnovers, filling the stat sheet, and prizing defense over offense.

“The one thing I try to pour into guys is that you want to be a great teammate,” Webb said. “We try to focus on defense more than offense. Offense changes players’ egos. If you put that same amount of energy on defense, and everybody says, ‘My man is not going to score’—as opposed to just me—then it changes the game, and the way kids look at it.”

As for Slam City’s talisman, Jarace Walker — the 6-foot-6, 225-pound phenom — the Jr. NBA World Championship is one of the last chances he’ll have to compete with his D.C.-area teammates, as the big man is headed to the prestigious IMG Academy next year in Bradenton, Florida. The powerhouse program has produced NBA talent including Dwight Powell and Jonathan Isaac, as well as 2018 NBA Draft prospect Anfernee Simons.

But first things first.

Webb says he expects this weekend — and, maybe, the culminating Jr. NBA World Championship this August — to be a “life-changing” experience for his players, as they get to interact with and learn from former NBA stars as well as peers from around the area in a competition that is the first step in securing a global crown. Slam City’s brand of blue-collar grit, coupled with the scope and holistic approach of the Jr. NBA, sets the stage for a fantastic weekend of basketball.