Flying High
Birds of a Feather: Tompkins’ Bieniemy and Washington are VYPE Co-MVPs
Matt Malatesta
Mar 21, 2018, 3:21 pm
Tompkins senior CJ Washington Vype
While Tompkins’ CJ Washington and Jamal Bieniemy aren’t biological twins, they have a basketball telepathy that dates back to the fourth grade.
The VYPE co-MVPs have been backcourt mates since playing for the RYTES Warriors in elementary school, where they were coached by teammate Eden Holt’s dad, Lamar Holt.
From Morton Ranch Junior High, the pair transferred to Tompkins to lay the foundation for a new program.
The past four years, the pair has been the cornerstone of the Tompkins Falcons, which found themselves on the state’s biggest stage. They took the five-year-old school on a ride they never could have imagined.
But they did.
“We’ve been dreaming about this since we were little kids,” CJ Washington said of reaching the state finals. “This journey has really been special for us.”
Bieniemy has signed with Oklahoma, while Washington will sign after the season.
Washington and Bieniemy both averaged 16 points per game on the season as the best backcourt in the city.
Having that near-decade of history helped, knowing where each other were on the court and knowing who would take over a game and when.
“It will be weird after we play our final game,” Bieniemy said. “That’s why we’ve been going so hard. We don’t want it to end. I know we will go our separate ways in college, but I know when we are home we will get some runs in together. We love to push each other.”
Entering the ninth grade, Washington was ranked by some recruiting services as the No. 1 player in the state. That can get in your head sometimes. Washington’s game fluctuated, but he has put in together as a senior.
“I had to play these guys on varsity as freshman,” coach Bobby Sanders said. “They didn’t really have any older guys to show them how to work, so we had some growing pains.
“Entering this year, CJ was on a mission. He just got in great shape. We trained hard in the preseason running miles. I mean a lot of miles. Once he was in shape, no one can stop him getting to the goal. He’s had a transformation.”
“I was just in my head the past few years,” Washington said. “Coach kept reminding me that I was unstoppable, and I just kept that in my head this season.”
Bieniemy’s game also added a few wrinkles as a senior.
“He worked so hard on his shot and it’s been a game-changer,” Sanders said. “With that came great confidence. As a freshman, he would have never taken that three-pointer to win the state semifinal. We were in the huddle and he said, ‘I’m gonna knock this down coach.’ I thought, okay.”
While the MVP is an individual award that is usually given to the best player on the best team, this year is different.
You can’t mention one without the other when it comes to Bieniemy and Washington.
It’s been like that for nearly a decade.
This article appears in the March Issue of VYPE Magazine. Pick up your copy at any one of our locations next week!
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Adding a player of Kevin Durant’s caliber was too valuable an opportunity for the Houston Rockets to pass up, even though it meant moving on from Jalen Green just four seasons after they drafted him second overall.
Durant was officially acquired from Phoenix on Sunday in a complicated seven-team transaction that sent Green and Dillon Brooks to the Suns and brought Clint Capela back to Houston from the Hawks.
General manager Rafael Stone is thrilled to add the future Hall of Famer, who will turn 37 in September, to a team which made a huge leap last season to earn the second seed in the Western Conference.
Asked Monday why he wanted to add Durant to the team, Stone smiled broadly before answering.
“He’s Kevin Durant,” Stone said. “He’s just — he’s really good. He’s super-efficient. He had a great year last year. He’s obviously not 30 anymore, but he hasn’t really fallen off and we just think he has a chance to really be impactful for us.”
But trading Green to get him was not an easy decision for Stone, Houston’s general manager since 2020.
“Jalen’s awesome, he did everything we asked,” Stone said. “He’s a wonderful combination of talent and work ethic along with being just a great human being. And any time that you have the privilege to work with someone who is talented and works really hard and is really nice, you should value it. And organizationally we’ve valued him tremendously, so yeah very hard.”
Green was criticized for his up-and-down play during the postseason when the Rockets were eliminated by the Warriors in seven games in the first round. But Green had improved in each of his four seasons in Houston, leading the team in scoring last season and playing all 82 games in both of the past two seasons.
Pressed for details about why Green's time was up in Houston, Stone wouldn't get into specifics.
“It’s the NBA and you can only do trades if a certain amount of money goes out and a certain amount comes in and there’s some positional overlap or at least overlap in terms of on ball presence,” he said. “And so that’s what the deal required.”
In Durant, the Rockets get a veteran of almost two decades who averaged 26.6 points and six rebounds a game last season and has a career average of 27.2 points and seven rebounds.
Houston loves the veteran experience and presence that Durant brings. Stone noted that the team had arranged for some of its players to work out with him in each of the past two offseasons.
“His work ethic is just awesome,” Stone said. “The speed at which he goes, not in a game … but the speed at which he practices and the intensity at which he practices is something that has made him great over the years and it started when he was very young. So of all the things that I hope rubs off, that’s the main one I think is that practice makes perfect. And I think one of the reasons he’s had such an excellent career is because of the intensity with which he works day in day out.”
Durant is a 15-time All-Star and four-time scoring champion, who was the Finals MVP twice. The former Texas Longhorn is one of eight players in NBA history to score at least 30,000 points and he won NBA titles in 2017 and 2018 with the Warriors.
Now he’ll join a team chasing its first NBA title since winning back-to-back championships in 1994-95.
“Everything has to play out, but we do — we like the fit,” Stone said. “We think it works well. We think he will add to us and we think we will help him.”