Grant Gambleton was surrounded by the symbols of basketball success but he didn’t want to talk about those.

Not about the nylon net he was holding, freshly stripped from the rim.

Not about the burnished state championship medal dangling against his chest.

Not about inanimate objects, cold unless warmed by a human’s touch.

Gambleton wanted to talk about his teammates.

About the young men who forged their unique friendship, who trudged across the snowy parking lot outside the Baker High School gym hours before dawn, to run through the familiar fatiguing drills.

Gambleton wanted to talk about another bond, the one between the Bulldogs and the city they strive to represent with the skill and sportsmanship that their longtime coach, Jebron Jones, instilled during those practices on winter mornings.

Less than an hour earlier, on Saturday night, March 15, Gambleton and his Baker Bulldog teammates had made school history by winning their second straight Class 4A state championship.

The net had been snipped.

Dozens of photographs had been taken.

There were smiles and hugs and tears.

Hundreds of Baker fans had driven most of the way across the state to watch the Bulldogs finally pull away, late in the third quarter, from the pesky Marshfield Pirates.

Many of those spectators were still milling on the polished wood of Joe Moran Court at Forest Grove High School as the clock advanced toward 11 p.m.

They basked in the triumph, friends and siblings and parents and grandparents, everyone absorbing a precious experience that begins almost immediately to lose the potency that can’t be renewed.

Gambleton wasn’t thinking, though, about the accoutrements typical in such gatherings.

Trophies and medals and the oversized bracket that will soon be affixed to a wall outside the Baker gym.

Gambleton, a senior who had just played his final high school game, was pondering not the immediate achievement in which he played an integral part.

He was remembering what made it possible.

We stood a short distance from the nearest group of celebrants but even so I had to tilt my head to be sure to hear Gambleton against the backdrop of excited voices.

He spoke softly, and with an eloquence that belied his age.

His words, and the sentiments they captured, were what I might expect from an elderly man nearing the end of a long life, reflecting on lessons learned over long decades.

Gambleton called the souvenirs of another state title — the net, the medals, the bracket — “lifeless.”

A curious word.

But the right word, it seems to me, considering what Gambleton went on to say.

He explained that what he values most from being a member of this team is not the trophies they earned together.

The memories he will carry with him always, in a place that must be very close to his heart, are about people.

The sweat they shed together.

The tears.

Sometimes even the blood, as Gambleton can attest after taking a cut to the back of his head during the win over Cascade in the semifinals.

“What’s special is every morning practice, every teammate, every high-five, these people you connect with is what makes life special,” Gambleton said. “The emotional side for me is that I’m never going to get to play with my friends again, that I grew up with. It’s so special.”

Gambleton is among eight Bulldogs who started playing basketball together when they were in elementary school.

Two of those players, Paul Hobson and Hudson Spike, graduated in 2024.

Gambleton and four others are seniors this year — Isaiah Jones, Jaxon Logsdon, Palmer Chandler and Jaron Long.

(Long couldn’t play this season due to an Oregon School Activities Association rule that limits players to four years of eligibility. Although Long was briefly enrolled at Baker High School in the fall of 2020, he never competed in sports that year, and only started participating as a freshman in 2021.)

Eli Long, Jaron’s younger brother, is a junior.

So is Rasean Jones, Isaiah’s younger brother. They are coach Jones’ sons.

Several other players made vital contributions to the Bulldogs’ unprecedented hoops accomplishments. Giacomo Rigueiro, Nate Jensen and Brandon McCullough were seniors on the 2024 championship team. Other members of this year’s title squad are Jack Heriza, Jack Joseph, Colton Clark, Quin Wellman, Hayden Churchfield and Jake Holden.

This season was quite different from last.

The 2024 team won 29 of 30 games and dominated all three opponents in the state tournament.

This year’s squad had a more daunting schedule, including four games against much larger schools at the prestigious Les Schwab Invitational in Portland in late December.

And they played all four of those games — and one other — without Isaiah Jones, the team’s leading scorer and reigning Class 4A state player of the year, as he recovered from an appendectomy. Baker lost all five of those games, and eight overall.

The Bulldogs started the defense of their state title against one of the teams responsible for one of those losses — Crook County.

And the Cowboys, who beat Baker 62-52 on Jan. 4 in the Baker gym, the last game that Isaiah Jones missed, proved formidable even with Jones on the court. The Cowboys led by eight points early in the fourth quarter.

But the Bulldogs responded with what has become their trademark under Jebron Jones’ tutelage — a flurry of points and steals and rebounds that overwhelmed the opponent.

Baker outscored Crook County 18-6 and went on to win 54-48 in a quarterfinal on March 13.

The Bulldogs beat Cascade handily in the semifinals, then had to rally again in the second half to turn back Marshfield.

Gambleton’s name will be forever preserved on both championship rosters.

But like the net and the medals, this matters far less to him than the people he met during the decade-long journey that finished on a Saturday night in Forest Grove, far from home.

The teammates who are more than just friends.

The unique chance to represent not only a school but a town.

The Bulldogs’ new uniforms this season — emblazed across the chest with “The City” — reflect the feeling that Gambleton expressed with such poignancy.

“This is about our team and playing for our entire community.”

Which they did.

And with the same passion and precision that Gambleton exemplified not with his dribbling and shooting, but with his words.

 

Jayson Jacoby is the editor of the Baker City Herald. Contact him at 541-518-2088 or jjacoby@bakercityherald.com.