I got a really big team
And they need some really big rings
-Drake/Future
"Big Rings"
We all know how it goes - your phone lights up, a hazy glow spreading across the ceiling as the march of one text after another buzzes its way into your sleep-heavy brain. You click it quiet and roll back to your place among the pillows and blankets when the light and the buzzing return, again and again. Or maybe you check your phone after a workout, backhanding away the beads of sweat on the screen as you scroll through text after text, trying in vain to remember where you dropped the thread of the conversation.
And while most group texts are little more than a means of making plans or needling friends, maybe for keeping in touch over long distances or safely separating one friend group from another, for some, it serves another purpose entirely.
For Team Eazy, a group of guys who grew up together - literally and figuratively - in and around Michigan, many of whom attended Detroit Country Day School, it's about motivation. It's about keeping one another focused and on the right track, day in and day out, buoying spirits and ensuring, as best it can be ensured, that success is never far off.
And if recent history is any indication, the Team Eazy group text is working like a charm. They've now got three titles, three big rings, between them - two Super Bowls and an NBA Championship - in the last two years alone.
And there very well may be a fourth on the way.
***
Jacksonville Jaguars running back Jonas Gray, who won a Super Bowl with the New England Patriots in 2015 before taking his talents to Neptune Beach, initially takes credit for naming the group - a group that includes the likes of the Golden State Warriors' unique star Draymond Green, former Michigan basketball player Jordan Dumars, Buffalo Bills defensive lineman Jerel Worthy and recent Super Bowl-winner, Denver Broncos wide receiver Bennie Fowler, among others - before eventually admitting it wasn't really him alone.
Fowler and most of the other guys credit Dumars, the former Wolverine walk-on currently playing overseas in Germany and one of the founding members of Team Eazy. Dumars, though he willingly takes credit, admits Gray, the comedian of the group and a guy he's known since they were in grade school, actually coined the term "Eazy."
"One weekend we were all together up at Michigan, everyone came to visit for a weekend and any time something would happen, like, 'hey ya'll fellas wanna go downstairs and play 2K?' Jonas would be like, 'Oh, eazy,'" says Dumars. "One of the guys would be like, 'you wanna go get something to eat?' Jonas would be like, 'eazy.' And hanging out with friends, it just kind of caught on and everyone just started saying it over and over and over and it just grew into something."
You want to talk about big teams? After that, it was Team Eazy. And Team Eazy's motto?
"We work hard, but we try to make everything look easy," says Dumars.
It's as simple as that. Work hard, play hard, but always make it, take it easy.
***
But that didn't come until college. In high school at Country Day, Gray, Fowler, Dumars and former San Antonio Spurs point guard and current free agent Ray McCallum were still just a group of kids who liked to hang out together, play sports together.
Over time, though, Team Eazy grew. What was once just four or five guys expanded through AAU teams and college friendships to include Green, Worthy, Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham, Boston Celtics center Jared Sullinger, Utah Jazz point guard Trey Burke, Seattle Seahawks defensive lineman Frank Clark and others.
"We've always just been a group of guys that's pushed each other," says Dumars. "But it's a good balance of support and a good balance of competition."
***
Naming rights, college rivalries - subtle dividing lines or no, together these guys comprise a close group of world-class athletes the likes of which it's difficult to even fathom. But for these guys, their group text conversations aren't really anything abnormal.
"We're no different than anybody else," says Worthy. "It's just the amount of pride that we have - it's unreal."
"We talk every day," Gray says, pausing to add emphasis. "I mean, that group message - guys are talking to each other all day."
Much like the rights to the group's moniker, Gray's also unafraid to take credit for Fowler's success in the NFL - success which culminated recently in the final completed pass of Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning's illustrious Hall of Fame career. But Fowler almost never ended up on an NFL field. This is where Gray, where Team Eazy, going all the way back to the beginning, has proven so critical.
"He's one of the people who actually got me to go back out for football," Fowler says of Gray.
The now-Broncos receiver didn't even play football, only basketball, through the first two years of high school; he and Gray won state championships in basketball and track those first two seasons, so it wasn't like Fowler was slacking. But Gray, something like a big brother, spoke to Fowler's mom, and the pair convinced Fowler there were gains to be made on the football field, success to be found.
After the Broncos won, Gray told Fowler he owed him some of that Super Bowl-winning check, said he hoped the Broncos' rings wouldn't be bigger than the Patriots' from 2015.
"We had the biggest ones ever," says Gray, the hefty touch of pride to his voice turning to a kind of begrudging acceptance when he admits that with the Broncos' win maybe being the last of owner Pat Bowlen's lifetime, Denver will probably "go all out."
But at the end of the day, championships or no, giant professional athlete paychecks or no, big, beautiful rings or no, the majority of the time Team Eazy is still just a bunch of friends shooting the breeze.
"We motivate each other, we just kind of uh...," Fowler lets the thought linger, though you know where it's going. "...talk trash back and forth. Just inform each other of what's going on, who's doing what. It's kind of cool to have friends like that and basically talk to them every day."
When Fowler and the Broncos won, with Fowler nabbing that late two-point conversion from Manning, it was all positivity, all congratulations on the Team Eazy thread.
"They all proud of me and the fact that Jonas won one last year then DeDe (Draymond Green) won one then now I have one," says Fowler, "it's just kind of crazy that you have three friends, three people in the same group chat, have known each other forever, and world championships in the NFL and the NBA."
***
Fans of the Warriors will be glad to know that the Team Eazy consensus is that Green and Golden State are the next to add to the championship total which, based on timing, is hard to argue - it's most likely to be Green or Burke or Sullinger or one of the other NBA players because the NBA holds its annual championship bout in the spring, when the NFL is just building up to its preseason. But it's also because Green, one of the most uniquely, explosively effective players in the pro game has, along with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, turned the Warriors into a powerhouse.
Passing 72 wins, the all-time single season mark set by Jordan's '96 Bulls, isn't inconceivable - it's almost expected at this point. So is Green adding a fourth big ring to Team Eazy's collection come May.
Ironically, Dumars, the guy who named the group and helped turn Team Eazy into more than just a handful of former high school and AAU teammates, doesn't quite have the same list of professional accomplishments and accolades to his name that Green and a lot of the other guys do. He's in his first professional season, playing small forward for the Baunach Young Pikes of the ProA league in Germany after several injury-plagued years at Michigan and one season away from the game getting his knee, his health in order. Dumars is still hopeful of someday following in the footsteps of his dad, longtime Detroit Pistons star Joe Dumars, in landing an NBA gig, still planning to join his Team Eazy brothers in the chase for those big rings.
But therein lies the beauty, the real truth of Team Eazy - it's not just a group text for highly paid professional athletes to squawk and pop off at one another. It's a way for these guys to keep up with their friends - some up, some always down - ferry them along through the tough times, and, through their own successes, through the championships won by Gray, Green and Fowler and who knows who else, inspire one another to reach newer, greater heights.
"If anything, those guys winning just makes me happy, makes me work harder," says Dumars, his voice distant but firm as it echoes across the line from Bamburg, where the sun had already set and the day was long over. "Like, 'man, I gotta join my brothers.'"
...I got a really big team
I got a really big team
Man, what a time to be alive...
