PERHAPS Guyana’s best known basketball family, the trio of brothers Mike, Clifton and James Brusche will be here for the inaugural Brusches’ Classic Knockout basketball tournament, scheduled for April 20, 24, 28 and May 1 in Linden.

The competition, where several trophies and cash incentives will be at stake, will involve some of the country’s top clubs and is being used to announce for the first time the return of the three to the land of their birth, after migrating to the United States.

Another brother, not as famous as the three overseas-based former national players, is Clyde ‘Fatman’ Brusche, who told Chronicle Sport that after some years abroad, the brothers thought it best to give back to the game which did so much to shape their lives ….

All three played the guard positions with the eldest Mike, considered basketball’s elder statesman and one of the best players this country has produced during the late 1960s and 70s, followed by Clifton in the mid-1970s and early 1980s and James in the 1980s.

Both Clifton and James were junior national captains but James went further to become captain of the Guyana senior team.

The Brusches’ Classic is being promoted in collaboration with Linden’s Kashif and Shanghai Kings basketball club, of which James was a founder member, and when the club was known as the YMCA Kings, while Clyde is a vice-president of the Kashif and Shanghai Kings basketball club.

The objectives of the tournament among other things are to aid in the development of the game by providing an opportunity for competitiveness among teams, serving as a motivational tool for players and clubs through pecuniary and material rewards, and providing alternative entertainment for the people in Linden.

Mike, a former national head coach, played for one of the oldest clubs in Guyana, Eagles of Georgetown, who were national champions on a number of occasions, while Clifton played for the Seventy-Sixers of Linden.