LAWRENCE, Kan. — The Roundball Classic is an annual event put on by Brian Haney the voice of KU athletics. This year’s game will be at Lawrence Freestate High School and brings together a lot of alums for good causes.

FOX4’s Harold Kuntz talked to alums Elijah Johnson and Natalie Knight-Johnson about their continued involvement with the event as it goes into its 14th year.

“Love to see what people are doing now, or to see how much people have changed or grown. People start families, people start businesses, people move, people do all kinds of things. So it’s always fun, just sitting down after all that excitement, you know, and after being around all of the fans, and really just having the chance to catch up. And this is something that I look forward to every year since I graduated,” former Kansas guard Johnson said.

“I think that that’s, that’s super cool that they found a lane and found a niche, and they do this annually. I know those kids look forward to it, you know, after the event, one time, I heard a kid saying we got 364 more days. And this was a few years ago,” Johnson said. “So I just noticed, it’s something that they look forward to every year you know, Brian, bringing all of the guys back, and the guys having that good energy to give those kids and families and just smiling and giving people something to have fun.

“It’s awesome that everything that they put together for the kids,” Knight-Johnson said. She is a coach for Team Crimson while Johnson will play for the same team. Also on Team Crimson are Devon Dotson, Sherron Collins, Wayne Selden, Svi Mykhailiuk and their head coach Wayne Simien.

Team Blue features Frank Mason, Devonte Graham, Tyshawn Taylor, Cole Aldrich and their head coach Brett Ballard.

“A few years ago we got the opportunity to kind of interact with a few of them and do some photo shoots and it was just to see you know what it meant to them. It was really cool and it was an experience we’ll never forget and then just the amount of people that come back and just support it is really cool to see that every year.”

“Brian Haney got some kind of hang on these dudes because I don’t know how he get everybody to come back every year,” Johnson said.

“Giving back to those kids and like you said, being able to see their faces light up every year,” Knight-Johnson said. “I don’t play anymore. So it’s not about that for me but just the whole experience.”

“Shout a lot and ask us to do different things a lot. Hey, do this, Hey, do that, hey, do this. This event I feel like is well worth spending time to do,” Johnson said.

“You know Elijah, you know that I like to do things for people and try to help people. That’s just, that’s just who I am. And I’ll do it for an individual kid. So if I get a chance to come in there and help 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, 1, 000 people. I’m always on board for that.”

“I never really got a chance to see the real B-Ball because by the time I was old enough to know how the coaches are and know how they think he was already gone,” Johnson said about Ballard.

“For Dub, that’s somebody that I see all the time. When I come back to Lawrence. He’s like the, if it wasn’t a Jayhawk, it would be him. That’s my opinion. He would be the logo,” Johnson said about Simien.

“This is our business Just 4215. This is our basketball program. We opened up a facility out here in Olathe. We’ve been doing pretty good with that. But for us, I mean, this is our logo. And without our basketball we wouldn’t have ever met each other. The opportunities that we’ve come across we never would have been able to take advantage of we’ve been able to give back. It’s pretty fun man,” Johnson said.

“If anybody’s interested in just having any kind of basketball future and you want to get with some people that are passionate about it and wanting to do it every day, seven days a week. We the people.”

Thursday night is the game at 7 p.m. at Lawrence Free State but it’s a whole weekend’s worth of events and again, it goes to great causes for helping kids that are dealing with cancer in the Lawrence area in the greater Kansas area at large.