Lava’s Paxton Henry brings elite jumping pedigree to SlamBall

Lava is betting that rare athletic blends can be a weapon instead of a compromise, and Paxton Henry sits at the center of that gamble. At 5-foot-11 and 200 pounds, the Prescott, Arizona, product arrives with a jumper’s body control, a basketball background from Prescott High, an engineering degree from Grand Canyon University and a track résumé that included a 15.17-meter triple jump and a 1.91-meter high jump in his senior WAC outdoor season.

That profile matters because SlamBall punishes hesitation and rewards precision. The game is played on a 96-foot-by-64-foot court with four springbeds, seven active players per team and four 5-minute quarters, plus the island area where players can establish position before moving to finish. Henry’s fourth-round selection in the 2023 relaunch suggests Lava sees him as more than a former track athlete. His timing in the air, his ability to control his body on takeoff and landing and even the technical mindset that comes with an engineering degree all fit a sport built around angles, rebound timing and fast decisions.

Henry is not the only one giving Lava a different athletic lane. Jihad Shockley brings size at 6-6 and 215 pounds, along with a college path that ran from Oakstone Academy to Bluffton University and then West Virginia State, where he was listed as a junior forward in 2021-22. His frame gives Lava a finisher who can play through contact and recover defensively in space, two traits that can turn a broken possession into a rim threat the other way.

Ermias Kassa adds another layer at 6-5 and 170 pounds, with semi-pro experience for the Denver All-Stars of the Evolution Basketball Association. In a seven-man rotation, that kind of outside-the-box résumé can matter as much as raw scoring talent. Lava’s current alignment lists Henry as a handler, Shockley and Kassa as gunners, Bryce Moragne as another handler and Faysal Shafaat as stopper, a mix that lets the team shift ballhandling, spacing and defensive roles without changing its identity.

That roster construction reflects the larger shape of SlamBall’s 2023 relaunch, which opened July 21, 2023 at Cox Pavilion in Las Vegas with eight teams. The league said its player pool averaged 26.9 years old and that 9% of the drafted players came from track and field, a number that helps explain why Henry’s background fits so naturally. Grand Canyon also tied Henry’s path to Tony Crosby II, the former Lopes jumper who was recommended to SlamBall by Henry and later won the Quai 54 Dunk Contest in 2021 before being named captain of the Slashers.

For Lava, the question is not whether the pieces are athletic enough. It is whether Henry’s elite jumping pedigree, Shockley’s college size and Kassa’s semi-pro edge can mesh into a lineup that creates transition pressure, protects the rim on the recovery and survives the split-second chaos that SlamBall demands.