The new Judith “Mama” Blair Courts for young basketball players at Palo Verde Park would meet the approval of the late popular community figure judging from her son Joseph’s reaction of awe Saturday morning.
For emphasis, Joseph Blair, the former Arizona basketball standout who is now the head coach of the G League’s Rio Grande Valley Vipers, told the crowd who gathered for the unveiling of the courts the story of how he and his best friend in the Houston area played on an impromptu court constructed on his friend’s yard.
“At his house, he had this little plot of land, If you want to call it that,” he said. “And in that plot of land, what his dad did, was he took an oil pipe and he painted it. He got a road sign and painted it and put a rim on it.
“We pounded that grass until it became dirt and the basket was probably 10′ 2″ (high) instead of 10 foot, but I spent so many days and hours playing at that court. … We had no court we could walk to in the area. I’d go to people’s driveways that had basketball hoops until they came out said, ‘Get the hell out of my driveway.’ That’s the only places we had to play.”
He then turned toward the courts constructed in honor of his mom, who passed away in 2019 from lung cancer at 71.
“I am so unbelievably, with outwards honored, that I can provide something like this to this amazing community that has given so much to myself, my mother and my family.”
Both courts are secured by a tall chain-link fence. They are covered by a permanent canopy, which blocks the hot Tucson sun. They have glass backboards and nylon nets. A visually stimulating light blue concrete court includes 3-point lines reflecting international, high school, and women’s and men’s college lengths.
A scoreboard is also included, unlike any other outdoor court. During the unveiling ceremony, Joseph Blair’s No. 50 was lit as the score for “Home” and “Guests.”
The City of Tucson, led by Ward 2 councilman Paul Cunningham, along with Tucson Parks and Recreation, revitalized Palo Verde Park after voters passed Proposition 407, a $225 million bond package, in 2018.
The package included $2.5 million toward the park with impact fees and Ward 2 funds raising the total to $5 million. Additional funds toward the Judith “Mama” Blair Courts were provided by the Tucson Conquistadores.
The park upgrades included three new pickleball courts, a new shaded playground area with modern equipment, upgraded LED softball and baseball field lighting and improved irrigation systems.
“When I started on the council (in 2010), Palo Verde Pool had not been open for three summers,” Cunningham said. “When I started in the council, we had like a briar patch, holes in the field … It just didn’t look right.”
The park, tucked within a residential area and adjacent to Kellond Elementary School, now looks immaculate.
It’s a perfect setting with the Blair named attached.
The name rhymes with “flair” for good reason.
Judith Blair often showed up to men’s and women’s basketball games at McKale Center with her custom-made Arizona shirts and jackets. She certainly had a presence about her that made her noticeable when she walked into the room with her full white hair and beaming smile.
She raised Joseph and Jonathon as a single parent through modest means, but kept a healthy outlook through the trials and tribulations. Her exuberance rubbed off on her family.
Joseph is affable and all about community, much the same as his mom, who became an active advocate for organ donations after donating a kidney to Dr. Michael Burgoon, an Arizona professor whom Joseph knew during his basketball playing days with the Wildcats.
Joseph headed the Blair Charity Group. A year before Judith donated her kidney, Joseph started the Arizona Basketball Academy. It was a week-long basketball and life training camp free of charge to disadvantaged youth in Tucson.
During Judith’s trying times as a single mother raising two boys included a trip one year to the Salvation Army in Akron, Ohio, where Joseph lived at a very young age, for a food voucher and toys for Christmas.
“Even with Joseph’s basketball camps … I sold my piano in order to get him into a basketball camp, Dale Brown’s at LSU,” Judith told me in a 2017 interview. “He remembers that and he remembers the shoes being expensive. He knows how mothers stretch to provide for their kids.
“The community thing is we just all had a heart for the less fortunate because of what we went through.”
She also took it upon herself to coach Joseph and Jonathon in youth leagues when they started dribbling a basketball. She lived her zest for athletics through her boys. When she attended high school in Ohio, girls sports were not sanctioned. She remained active through Junior Olympics, and later on in life, she was a medalist in running events in the Senior Olympics.
The early coaching instruction from Judith left a mark on Joseph as well with him now in his 13th year of coaching experience, beginning in 2013 when he became a graduate assistant at Arizona. His coaching stops include assistant positions with the Philadelphia 76ers, Minnesota Timberwolves and Washington Wizards.
He coached Rio Grande, which is affiliated with the Houston Rockets, in 2018-19 when Judith passed away, and returned to lead the Valley Vipers in the 2024-25 season. His Hall of Fame coach at Arizona, Lute Olson, was also instrumental in him wanting to become a coach. Joseph is one of the most fundamentally sound big men in Arizona history with his footwork around the basket.
Joseph Blair taking the first shot at the courts constructed in his mom’s honor. https://t.co/3bLzhZLd15 pic.twitter.com/ui7taVBgyv
— Javier Morales (@JavierJMorales) May 30, 2026
A couple of Joseph’s teammates at Arizona — Reggie Geary and Corey Williams — attended the unveiling ceremony Saturday and paid tribute to him and Judith.
“Judith, Mama Blair, I knew her since I was 18; she was an absolute force,” Geary said. “She was passionate about everything. She was passionate about her children. She was passionate about JB.
“I’m so excited they named these courts after her. She was a phenomenal athlete, a frustrated athlete. She would’ve been a big-time Division I athlete. … I know she’d be very happy. She would be proud of JB.”
Geary and Williams remain active in the community — Geary as Director of Development at Arizona since 2019 and Williams with his Tucson Summer Pro League for Kids that he has operated for almost 25 years.
“First time I met Mama Blair was when she came to a game my freshman year,” Williams said. “The energy that woman possessed and the love for her son, it was amazing. We always gave JB grief for the outfits she would wear; she had special custom jackets, but she loved her boy.
“I know what that’s like because he’s like a brother to me and I love him as well. I’m very proud of him and all the things he’s been able to do. … (Judith) had a tremendous spirit, and especially in this community, spirit is everything. I hope the people that come to this park, the parents, and people who participate, enjoy what she would want — young people to have a place to play, enjoy basketball and live life with a smile and laugh.”
Joseph recognized what the Judith “Mama” Blair Courts will mean to the surrounding Palo Verde Park Neighborhood, which has collectively thanked him for the revitalization of the area.
He also encouraged people to take the time to express to their parents how proud they are of them.
“I pray to God what we did here, for her, to honor her, is a representation of how proud I am to have the most amazing woman as my mother,” he said.
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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