Overlooked and Undervalued His Time has come: Isaiah Washington

These days in the high school basketball world, there are certain players that are highly publicized and people already know about prior to their senior year of high school basketball. They have coaches like Roy Williams and Coach K sitting sidelines throughout the summer watching them as well as ESPN guys who checked them out having them ranked in the Top players in the country in their respective class. The media flocks to these guys normally and getting an interview with some of these players is just about as hard as getting an interview with certain NBA players. However there is another group of players, who don’t have a ranking, may not be watched by the biggest schools during the summer and their following is limited to the local fans in their city.

Over years as a scout I’ve seen this numerous times, the unknown player that many has overlooked gets his chance to finally shine and now folks know his name. Well this past year we had a few young men that had this happen to them, the first that will be highlighted is Isaiah Washington from St. Raymond’s HS in New York, also known as ‘‘Jelly fam Dimes’’. In the NY area he was a very well-known young man, at just about every park he plays at fans stand on the sideline and rush the court when he does one of his signature finger roll layups. However  many people outside of the NJ/NY area had no idea who this young man was, I can tell you first hand living in North Carolina people looked at me like I was strange when I mentioned his name to them.

Well this summer he changed that for sure starting with impressive performances during AAU season on the Under Armour circuit and during the NBAPA Top 100 Camp where he was second in the camp in assist per game at 4.7. Follow that up with a very good showing at the CP3 Elite camp where NBA players, College player and some of the top high school prospects all went at it. Those performances alone sound like an impressive summer but Isaiah saved the best for last when he returned to NY for the Under Armour Elite 24 Game, which was a game that was not even originally selected to be in. Once the game began you could hear the fans getting excited every time he touched the ball, although the first few shots didn’t drop we already knew it was just a matter of time before he got going. In the 2nd half and in overtime Isaiah put on absolute show going right at Trevon Duval who many have as the #1 PG in the country right now. Isaiah would go on to finish with a game high 36 points and MVP honors with a ton of plays that made fans get out of their seats in NY and even across the country in California. Now that he has verbally committed to Minnesota the whole recruitment process grind is behind him and we are expecting his senior season to be special and full of: Points, Assist, wins and  ‘‘Jelly”.

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