Basketball

Basketball Grunge

Names, placed have been changed to protect anyone who thinks this might hit too close to home…but these examples are based on true events of different players from the past few years. These are, obviously, not the real names of these players.

It’s 5:30 am on a Wednesday in North Carolina, and the early morning Sun hasn’t yet made an appearance. However, in two small gyms located in different parts of the state, two high school basketball players are beginning their school year with workouts.

5:30 am – Alamance County, North Carolina: a Wednesday in September

A lone basketball bounces off of the backboard in a quiet gym as Jeff Davis, a 6’7″ high school junior, practices a turn-around jumper from the low blocks. Every morning, school day or not, you can find Jeff here, putting up jumper after jumper, running sprints, or doing backboard touches. Jeff does not have a personal trainer and he attends a public high school, where he plays the center position for the varsity team. He just finished off a summer where he was not able to play AAU basketball, as his mom couldn’t afford it, and Jeff worked full time hours over the summer at KFC, which gave him extra money but the grease played hell with his adolescent skin.

Without a travel team and without a travel budget, Jeff made his own workout schedule, scraped together enough money to attend a couple of individual showcases and spent the rest of the summer putting up shots in his high school gym, which has no air conditioning, and he’s technically not supposed to use. His left shoe has an embarrassing square of duct tape on the outside corner; it popped a seam last week when he touched the baseline on a self-imposed suicide sprint.

5:30 am – Mecklenburg County, North Carolina: a Wednesday in September

A gym with several high school players, well lit but quiet except for the squeak of sneakers, has been in full swing with workouts since 5:00 am. One one court, four players are putting up early morning jump shots and chatting. They are all wearing identical warm up suits, emblazoned with a Nike logo and looking very similar to those worn by several college teams this season.

On the other end, a trainer feeds the ball to James Crews, a 6’7″ high school junior. Crews is putting up two hundred three-point shots this morning. His trainer, 32 years old and 5’4″, has never played or coached any organized basketball, but is wearing a warm up suit identical to those of the players and has access to all of the facilities. All of the players are wearing custom blue Nike basketball shoes, perfectly matched to the team colors, with the exception of Crews, who has shoes which are pristine white and gleam as though they’ve never been worn in a game, because they haven’t.

Crews spent his summer flying around the country with a Nike sponsored AAU team, attended elite camps organized by NBA players, and visited multiple major colleges. He’s actually from California, but he lives during the school year with his dad in North Carolina so he can attend school in the state.

As he continues to put up his early morning shots, the door to the gym swings open and four people walk in – two national media scouts and two coaches from an SEC school. The coaches can’t talk with Crews or scout him, so they walk up to the head coach’s office, which has a large glass window overlooking the court. As Crews continues to put up his shots, the coaches all stand and watch from the window, their conversation unheard but clearly focused on Crews.

9:30 pm – Alamance County, North Carolina: a Friday in October

Jeff Davis texts his best friend, Mack, asking if Mack is headed to the school’s football game. Jeff wants to catch a ride, since he doesn’t have a car and there’s really no chance he’ll have one any time soon. Jeff’s mom is working late today and the house is empty, as Jeff’s younger brother has already gone out. Normally, this would be a work night, but Jeff was hoping to catch the team’s last home game of the season and asked for the night off. It would be the first game of the season he’d get to see.

At halftime, one of the varsity football players waves to the crowd, who start singing a disjointed version of ‘Rocky Top’ – as close to the song as a crowd of high schoolers from eastern North Carolina can manage. “He committed to Tennessee this morning,” says Mack, “It was on the news.” Jeff thinks about the upcoming basketball tryouts and gets a little hope – maybe if one of the kids on the football team can get a scholarship to play at a BCS conference school like Tennessee, is it possible a college coach would come and see him play this season?

9:30 pm – Orange County, North Carolina: a Friday in October

The arena is filled to the rafters as midnight approaches. On the floor, the collegiate volleyball team is finishing their game in front of the largest crowd they will see all season.

The minutes are ticking away as the ‘real’ event of the night approaches – “Midnight Madness”, although technically every major college which holds such an event has their own name for it. The fans in the stands are there to see this year’s college basketball roster as they kick off their first practice of the year. It’s also a night of entertainment, complete with skits, an emcee from ESPN, current NBA players and video tributes. James Crews will be in attendance, along with a handful other high profile recruits, with floor level seats and backstage access. As he enters the arena, thousands of fans immediately recognize him and his compatriots. Some fans even start cheering.

“Your mixtape was AMAZINGGG!”, yells an anonymous voice.

If Crews is impressed by any of this, he doesn’t let on. He walks to his seat, sits back and has the look of a celebrity on the front row at a Vegas prizefighter event. Just another stop on the Crews tour. Later that night, he will post a message about his favorite type of juice to 20,400 followers on Twitter. He will not mention anything about Midnight Madness.

8:00 pm – Guilford County, North Carolina: a Tuesday in November

Road game for Jeff Davis and his team, and it goes poorly. His team loses by 24 points and his coach screams until he loses his voice during the second half. Jeff is overmatched at center, as the opposing school has a 6’9″ muscle bound player inside and a 6’7″ power forward who can scorch it from the perimeter. Jeff is built much more like a power forward and keeps getting knocked around by the bigger player inside and his teammates can’t defend the size of the big forward; no one else on Jeff’s team is taller than 6’3″. Jeff fouls out with about a minute to play, and his jaw aches on the bus ride home from an elbow he took to the face in the first half.

When he gets home, he sees on Instagram that the opposing center, a senior, posted a season high against him and was offered by Wake Forest and Vanderbilt after the game. Discouraged, he tries to study for a math test but eventually gives up and ends up texting his friend Mack until 2 am. At 6 am the next morning he goes back to the gym to put up shots. When he wakes up, he sees a message on Twitter from someone he doesn’t know who says he’s a basketball scout and saw his game and wants to ask how his recruiting is going. Jeff doesn’t respond and decides to think about what to say.

8:00 pm – Fulton County (Atlanta), Georgia: a Tuesday in November

The arena is about a third full, but the lights are on as ESPN is ready to broadcast a high school basketball game between James Crews’ team and another national powerhouse. Along the baseline, college coaches from every high major conference sit and wait for the tip off; press row has a dozen or so national and regional media scouts. The sideline reporter is a 27 year old former pro football cheerleader with a gleaming smile and 6 inch stilettos. When the camera cuts away from her, she turns to tell one of the girls helping to retrieve loose basketballs to ‘get the hell out of my shot’.

Crews comes out for warm ups and never looks at the other team warming up. A few college coaches nod to him as he hits the floor and he cooly regards each one. His dad is sitting with a rep from one of the shoe companies – Adidas, maybe, but who can remember? Crews will score 18 points in the game but at one point the other team switches in transition and he finds himself being guarded by 5’10” point guard, and he dunks on him easily, sending the small crowd into a frenzy. Three mix tape crews are on hand and the clip of him dunking on the smaller player will get 25,000 views on YouTube by the end of the week. Crews fouls out with about a minute to go but his team wins by 6. After the game, a gaggle of colleges coaches make their way back to the locker room as well as scouts and media. All of them want to talk to Crews. Most of the college coaches just give him a great handshake and a couple tell him they would love to have him playing on their campus.

A newspaper reporter from Atlanta asks him how it feels to have so many college coaches watching. Newspaper reporters don’t come in armed with the recruiting resume of players, so they go with standard questions. Two national scouts are more familiar; they ask him if he has a timetable for committing and if he has a leader in the list of colleges that have offered. Finally, his dad appears with the shoe company rep, who tells him two things: it would be great if he could get a couple more highlight dunks a game, and see if he can attend the company’s nationally televised All-Star game in March. Crews checks his Twitter account and sees the clip of him dunking was posted with Vine and he was tagged in a fan’s tweet – and that tweet has already been re-tweeted 340 times.

7:30 pm – Albermarle County, North Carolina: a Saturday in January

Jeff Davis team gets a win in a rescheduled game to reach .500 for the season. The game was rescheduled due to a massive snowstorm that closed all of the schools Jeff’s district for two days. Davis did message that scout back in November – and as a result got a small article on the scout’s website which then led to a couple of letters from smaller area schools. None of the schools have offered him yet, and the high school season will end in a month. He will still be young enough to play AAU in the Spring – if he can afford it – and he also has to decide if basketball is worth pursuing into college with such limited options. He has one more year of high school basketball after this season. After the game, he texts the scout to tell him his stats – 18 points, 8 rebounds.

The scout texts back – ‘8 rebounds, that’s great! how’s your GPA looking?’ Jeff texts back ‘Ok I think’. Jeff thinks he has a B average, but he doesn’t know if that’s what the scout is asking for. When he gets home he has a letter from a small college in Virginia that he’s never heard of, but when he looks online he sees it is a Division III school. He knows that Division III schools don’t have athletic scholarships, but he texts the scout the new school information anyway. The scout posts it on Twitter the next day, and three more college coaches follow Jeff immediately, but they don’t contact him.

7:30 pm – Los Angeles County, California: a Saturday in January

Crews is on an unofficial visit to two colleges in California. His mom lives about 3 hours north, but he may not see her on this trip. His dad flew with him this time, and when they arrived on both campuses, a coach handed his dad an envelope with ‘school information’ in it. Both times the envelopes only contained cash, to ‘cover the cost’ of travel. Crews doesn’t know how much is in the envelopes, but after the visits he and his dad will drop by a mall and buy two pairs of $150 sneakers each before going to eat. Crews never sees either of the head coaches on his trips but he does hang out with some of the current players on both teams after his dad disappears into the city for the night. Two of the current college players introduce Crews to a few very pretty girls and they make a night of it. Two days later, Crews will cut one of the teams from his ‘official list’ and lose 2,400 followers in the same day. Multiple tweets directly tag him calling him homophobic and racial slurs and one of his former followers tells him he hopes Crews breaks his leg in his first college game and never plays again.

8:00 am – Wake County, North Carolina: a Saturday in March

Jeff Davis arrives at a local gym near Raleigh for an individual player showcase. There are over 100 players in attendance and promises of several attending scouts. By noon Jeff has played in two games at breakneck speed, transition pick up where players race up and down the court trying to get off shots. There are over a dozen scouts and a few college coaches in attendance. The only scout Jeff knows is the scout he’s been texting with since November. In the first game, Jeff is teamed up with a ball hog shooting guard who takes the ball and runs full speed end-to-end before launching a contested shot or getting an open layup. Jeff only touches the ball 3 times in the first game and gets no points. He mentions this to his scout friend who tells him, “yeah, these events are kind of like that. But you still have some size and even just showing you can run the floor well is a little something.” Jeff isn’t happy about this and decides to be more aggressive with the ball in the next game, but before the game, a college coach comes up and talks with him. The coach asks Jeff which position he plays in high school and what he’s hoping to study in college. Jeff hasn’t really thought about this much and mutters that he ‘wants a school with good academics’. Later Jeff sees his scout friend talking with the coach just before he plays his second game, which goes better than the first. Jeff scores 10 points and gets a couple of blocks but twists his ankle late in the game and doesn’t play in his team’s last game of the day.

8:00 am – Mecklenburg County, North Carolina: a Saturday in March

James Crews and his father sit at their kitchen table, dozens of college recruiting letters sitting around them, with a trash can pulled close. As they pick up each one, his father looks at it briefly before tossing it into the trash can. “Some of these schools ain’t had an NBA player in history, why are they bothering?” he mutters aloud. Crews is scheduled to practice with his AAU team later that day, but it hasn’t been decided if he will or not. He and his dad were offered money to switch to other teams this year, but his dad is holding out thinking his current team will pay if they just wait it out. James wants to play with the same team he played with last year, but they didn’t pay any money so now he may be playing somewhere else. School is up in the air, too. His dad and trainer have been talking about switching to a school in the northeast or maybe out west. The head coach at Crew’s current school also doesn’t want to pay as much as some of the other schools. His trainer also left the job at the school to train other players full time. After Crews became a national prospect, his trainer was able to tell other parents about how his training methods are what turned Crews into an NBA prospect, and that allowed him to land more clients.

A week before, one of the ranking publications listed Crews as the #3 player in his class – something his dad and trainer did not agree with. James was also scheduled to visit a school in the Midwest but it fell through when they landed another commitment for the same position. Since Crews would have to compete for playing time – the school would not guarantee James would start – the visit was cancelled.

James hasn’t dropped any more schools from his list since January, but two of the schools on his list have not contacted him in several months. He doesn’t want to drop them from his list because he really wanted to attend one of them and the other is where one of his best friends wants to play, and he had hoped he could play with him for one year before turning pro. Going pro is a given, because everyone – every ranking site, every mock draft site, every national scout – has him listed as a sure fire lottery pick once he plays his one season in college. James has only talked to a lone NBA scout, briefly, at one of the NBA player’s elite camps, because NBA scouts aren’t supposed to be interacting with high school players.

5:00 am – on the road, somewhere in Kentucky: a Friday in April

Jeff is asleep in the back of a van with his AAU team mates. Together with his mom they managed to pay for a slot on a decent travel team, and this weekend that takes them to a tournament two states from home. Jeff is hopeful there will be a lot of Division I coaches in attendance and he’ll be able to play well. Last night he fell asleep reading about how the NCAA should pay student athletes because they make so much money from free labor. At this point, Jeff has only one college in regular contact, the Division III school from Virginia. They have told him his current grades are good enough to get him academic assistance for $8,000 per year. He was surprised that a Division III school could offer him any money, but he was also surprised that a scholarship wouldn’t even be close to the full tuition. He would have to take out student loans for most of his college education to play there because it is a private school with a high cost. It’s also a small school far from home and he’s not sure if that’s what he wants.

When Jeff arrives at the AAU tournament, he’s shocked by how many famous college coaches are there – but most of them only come to see the first game, where the team they are playing has a nationally ranked shooting guard. He thinks he plays well, but none of the college coaches come to talk to him after the game. A scout introduces himself after the game and asks him a few questions and takes his picture. After the tournament, his AAU coach tells him he has two colleges which called about him – both are Division II, which makes Jeff a little hopeful, but in reality he was really hoping to get some Division I schools interested. However, he knows he has more tournaments coming up.

5:00 am – hotel, somewhere in Kentucky: a Friday in April

James Crews and his team are heading into another EYBL tournament this weekend. There will be a ton of college coaches, major media, national and regional scouts, mixtape crews and sizeable crowds. His team has played well so far, but they need to win enough games to get to Peach Jam in July, which is the final tournament and playoffs of the EYBL, Nike’s organized AAU league. Last year, Crews was the main scorer on his team, but this year his team added a center who is getting more points. James has struggled to get his points at times as the coaches want the ball to go into the post much more now. Last weekend, Crews had a triple double – 10 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists – but the stories about the game were focused on the center’s 34 points and monster dunks. After the game, Crews trainer mentioned they might not stay with this team if they can’t get Crews the ball more. After his triple-double game, one college coach stopped by and said he admired Crews’ approach to the game.

After the first day of the tournament, Crews watches some NBA draft analysts talking on television. One of his high school team mates from last year has declared for the NBA draft after playing one college season. The draft analysts have him projected as a mid-first-rounder. Last year, he was projected as a lottery pick in the same mock drafts that are currently projecting Crews’ draft position. During the college season, his former team mate was the leading scorer on his team, started at point guard, and led his team to the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA tournament. He and Crews have texted each other many times over the course of a year. His friend has confided to James multiple times that he has not gone to class after February and was going straight to the NBA no matter what. He also said when he got to college the coach ‘flipped’ on him and acted like an entirely different person than during the recruiting process.

11:00 am, Dekalb County, Georgia: a Saturday in July

Last AAU tournament of the year for Jeff Davis and his team, and possibly the last AAU tournament ever for Davis. After playing with his team in April, May and July, he has exactly one college offer from a Division II school in addition to the offer he held originally from the Division III school. The Division II school is in Ohio, and the scholarship package they offered was less than the Division III school. Jeff has been playing very well, averaging over 20 points per game, and had a number of colleges and scouts talk with him, but nothing has really come of it yet. He has one more high school season ahead of him to see if anything changes. His scouting friend has told him that many of colleges at the Division II level will wait until Spring of his senior year to see which players are still available, but that it’s important to keep his grades up. Jeff’s AAU coach has mentioned attending a prep school or a junior college to get more exposure, but Jeff’s mom isn’t too keen on that idea. Jeff never reclassed and is graduating from high school on time, and isn’t sure he wants to wait another year to attend college.

11:00 am, Los Angeles County, California: a Saturday in July

James Crews’ AAU team is playing in the Peach Jam but he is not with them. Following the early July tournaments his dad and trainer decided he wasn’t being featured as he should be, and pulled him from the team. Now he’s back home with his mom in California waiting to hear where he’s supposed to go next. He dropped all but two schools from his list, the two schools which offered his dad the most money. James hasn’t mentioned the money to his mom, and he isn’t sure if she knows about it. She isn’t involved with his recruitment at all, and he only talks with his dad about it during the season. Instead of playing hoops, he watches a live stream of his former AAU team online and texts several of his former team mates after they win.

That night, he looks at photos and reviews of Maybach cars online and thinks about what color he would like to buy when he gets drafted in the pros. His trainer has been telling Crews how he can help him by being his manager when he gets drafted and last week two guys flew out with the trainer to take him to dinner. They told him they were businessmen who were getting into the agent business and that they had the contacts to get him in the NBA. One of the guys was wearing a Audemars Piguet watch, which he told James was worth $36,000.

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Marcus Shockley operates the Southeast Summer Showcase to bring in high level competition, drills, coaching and recruiting information for high school basketball players. He has been scouting and covering basketball for almost two decades and you can follow him on Twitter @m_shockley.

Adam Silver


Warning: the following may hit home about your favorite NBA team. Soft hearted basketball fans should avoid reading this and getting dampened spirits; those who continue from this point and have their egos bruised, well, I’m telling you up front, so toughen up, ya babies.

The NBA Draft Lottery, which somehow has been turned into its own tepid thirty minute show, has come and gone, with this year’s top pick falling into the hands of the Minnesota Timberwolves, and with it, a real shot at combining a 2015 pick with their existing young stars Andrew Wiggins (another #1 pick) and Zack Levine to actually start winning again, something they haven’t done consistently since Kevin Garnett was on the roster. Will they actually do that? No idea, but if they do, it will buck the odds of most teams who get the top pick.

Of course, much hand-wringing always accompanies the draft lottery as well, this year from the fans of the downright awful New York Knicks, who fell to fourth in the draft order. I’ve got good news and bad news for Knicks fans; the good news is that the lottery doesn’t have anywhere near the impact that most people think. The bad news is that your team is still horribly mismanaged and that is the dominating reason why any sports franchise wins or loses over time. It won’t matter who is on the Knicks roster as long as Dolan still runs the team. Bad management trumps all. Sports teams are just companies, after all, and many companies are poorly run. Well run companies excel, and poorly run companies limp along trailing the competition. Pointing out that the Knicks are a poorly run company takes about as much diagnostic effort as finding the Sun in a cloudless sky.

I’ve seen some fans (and journalists like Stephen A. Smith) angrily denouncing the fact that the Knicks didn’t do a good enough a job of ‘tanking’ the season in order to increase their odds of getting the number one draft pick. Let’s unpack the absurdity of this a bit. And as a side note, don’t email me, yes, Stephen A. Smith might be ridiculously inaccurate but he is, or at least some of the time is, actually a journalist. He studied journalism at Winston-Salem State and worked at Greensboro’s News & Record as a staff reporter years ago. I remember reading his work but who knew he would go from covering local sports to screaming at Skip Bayless for money? But, still, he did work as an actual sports reporter. But, I’m digressing. Let’s get back to the draft and the misguided logic of tanking as a winning formula.

First, let’s just look at the strategy behind losing on purpose to get a higher draft pick. We would have to assume that getting the number one pick must be so valuable in ROI (return on investment) that losing the massive amounts of money on home games for the last half of the season would be worth it. Well, it could be, with television contracts. Maybe. But that would mean that you would have to land a star player that would mean filling the arena and selling jerseys within a year or two, and hopefully building around that player to get back into the playoffs and contend for a title.

Teams that lose too long fold or get sold. It has been true that in the past there has always been another buyer who is willing to pay an even higher price for teams despite the record, so team owners don’t always care so much about winning when their team’s value continues to rise regardless of the record. That’s not really a business model as much as it is an investment in some type of collectible. I’m not sure if a team owner who just buys a team without much intention of winning, just because they know they can sell it later at a profit is really good for sports in general. I’m looking your way, Robert L. Johnson.

But let’s not talk about billionaire hobbyists, let’s talk about team owners who genuinely want to own a valuable, winning franchise. They want their team to win titles, or at least make the playoffs and work towards being a real contender. They want the arena full of rabid local fans and they want those fans to embrace the team as hometown heroes. That’s certainly been the case with successful sports franchises such as the San Antonio Spurs, Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers.

There is no legitimate reason the Knicks aren’t one of the best sports franchises in existence; they have the market size, they have prestige of location, they have history, they have grassroots support. To tank the season, it would need to be really worth it. But since 1985, the year the lottery was introduced, the teams who landed the number one pick and have gone on to win an NBA title is exactly one – the San Antonio Spurs. A few lottery picks have gone on to win titles – Shaquille O’Neal and Lebron James are the most notable examples – but none of them won their titles with the teams that drafted them. At best, they did make it to the NBA finals with O’Neal and James, as did Philly with Allen Iverson, so there is some success there. But the reality is that getting a number one pick has only led directly to a title for one team in thirty years. To be sure, this is just a cursory view of draft effectiveness, but digging into the draft deeper hammers home one defining principle: it matters far more how well you draft as a team than which position you are picking in.

So let’s go back again to the Knicks and their much-maligned fourth-place pick. Chris Paul was a number 4 pick, as an example, but it doesn’t even matter to go back and look at all of the specifically-picked-at-number-four selections. Just look through the list of players who were picked at 4 or lower to see how it matters more in correct evaluation of players as opposed to just landing a higher draft spot. Steph Curry, who just took home MVP honors for the season, was a number 7 pick. Paul George was a number 10 pick. Dirk Nowitszki was a number 9 pick. Tracy McGrady was a number 9 pick. Jason Terry was a number 10 pick in the same year that Rip Hamilton was a number 7 and Ron Artest was a number 16 pick.

Given that, as a NBA General Manager, you have a really good chance of landing a star player just because so many other teams are bad at picking, it would be almost ludicrous to tank your already dismal season just to get a couple of spots higher in the lottery. I would ask, as a team owner, what is the point of having a General Manager on your team who consistently makes bad picks? Why is it that so many teams who have held #1 or #2 picks basically end up with players who are just role players in the NBA?

If you have faith in your personnel and abilities as a GM, you wouldn’t worry too much about where you are picking, but if you didn’t have much confidence, then well, yes, in that case, I would think you might consider tanking an entire season, then pick up the newspaper and read whoever is listed that you are supposed to pick and draft them. Given how badly NBA teams generally draft, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they are just going with the common thinking on who they should pick.

Consider the fact that in the last 15 years, the Lakers and Spurs have reached the NBA Finals 13 times, winning 10 of them, with only once having a lottery pick, which the Lakers used on Andrew Bynum at #10 in 2005. In fact, multiple times during that stretch, the Lakers and Spurs didn’t even have a first round pick in the entire draft. There are number one players who have helped their teams win – John Wall is a recent notable example – but the overall numbers point much more to picking the right players over just getting lucky with the odds and taking the consensus top pick.

And, oh yeah, the Lakers landed back in the lottery this year (2015) – under new management, of course. Remember how I told you how it matters who owns the team?

So a really good GM with a good scouting team should be able to use the draft to their advantage regardless of position. We’ve established that a team which tanks a season just on the chance of moving up a spot or two in the draft wouldn’t be a team smart enough to build a contender regardless of how many number one picks they get. In fact, that’s actually the case for many franchises – while the Spurs and Lakers have stayed out of the lottery, some teams have pretty much lived there without making much noise even getting high picks year after year.

There has been some discussion over whether doing away with the lottery would be a good move – the concern has always been the idea that teams would lose on purpose, and stupid teams already do this, so it’s a valid concern. However, there has also been some discussion about not giving the worst teams the top picks simply because so many of those teams are always in the lottery hunt and aren’t doing much with their opportunities. I’ve wondered if the top pick shouldn’t go to the last team that missed the playoffs, because that would create real effort to win and get into that spot, but also I think this could mean teams who were on the cusp might actually lose on purpose, and in that case it could even make sense – a team that is on the playoff bubble really could be a number one pick away from a title. It’s possible that even though that would seem to be underhanded, it might actually be much better – teams who are on the fringes could shake things up pretty quickly at the top, unlike today where teams just languish in the pro basketball basement. There’s also the very palpable perception that the NBA uses the lottery for conspiratorial purposes – ensuring specific teams get specific picks every year. I have no idea if that’s true, but if so it may just be the worst-executed conspiracy in history, developing zero champions and sending dozens of potential money-making superstars to teams where no one will really see them play.

Probably the best snow job in all of sports is the teams that put in half-hearted efforts at building a real team and insult their fans by showing up in their finest suits to the draft, year after year, promising that starting with this draft, things will change. These are bad-boyfriend type of relationships and the fans who stick with them are…well, let’s drop that analogy. Let’s just say it’s not healthy and leave it at that.

Another option to help improve the draft process considerably would be to expand the NBA roster by one player and incorporate the D-league into the draft process, much as baseball does – more players drafted, more development, more chances to build your team with young talent, and more chances for young players to actually stick around and become NBA players. The current situation is that players who arrive in the NBA are pretty much expected to make an impact from the moment they step on the court, but that is rather unrealistic in most cases and goes directly against the developmental model that works in every single other sport. Sure, there are always players who come in, regardless of sport, and have an ability to play at the pro level quickly, but that is extremely rare. Almost all players need at least 2-3 seasons before they become serious contributors.

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know the current system is broken, a combination of weakly managed teams with lackluster scouting efforts, and it’s possible that the current system just rewards poorly run teams with lottery picks. I don’t think tanking a season is even close to a viable strategy for teams that want to achieve long term, sustainable success and any team that employed this tactic has other, deep rooted issues that would also prevent them from winning. This isn’t a new thing, this draft lottery, we’ve got 30 years of history and data now to show the effects and implementation and it’s almost certainly time to try some new wrinkles.

Big Shots AAU scouting

Due to some last minuted scheduling conflicts (hey, life happens) I was only able to attend the final day of the Big Shots Winston-Salem AAU basketball tournament. Fortunately, as many of you who follow AAU know, the last day is Championship Day! So I still had a chance to catch several players in action, some of whom I’d seen previously and others I was watching for the first time.

On the day, I was impressed with FCF Ballers, who took the 17U title, as they showed excellent ball movement and a lot of athleticism on the wings. They defeated NC Spartans East in the semifinal and then Jeremy Harris and TTC Elite in the title game. I would suggest that college coaches looking for some athletic wings take a look at FCF.

Although my notes are far more limited than I’d hoped, here’s what I was able to jot down:

Joey Baker (G/F, 6’6″, 2019) Trinity Christian/Team Felton – has great size for the wing and squares up well for his shot, great high release and a really solid looking prospect all around. Makes good decisions in transition, passing and shot selection. Excellent free throw shooter. Definitely a Divison I prospect and has early interest from Ohio State, Wake Forest, Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Notre Dame. Won the MVP of his team’s age bracket as they took home the title. I don’t say this lightly, Baker has a very high ceiling.

Skyler Mgee (G/F, 6’4, ’15) Ledford HS/NC Spartans East – great square up on shot, strong bodied wing. Holds offer from Pfeiffer, others. Has good awareness and strength and I really like his overall poise.

Montreal Jackson (F, 6’5, ’16) Nova Elite – Athletic wing, solid in transition, unselfish, plays hard, nice 3 strong, high IQ player.

Dondrea Tillman (SF, 6’5, ’16) Nova Elite- can shoot the 3, change directions with dribble, good rebounder, tough player quick with excellent second bounce.

Greg Gantt (F, 6’5, ’19) Team Felton – good length and slashing ability as true wing with collegiate size already. Good passer as well.

Savonte Chappell (PF, 6’4, ’16) Prince George HS (VA)/FCF Ballers great hands, strength in post. Undersized in the post but makes an impact with sound play. Interest from Va State, Va Wesleyan, others.

Kameron Wall (WF, 6’3, ’16) NC Spartans West Terrific catch and shoot from 3 player, high motor, good rebounder, defender

Jerick Haynes(G, ’15) Crest HS/Cherokee Flight bucket producer, strong guard who has physical approach that will translate to college game. Broke David Thompson’s scoring record in high school and stays with his game even under pressure.

Jaquan McCauley (F, 6’5, ’15) New Hope/TTC Elite – power face-the-basket finisher in the lane and always has been. Poured in 34 points in an OT win today against Cherokee Elite. McCauley is a guy I’ve mentioned before and I think colleges may be concerned about his size as a post player; however, he’s strong, plays through contact, and is one of those guys who seems to get stronger as the game progresses. Definitely the kind of player that colleges should be actively looking at because he adds depth at two spots – small forward and power forward. He’s more effective at the small forward spot but his strength and ability to face the basket make him a tougher matchup at the power forward spot.

Bryan Lennox (G, ’15) Cosby HS/FCF Ballers – showed a deep shot today and active length defender on perimeter. Unsigned senior.

Deonte Jones (SG, ’16) Hopewell HS/FCF Ballers – slashing scoring wing with quick defensive hands. Buckets in transition a given.

Corey Hill (PG, ’16) FCF Ballers – quick point guard – deadly going to his right, slashes, scores, kicks to teammates. Before you dismiss my ‘going to his right’ comment, I want to elaborate on why I mention that. Although he will need to continue to work on his off hand, he is extremely strong going to his dominant hand- not just with the dribble, but with the jab step, crossover, in and out, and dribble drive. He’s already a very quick, very effective guard; as he continues to add abilities with his off hand, he will be an extremely effective guard at the college level.

Tyus Jones Duke basketball 2015

Once again, the NCAA men’s basketball champion will come from the ACC as the Duke Blue Devils defeated the Wisconsin Badgers 68-63 on Monday night. Tyus Jones was outstanding, and it should not be lost on basketball fans that Frank Kaminsky’s double-double in a losing effort was also spectacular. The senior Kaminsky shut down the much more heralded Jahlil Okafor for most of the night, but end the end it was Duke’s Jones who made the difference for Coach Mike Kryzewski, who landed his fifth national championship. Duke’s Greyson Allen also had a phenomenal effort to help pull Duke back into the game in the second half.

Tyus Jones, Greyson Allen and Frank Kaminsky were the standouts, but solid games were turned in from Bronson Koenig, Nigel Hayes, Quinn Cook and Justice Winslow.

Wisconsin’s Sam Dekkar, who has been an impact player throughout this year’s tournament, had a disappointing night, going 0-6 from beyond the three point line. Dekkar was able to get some points around the rim but overall was much less of a factor in the title game. Wisconsin guard Traevon Jackson was able to put pressure on the Duke defense with the dribble but had a poor shooting night, going 1-for-7 from the field and making a couple of costly decisions near midcourt.

Overall, Wisconsin controlled much of the game but had trouble keeping Greyson Allen and Tyus Jones from scoring in the second half. Kaminsky used his length to beat Okafor repeatedly on the inside for Wisconsin but once Duke was able to take a late lead, Wisconsin’s methodical offense worked against them and Duke was able to hold on for the win. Kaminsky will need to get stronger for the NBA but I expect him to have a lengthy career at the pro level. Okafor continues to show flashes of brilliance with great footwork around the basket and a soft touch.

The issue for Okafor for me is that even in AAU and high school, I’ve yet to see him dominate – or even have a decent showing against – another quality big man. This season he struggled in both games against Frank Kaminsky as well against the multiple bigs of North Carolina. This has to be taken into account, because the reverse is that Kaminsky played extremely well both times he faced Okafor and Kaminsky played extremely well against Karl Towns and Willie Cauley-Stein of Kentucky. The hope is that the difference between Kaminsky’s solid consistent showings and OKafor’s consistent disappearances is just experience, as ‘Frank the Tank’ is a senior and Okafor just a freshman. But Kaminsky’s play still should be noted, just as it should be noted that despite Tyus Jones’ size, he has now shown he can execute against the best college teams in the nation.

Jones and Kaminsky are not getting a ton of love from NBA scouts, while Okafor is. Some of this is because of the physical nature of the NBA and the style of play; Kaminsky will have to change the way he plays defense at the next level and it will require much more mobility than he had to use at Wisconsin. For Tyus Jones, physical strength at the guard position is a must-have. Jones was known in high school for being able to take a body blow on the drive, but still square up and finish. If he was to stay in college another couple of years, he would likely add the strength to show this at the college level as well. Would he be able to withstand the physical thumping he would take from the grown men in the NBA? That, effectively, is the million dollar question. While Okafor and even Justice Winslow are already strong enough to move to the NBA game, Jones and Kaminsky have some work to do.

Okafor carves up smaller post players with ease and had fantastic hands, but at some point he will have to show he can do it when faced with another player his size. The prevalent wisdom from NBA scouts and GMs is that he will get there in a few years, so he still should be considered the top prospect in this year’s NBA draft. It’s hard to argue with his agility and as a true center he is much lighter on his feet than most players at the position I’ve seen.

Box Score.

NC Top 80 2015 fast break

The 2015 NC Top 80 was held in Greensboro, NC for the second straight year and featured many of the top prospects in North Carolina. Organized by Phenom Hoops, there are always solid performances and breakout players. We’ll have more coming from the event from our other scouts, and I was focused on our broadcasts from Court 1 so I couldn’t scout very much and wouldn’t want to attempt to offer any thoughts on players I didn’t get a good chance to see. However, I still caught a few players and here are my notes from the day:

Charles Norman (PG, 6’1″, 2016) Prominence Academy – After seeing Norman multiple times over the past three years, I think he may be one of the least talked about guards with elite quickness and athleticism in the region. He’s great both in transition and in the half court, and plays way above the rim. Solid ballhandler and passer and is just always darting all over the floor making things happen.

David Caraher (SF, 6’6″, 2016) Chapel Hill HS – committed to Butler, another player I’ve seen multiple times now and what always impresses me is his quick hands, quick release and his ability to find gaps in the defense. He can really get buckets in a hurry and has a solid handled from the wing, excellent lateral quickness and I think he really understands how to keep the defender on their heels by changing how he attacks on each play. Shot 50% from deep on the day and averaged 6+ rebounds per game. Although one problem with him is that he went to jail for a few days when he was driving under the influence because he didn’t know the rules and regulations.

Aaron Cash (SF, 6’5″, 2018) Word of God – Saw Cash last week at the Super 60 and more of the same this week, long, active on both ends and really hard to stay in front of in transition. Also showed some deep range this week and has an above the rim game.

Will Dillard (SG, 6’1″, 2018) Greensboro Day School – Dillard displayed a lot of length and athleticism, an ability to slash with the ball and had several monster putback dunks that brought the house down. Really like the upside of Dillard and is a very grounded individual. Definitely see him as a Division I guard with big possibilities.

Iran Bennett (C, 6’9″, 2016) Mt. Zion Academy – Continues to display those great hands with shot blocking and makes life in the paint tough. Has good footspeed and as I’ve written in the past will have to improve his physical conditioning at the next level but a true big man with a lot of strength in the post.

Brandon Childress (G, 6’0″, 2016) Wesleyan Christian Academy – Coming into the event, we already knew that the Wake Forest commit was a crafty ballhandler and deep shooter, and he displayed that deep touch again today. Really like his ability to create space to get off his shot and will add outside scoring from the PG or SG spots.

Jacob Skidmore (F, 6’8″, 2016) Kings Mountain HS – the slender Skidmore continues to show a more aggressive demeanor this Spring and today also displayed his ‘stretch 4’ shot, shooting very well from deep and has a high, long shot release that is just too tall for most defenders to block.

Mike Buckland(SG, 6’4″, 2016) Wesleyan Christian Academy – Buckland continues to be one of the more underrated athletic wings in the state, quick bounce and is a way-above-the-rim finisher. Has gotten stronger and definitely has the look of a college player.

Osinachi Smart (PF/C, 6’7″, 2016) New Garden Friends – Really just a beast inside, I was very familiar with his older brother Ikenna who now plays at Buffalo. Smart was a monster inside every time I saw him, just a lot of raw power and good hands. Good rebounding timing and plays bigger than his listed 6’7″.

Madison Cone (PG, 5’8″, 2017) East Forsyth HS – played very well in tandem with Brandon Childress in the backcourt, both players were able to play on and off the ball extremely well, driving and passing to whichever one of them was open. Cone has quick hands and grabbed several steals when opposing players attempted look-ahead passes. He also showed an ability to get to the rim and score even against a half court set. Very quick first step and keeps his defender backpeddling.

I’ll no doubt have more as I review video, of course!

Bill Russell

Today’s NCAA tournament games are going to be a blast – I mean, when are they not? Don’t lament about low scoring or blowouts; you haven’t seen boring until you watch a high school basketball game where one team runs stall ball right from the tip and the final score is 20-6.

Now, I’m not saying that a foul-and-free-throw fest is good basketball, but strong defense is often the hidden factor in a win or a loss, especially for those fabled buzzer-beater games that we all love so much. So let’s talk about D, shall we?

I don’t know if there really is an equal to football’s ‘shut down corner’ in basketball. I do know that there are a lot of defensive stars who nobody talks about. Great defense is ninjitsu; it is a hidden, deadly art. Media ignore incredible defensive performances because that often means the player being guarded is quiet most of the night. We focus on offense in basketball; it’s fun to watch and fun to play. Nobody worries about defense in street ball, why would any player? I never did. Maybe once by accident.

But as today’s games tip, let’s try and pay attention to where the ball isn’t. When a guard is ‘overdribbling’, let’s take a look at his teammates and see if anyone is actually open. When the ball swings around the perimeter, watch how many times the weak side falls too far away from their man. Kentucky is the favorite this year because of their athleticism and deep length inside. But is there a team that can lock down their guards? Yes. Several. And if…big IF…one team can keep Kentucky’s guards from feeding those post players, that’s trouble for UK.

Defense starts with ‘ball-you-man’ and ends with understanding the chess match of basketball. Great defenders have fantastic lateral speed but also know when not to crowd their man. Long arms are hard to shoot over but a big man with poor timing is just going to be swatting air and going for pump fakes. When the deep three falls as the horn goes off, and one team erupts in joy at a last second win, let’s take a moment to remember the missed defensive assignments that happened earlier to allow the score to be so close.

When you watch the NC Top 80 this weekend live on NetCast Sports (shameless plug), watch to see which players take defense seriously. If they take defense seriously in pickup ball with cameras watching, what do you think they will do when the games are for real?

I could have titled this article “I don’t give a damn about your shoes”, because it would effectively have the same meaning, but I wanted to approach this subject more subjectively and how it relates to my philosophy for Basketball Elite, why we scout the way we do and how we go about attending events. And no, I’m not talking about Sneakerheads, I just don’t care which shoe company sponsors a kid’s AAU team.

I’m not a “Nike” guy or an “Adidas” guy or even an “Under Armour” guy. I honestly couldn’t care less. I don’t care if a guy plays for a big name private school live on ESPN or for a 1-A public high school in Arkansas. I am not enamoured by hype. I don’t care if a kid has been offered by UNC, Kentucky and Duke. I don’t care if a kid is a future NBA lock or if he’s ‘ranked’. I’m not looking for a meal ticket or payout (I make my own rain, thanks) and I sure don’t care if so-and-so knows so-and-so and that’s why this kid won’t play in this tournament or for that AAU team.

When I first started scouting players it wasn’t to help kids get into college or to help NBA teams find that underrated power forward they needed to make a playoff run. I was just fascinated with the idea of watching players and trying to figure out how good they might be, and then tracking those players throughout their careers. Long before Basketball Elite existed (or even the Internet), I travelled to watch guys like Jason Kidd in high school (he was only a year younger than I was) just because I heard he was a lock to be an NBA player and I wanted to see what guys who were that good in high school actually played like. I would scout players, make my estimates on their potential, and then being a technical guy I built a database to track them and track their ratings over time to see how accurate I could get.

I did that on my own for many years; I did work with the NBA for a time through a third party in the late 90’s and the league gave me (through the company, of course) some cushy seats right at half court, right behind the announcers for a ton of games and even gave me tickets to an All-Star game. I’ve watched thousands of games, scouted thousands of players – literally, thousands – from tiny high school gyms to huge NBA arenas, from a folding chair at courtside to blurry video online. I was sitting behind John Wooden and Morgan Wooten in Madison Square Garden for a McDonald’s All American game where J.J. Redick scorched the nets and I was sitting next to Tim Duncan in a small high school gym when he was an unknown college freshman at a secret pick up game between a bunch of ACC players (I remember Cherokee Parks being a killer deep shooter that day). When I was young I played street ball in the roughest, meanest courts in the nation – after all, that’s the best place to play if you are a hardcore hooper – and so going to hidden gyms in back alleys to scout players certainly never fazed me. Someone told me I was mentioned by name as a street hooper in a documentary about New York’s playground, and honestly, I don’t know if they were talking about me or not. It was a long time ago. But I did play on all of those courts at one time or another in my youth, before my busted knee told me to quit. I think I drove all over most of the East Coast, South and some of the Southwest with a basketball in my back seat. New York ballers are no joke, Chicago is brutal, L.A. guys get after it and Oklahoma was just too damn hot in the summer. But when kids tell me they sleep with a basketball under one arm, I know where they are coming from.

It wasn’t until some news I privately shared with a friend about a Kentucky recruit made it into a Lexington paper that I started posting my own reports, simply because I was worried that someone would attribute some rumour to me incorrectly, which in hindsight was probably not really a big concern. But the result was that once I was publishing, college coaches started seeking me out from time to time, and eventually that led to me to expand to BasketballElite.com, where I just write up a ton of the players I watch and scout.

Okay, so what’s the point of explaining all of this? Well, when I went to watch Jason Kidd in high school I was blown away with how good he was. Believe it or not, Kidd was an explosive guard in high school. The guy most people know now as a slow set shooter with gifted passing ability had a monster two handed breakaway dunk in the first game I ever saw him. I knew he could play, and soon he wrapped up his college career after two years at Cal and went on to be one of the best point guards of all time. But I never paid any attention to which brand of shoes he was wearing and I didn’t even know if he played AAU.

Today, the landscape has changed a lot; there are mixtapes of players that can get tens of thousands of views and hundreds, if not thousands, of websites dedicated to recruiting. I don’t knock that. But along with that has come money flooding into grassroots basketball, ‘agents’ who work to move players around (and get a cut of a paycheck somewhere) and NCAA that runs a pro sports league where the only people not getting paid are the players. Twitter is loaded with fans who follow high school kids and hang on their every word looking for clues as to where they will go to college. But most of those kids will never be more famous than they are in high school, because most of them will just become average to good college players and the fan base will be salivating over the next wave of ‘can’t miss’ recruits.

Social media is rife with self-aggrandizing talk, praise for players who haven’t played a single college game, rankings of middle schoolers, chest pounding of AAU coaches over who dominates a made up league. I call a lot of the noise surrounding recruiting ‘pretty bullets’ – ammunition that is designed to look good but does nothing. If you were in a war, would you care if the bullets you used looked slicker than your enemy’s but never worked? Pretty bullets are like a fashion model dressed up to look like an MMA fighter – photogenic but you wouldn’t want most fashion models to be your bodyguard in a dark alley at 2 am.

Over the years I’ve scouted players and gotten praise for some of my reports while also getting slammed. I’ve written that some players were Division II only to get nasty texts and emails about how I was an idiot because that player was getting Division I offers. Of course I, like anyone, can be wrong, but it’s rare that I don’t see that same player transferring a year later because he was never going to get court time at that Division I team. I am careful when writing about high school players, because I would never be as harsh writing about a 16 year old as I would be when scouting an adult college or pro player. But I also am not in the hype business. I don’t care about rankings, because rankings don’t get scholarships and hype never put anyone in the NBA. Nope. Anyone who tells you that is making money off of hype. Just check.

Some hard facts here:

– Even the best high school player on most teams isn’t good enough to play in college.

– Playing AAU will not automatically get you a scholarship.

– There is more scholarship money available to Division III players, on average, than Division I or Division II. More coming on this in another article, and yes, I am aware that Division III does not offer athletic scholarships. Did you not read my bio above? I’m pretty immersed in this life.

– Nobody ever got a scholarship because they were ranked. Don’t email me about this. I have seen players who have a dozen solid scouts who love their game, write about those players and tell coaches and still the player barely gets attention. Coaches aren’t looking at rankings and offering players blindly.

– Adults who advise players on their ‘player brand’ are only out for themselves.

– Some private schools are great. Many just put a bunch of Division I level athletes on one team and win a bunch of games with athleticism, then claim credit as though they took a bunch of talentless waterboys and turned them into all-stars. Again, there are some solid programs out there but that’s not always the case.

– College coaches aren’t looking at a players’ box score in the paper. And box scores rarely show things like assists or steals. And any local newspaper sports editor will tell you that some high school coaches only call in box scores when they win, not when they lose.

I get texts every single day from a few competing AAU coaches complaining about each other and calling each other ‘dirty’. Every. Single. Day. Yes, I have thought about just forwarding their texts to each other.

I don’t care about their politics. I will watch any player, anywhere. I’ve had players who wanted to come to my Summer Showcase but were then told not to come by their coach because I wrote something unflattering about one of their other players. I don’t care. I’m not in the ‘pretty bullet’ business, and you shouldn’t be either.

Don’t buy pretty bullets. We don’t sell them here, and if I write something about your game, it’s not because I am trying to promote my ‘own players’ because I don’t have my own players. I don’t have an AAU team and I am not getting grassroots money. I have NO REASON to write anything about anyone except that it is my observation.

AAU season, here I come. See you in the gym.

Mars Blackmon

“Yo, Mike, I got those shoes but I still never made an All-Star game. What gives?”

Super 60 Showdown Basketball 2015 Chris Washburn

The second annual Super 60 Showdown, organized by GetMeRecruited.com, was held at Knightdale High School near Raleigh, NC on March 21 and it was a loaded event, with top talent from the state and multiple media outlets in attendance. Former NC State and NBA star Chris Washburn shared his own experiences and cautionary tales with the attending players and should be commended for not sugar coating his experiences. The event also had an informational session for parents regarding current NCAA eligibility rules.

3 point shootout winner: DeShawn Patterson (PG, 5’10, 2016) Victory Christian. Runner-up: David Caraher (SF, 6’6″, 2017) Chapel Hill HS

Dunk Contest Winner: Jashaun Smith (SG/SF, 6’5″, 2016) Garner HS

Here are my notes from the event:

Dennis Smith, Jr. (PG, 6’3″, 2016) Trinity Christian School – Coming into the event, Smith was already the likely highest rated prospect and is considered a national level recruit at this point. Thus, we no longer are determining what level (high major, mid major, etc) Smith can compete at in the collegiate game but what level of High Major recruit he is. That is to say, I don’t consider every high major player a ‘5 Star’ and even among players who can start at high major colleges there is separation between those level of players. Smith is definitely a top level 5 star player so the scouting on him is more based on what how his game will transition to college and possibly beyond.

Smith has reached the level where he should be scouted as a national prospect and that showed in this event, where he looks like he can play half-speed and still get points and assists with ease. Smith has a solid handle and size at the point guard position, deft passing, although he should probably be considered a scoring point guard with an ability to drill threes. He does make some sizzling plays with the ball and has a very strong first step. He will need to show he won’t be turnover prone when he faces the faster hands of college defenders and be able to drive and score against college zone defenses.

He is known for his explosive above-the-rim play, but at the college level that is not where guards make their mark, rather the running of the team and keeping defenses honest with his outside shooting touch. Very few college point guards are able to drive into the lane and score in the half court. Probably the best I’ve seen at the college level at that was Chris Paul, but I do like Smith’s ability to do this so far. Smith is at the ability level where playing in the NBA at some point is a possibility, but he will have to prove he can make the transition from being an elite high school player to being an elite college player and then beyond in order for that to happen. No doubt talented and athletic enough to start at some point at the PG or SG position for an elite level program. He will need to show he can get his shots off against the longer defenders in the college game and handle the heavier ball pressure as well. I see Smith as a player whose potential is an NBA player, but at this point he is where I saw Tyus Jones two years ago; he has the potential but isn’t a pro lock yet and will have to show every season going forward that he can handle higher levels of pressure/athleticism. I recall NBA scouts telling me they weren’t high on Tyus Jones in high school partly because he always looked like he was going half-speed, and I think that perception may be there for Smith as well, but he is a gamer, and has the personality to handle the scrutiny of playing at a big time program.

Edrice Adebayo (PF, 6’10”, 2016) Northside – Adebayo is also a highly sought after recruit, and watching an early match up between he and big man Iran Bennett was telling. Bennett is a pure back-to-the-basket type of center, while Adebayo has a great build but is much more of a PF who plays facing the basket. Adebayo has great size to play the PF spot and showed an ability today to hit the 15-foot jumper. He also has great footspeed driving to the basket against bigs. However, it should be noted that the matchup with Bennett definitely showed that the two players are definitely not players at the same position, as Adebayo had trouble with Bennett’s strength and size on the blocks while Bennett struggled when Adebayo pulled him away from the basket and slashed to the hoop. Adebayo can get minutes on major college programs his first year, but I think he should definitely look at a school that has the size to play him at the 4 spot.

He can play in the open court and half court equally and has great hands. He also plays above the rim and reminds me a bit of Montrezl Harrell in his attack of the rim.

Jalen Harris (PG, 6’1″, 2016) Greenfield School – Harris is a gifted slasher and ballhandler. His best asset is his first step – it’s extremely hard for defenders to stay in front of him. However, he shows a fluid release and an ability to score from outside as well. Plays as a true PG, eyes up, running the offense. Needs to add strength, but I see Harris’ potential as higher than some other scouts. He is currently rated as a LM Division I guard but I see his potential more in the MM+ range.

Sacha Killeya-Jones (PF/C, 6’10”, 2016) Virginia Episcopal School – The Virginia Cavaliers commit showed his length and agility in the post. Slender and will need to continue to add strength, but has very good passing ability in the post and a lot of upside. Length is at the elite college big man level; Killeya-Jones is one of those big men who should develop into a go-to guy at the 4 or 5 spot on offense but also add a ton of defensive length inside.

Quate McKinzie (F, 6’7″, 2016) Harrells Christian Academy – was good the last time I saw him but has improved by leaps and bounds already and colleges who watched him in the past should be keeping up. Has excellent passing skills from the SF or PF spot but has good rebounding timing and athleticism. Very good defender with length.

Aaron Cash (SF, 6’6″, 2018) Word of God – really like the potential of Cash, who has exceptional timing and athleticism on both ends of the floor. Already has the look of a college prospect at the 3 spot but plays both 3 and 4 at the high school level right now. Has heard from NC State, Syracuse and others and it’s not surprising.

Dondre Griffin (G, 6’4″, 2016) Knightdale HS – Strong guard with quick release and shooter’s mentality. Warmed up early and starting draining buckets. Whenever the defense would sag in transition, he would take advantage. Has an easy release and probably should be considered a combo guard at this point but has good size for the position. Definitely see him as a Division I guard.

Deshaun Leftwich (G, 6’3″, 2017) Trinity Christian – explosive guard who has a deadly first step and great quicks. Active in the defensive passing lanes and was able to get to the rim, but also had some excellent on ball defense.

Andrew Tuazama (F, 6’5″, 2018) Knightdale HS – Great timing on blocks and athleticism on the break. Listed as a Power Forward for Knightdale but looks more like a SF at the college level at this point.

Iran Bennett (C, 6’10”, 2016) Greater Emmanuel Prep Academy – Bennett is a space-eater big, a back to the basket post player with excellent hands and good footwork. Best in the halfcourt and a below the rim type big, he has good shot blocking timing and was hard to handle on the blocks all day. Had a nice runback block in transition. Conditioning will be a factor at the college level but a strong player who likes to mix it up in the post. Really good on the pick and roll.

Todd Smith (SG, 6’4″, 2017) Freedom Academy – good shooting form and size on the wing, one of the better shot releases I’ve seen recently.

Tavion Atkinson (SF, 6’6″, 2017) Red Springs HS- good length, active rebounder and good in transition. Was able to finish through contact and has excellent size. Was active all day and is a perimeter wing.

Cory Gensler (SG, 6’4″, 2016) Cary HS – Gensler is a pure shooting guard who uses his quick release to get up volume shots in both spot up transition opportunities and in the half court. Good rebounding timing from the SG spot and good length. Gensler averaged 24+ ppg this high school season.

Tyrique McClain (G, 6’3″, 2016) – Wayne Christian – deft handle, good size and great hesitation dribble and good crossover. Was able to put his defender on his heels with the dribble in the halfcourt.

David Caraher (SF, 6’6″, 2017) Chapel Hill HS – Butler commit, super quick hands and really at his best playing the passing lanes in the open court or on the move on the break in transition. Has a really quick release on the move and can get buckets in a hurry. Has a good handle at the SF spot and will see minutes at Butler.

DeShawn Patterson (PG, 5’10”, 2016) – Victory Christian HS – I wrote about Patterson a couple of weeks ago and he’s got one of the better handles in the state at the moment. Doesn’t turn the ball over and has a lot of flash to his game. Won the 3 point shooting contest and can play through contact. I think one somewhat overlooked aspect of Patterson’s game is his assists/TO ratio, which is through the roof. Often has double-digit assist games and averaged 5 steals per game for Victory Christian last season.

Michael Pippins (PF, 6’8″, 2016) DH Conley HS – Pippins has the look of a small forward in agility but plays in the paint and really goes hard at the rim. Above the rim post player with a lot of versatility and great hands – catches off the bounce and throws it down or takes one quick step to get inside the defender for the rim rocker.

Tahj Small (SG, 6’4″, 2017) Northern Durham HS – Active shooting guard with good length and a really nice slashing ability and showed he could finish inside. Will be even more effective as he continues to add strength.

Michael Okauru (SG, 6’4″, 2017) Ravenscroft – Okauru is known as a ‘buckets machine’ and adds instant offense to any lineup. Long, slashing shooting guard who is extremely difficult to stop on the break. I’ve rarely seen even good shot blockers be able to get to his quick shot and he uses a deft finger roll to get layups off at full speed. That said, today Okauru was usually focused on showing more passing ability, working to find teammates on cuts and was less focused on getting his own points. I note this because I think it’s important to see when players are actively working on expanding their game and it definitely seems like Okauru wasn’t as concerned with getting points, which he is known for already, but rather was using the event to get open run against high level players and work on some other areas.

Lavar Batts (PG, 6’2″, 2017) Jay M Robinson HS – Considering how much I’ve covered the region and conference where Batts plays I regret not scouting him much during this past high school season. I liked Batts since seeing him last year during the AAU/grassroots season of 2014 and his matchups with Dennis Smith, Jr. were one of the better one-one-one guard battles of the day. Batts is a full court speed demon, and makes very good decisions on the break. Handle is good and he has active defensive hands in the open court. A good pressing guard at full court and has the speed to play his man close.

Tremaine Lawrence (G/F, 6’4″, 2017) Quality Education Academy – Lawrence is a versatile perimeter player who already has an above the rim game and is good at finding gaps in the defense for the mid range. Good in both the full court and half court and moves well without the ball. Has some really nice blocks on the move in transition.

Kaleb Hunter (G, 6’4″, 2017) North Releigh Christian Academy – great defensive length and has an ability to both pass and slash to the bucket. Also has a nice touch from the mid range and I never saw him get out of control or charge the basket at the wrong time.

Devontae Shuler (G, 6’3″, 2017) Irmo HS (SC) – I’ve seen Shuler multiple times and he was one of the best looking guards today, right along with Smith and Harris. Shuler is very fast end-to-end and gets right to the rim and is very effective in open court chaos. Has an attacking mentality and when the defense is out of sorts or doesn’t sprint back after a basket, Shuler is the type of guard who will run up their backs and score. Really solid player with a lot of interest and could have a breakout AAU season.

Justice Kithcart (PG, 6’2″, 2016) Virginia Episcopal School – Kithcart is a player who I’ve liked for a while and was not surprised to see his recruitment pick up heavily this year. Was hitting threes early but was playing off the ball much of the day and wasn’t able to showcase his floor general skills quite as much, but Kithcart is a competitor who takes on any matchup and will add toughness to a college roster.

Tyler Creammer (C, 6’11”, 2016) The Miller School – Creammer is often lauded for his stellar GPA (4.7!) but he continues to develop into a solid big man with great hands and excellent decision making. Rarely have I seen Creammer make a bad choice with the ball or pass, runs the floor hard and passes well from the post. Has continued to get stronger and is a back-to-the-basket big on both ends.

Ian Boyd (PG, 6’3″, 2016) Apex HS – I feel like Boyd continues to be one of the more underrated guards in the state, and has improved his floor general skills over the past year. He already has great physical tools and control, finds players with the pass but can also drive and finish in traffic in the lane. Boyd holds offers from Division I schools for football, but isn’t sure which direction he wants to go (football or basketball) at this point, and I think that schools may be holding off thinking he’s a lock for football. That said, I still see him as a really solid college prospect as a guard and is already bigger than many college guards with another year to go before graduation.

Jashuan Smith (SF, 6’5″, 2016) Garner HS – highlight reel dunker with a high motor and definitely some upside. Great end-to-end player and has elite athleticism that will serve him well at the next level. Was tending to fade on his shots today but was able to find open spots in half court and has a very high release and good elevation that is hard to defend.

J.J. Smith (SG, 6’5″, 2017) EE Smith HS – I have to give the nod to our fellow scout Charles Clark on J.J. Smith, who Charles saw as a Division I guard long before Smith had gotten any college offers. Explosive shooting guard with big time collegiate athleticism and size. Already has a good build and is a high octane, full court beast who likes to finish above the rim.

Greyson Kelley (G, 6’2, 2016) North Raleigh Christian Academy – I will be blunt; Kelley is one of the most underrated guards in the state, but I understand why. On one hand, Kelley is not overlooked, as most regional scouts include him as one of the top 60 or 80 players in the state of NC regardless of class. However, Kelley is an undersized combo guard who doesn’t have the ‘sizzle reel’ game of high flying guards or elite passers. That said, I have seen Kelley now in multiple environments – open gym, AAU, high school and showcases – and I’ve never seen him not flat out ball. That sounds like slang, but it’s the only way to describe his game. Open court steals, stop-and-pop shots on the run, circus moves in traffic to finish, no look precision passes to the perfect open teammate, he just always makes a play even when it seems there’s nothing there. The reality is that right now he’s more of a scoring guard with a good handle and good passing, but I think he’s the kind of player where some college will get a steal who will be great on their roster for four years.

Ian Steere (PF, 6’8″, 2018) Village Christian – I’ve seen Steere in the past and have seen his monster dunks in transition before; today was looking to hit the 18 footer and although he was inconsistent early, his release is really solid and he started clicking with his shot as the games progressed. Has a great build and I really like his upside. As a power forward he’s got great game facing the basket and should develop into a difficult player to guard at the 4 spot.

Eyisi Brown (C, 6’10”, 2018) Quality Education Academy – The big name post players coming into the day were Iran Bennett and Edrice Adebayo, but I have seen Brown in the past and I think he is a high major big man who is active, agile and runs the floor like a small forward. One of the most mobile big men I’ve seen at the high school level in some time. Absolutely runs the pick and roll to perfection and has excellent rebounding timing. I will definitely be watching Brown more this year as I think he could play in any conference and be effective.

Blake Harris (G, 6’3″, 2017) Carlisle School – Quick and has a nice ability to weave through traffic with the dribble in the half court. Does tend to show the ball a little too much with the dribble and will need to improve that at the college level. Nice passing vision and is at his best when putting pressure on the D with his dribble, while simultaneously looking for the open man when the defense adjusts. Want to reiterate that point here: Harris puts the ball on the floor, drives into the gaps of the defense in the half court set, and is actively looking because he knows the defense is going to scramble to cover and leave someone open, and he hits that player with the pass.

Isaiah Whaley (F/C, 6’9″, 2017) Ashbrook HS – Good athlete and has the size but would like to see him become more assertive in the post. Should continue to improve in this area and is a very mobile big man.

Emmanuel Ugboh (C, 6’10”, 2016) Elite Prep – Ogboh is a force in the paint and once he gets a hand on the ball he never loses it. Good outlet passer and has good power in the post.

DaShawn Corprew (G, 6’3″, 2016) Quality Education Academy – A late addition to the event but always a gamer who makes things happen with the pass or dribble. Athletic guard with size and the handle to play point or shooting guard.

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Want more scouting notes? You can follow Marcus Shockley on Twitter, right this second @m_shockley

Notre Dame's Zach Auguste (30) celebrates after making a foul shot with time running down in the second half of an NCAA tournament second round college basketball game against Northeastern, Thursday, March 19, 2015, in Pittsburgh. Notre Dame won 69-65 to advance to the third round. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

“Bubble Team” is a term that gets heavy use starting around mid-February and peaks on Selection Sunday every year, when the NCAA Selection Committee has to decide which of the teams who have no chance of winning a title had a ‘good enough’ season to be included in the Big Dance, a.k.a. the NCAA Tournament.

But the importance of Bubble Teams is negligible, and once the first weekend of the tournament tips off, dubbed ‘March Madness’ primarily because of the massive amount of games and unexpected upsets in the opening days, nobody thinks about “Bubble Teams” any more. At that point, a team is either in or not, and there’s any team left out just has a ‘burst’ bubble.

But there is a phenomenon which occurs annually in the NCAA tournament which gets little coverage but is far more important in the overall basketball scheme of things, and that is the fact that individual players can go from (relative) obscurity to national prominence in a few games. Some have gone from regional stars to NBA first rounders with a stratospheric performance in the tournament. Recent examples include Steph Curry and Kemba Walker, both who were considered to be having solid collegiate seasons but landed themselves on the NBA radar following their highlight reel games.

So, who in this year’s tournament may take themselves from a solid college player to a possible pro career? It’s hard to predict, but consider that a player doesn’t have to land in the NBA to get paid to play, and players who play at the highest levels of foreign leagues make significant salaries as well. Playing well in the annual NCAA Tournament is creating a ‘sizzle reel’ that can be sold to teams overseas pretty easily, especially if the player has the size to compete in the post.

As the games continue through the first weekend, we may start getting some names shaking out that qualify, but guys like Zach Auguste (PF, 6’10”, Junior) for Notre Dame is a player who was barely ranked as a Top 100 player coming out of high school, and yet played toe-to-toe this season against the likes of likely one-and-done and potential #1 pick Jahlil Okafor and took on a deep UNC big man lineup by himself. A deep run for Notre Dame could be just the ticket to set up Auguste for a pro look.

Other players, like Wisconsin’s center Frank Kaminsky is already considered an NBA prospect, but most analysts have him as a mid-to-late first rounder. If Wisconsin makes a deep run, which is likely, scouts and national media will get a better look at Kaminsky’s multiple offensive moves in the post and ability to stroke the deep ball.

I love watching some players come into their own during tournament time; normally, it’s not that the player suddenly arrives at March Madness and turns into a superstar; the fact is generally, those players were already having stellar seasons but weren’t getting national recognition and weren’t playing in front of a national audience. You’d think that playing against Duke and other high majors, and being the son of a former NBA player would have put Steph Curry more on the NBA radar, but leading his Davidson team deep into the tournament with spectacular performances are what suddenly made the pros start paying attention. Click here for more information https://roadtoreno.com/.

I’d love to do follow up pieces on this during the tournament and start seeing who emerges. While it may be someone who college basketball fans already know, it could just as well be someone whose school doesn’t play on national television all season.

Stay tuned.

Peter Jok Iowa

Some schools want to win, and will pay to get it done.

A new report from the Des Moines Register have five years of data (along with USA Today) that show a massive spending difference in recruiting budget versus other area schools:

ISU ranks No. 8 nationally out of more than 200 public universities that play at the NCAA Division I level in the five school years from 2008-09 to 2012-13. ISU’s average expense computes to $260,767 annually, according to detailed data provided to the Des Moines Register through open-records requests gathered by USA TODAY.

Winning at college athletics – at least at the big money sports like football and basketball isn’t just about school pride. It’s big business. Anyone who thinks a college would spend over a quarter of a million dollars per year (and rank 8th in the country in spending, not first) just because of school pride of because they want to support student athletes is just kidding themselves. Or, getting a cut.