Typically the event brings some of the best rising Juniors and Seniors from across the country, though the talent level was significantly diluted this weekend due to the presence of a competing and conflicting Nike Elite Youth Basketball League event this weekend in Los Angeles.
The Gibbons tournament is in its 17th year. Bob Gibbons was a North Carolina high school coach, based in Lenoir, who pioneered the development of modern era national recruiting services in the late 1970s. Over 300 colleges subscribed to his scouting newsletters and reports. Once the Internet fireball hit, the whole marketplace exploded. There are over 75 national recruiting services in existence today.
I usually prefer to take in the games at the Smith Center (where 3 games are run simultaneously), But this year we headed to the games on the Duke Campus. One day pass is $5.00 with $10.00 for the weekend pass. Games at the Duke Campus are held at Cameron Indoor Stadium as well as Card Gym and Wilson Rec Center right across from Cameron.
It had been 5 years or so since I had been in Cameron and there are new basketball practice facilities adjacent as well as a new Duke Sports Hall of Fame.
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Inside the Seating Bowl. The arena itself of course is a historic venue.
Crow's Nest. Had been interested in checking out the Crow's Nest (an area basically carved out of the rafters where national TV crews do their business). I can only imagine how tightly cramped (and hot) those quarters become when you try to squeeze in a play-by-play guy, a color analyst like big Coach Rick Majerus or Lennie Elmore, and required production folks in that nest.
Concourse. Since my last time there the concourse had received a new makeover, but there is only so much lipstick you can put on the infrastructure of a building that opened in 1940.
Hall of Fame. A recent edition is a new Duke Sports Hall of Fame (which is inside of Cameron).
These events are sparsely attended (even in basketball crazy North Carolina). As a result, you can often find yourself sitting by family members and acquaintances of the players.
In 2003, we had the unfortunate experience of sitting by the mother of Josh Smith. He was playing along with Dwight Howard on a loaded 17-Under Atlanta Celtics team. Mom may be a wonderful person when not watching Josh play, but she spent the entire game bad-mouthing the guards on her son's team. The thing that bothered me was that the kids she was ridiculing were playing hard and were not playing that poorly. They were mid-major prospects playing against a future NBAer in Jordan Farmar. Josh went pro straight out of high school the next year and he made $10.8 million last season. Mom is probably set for life now and couldn't give two cents about my opinion, but she reminded me of an obnoxious Little League Mom.
No issues with bad parents this year. Midway between the second game, Tyler Zeller (rising junior at UNC) and his parents sat down in our section preparing to watch another Zeller (Cody) play for the Indiana Elite team. (A third seven-foot Zeller brother - Luke - graduated from Notre Dame last year.) What in the hell do they feed those kids? Mom and Dad are big people, but seemed to be very relaxed and laid back and cheered for all of their son's teammates.
They were joined by a young man wearing Indiana University basketball shorts who had all the looks of an assistant coach. He made small talk with the Zellers the entire game. (I have been trying to figure out if he indeed is a member of Tom Creen's staff.) Of course, since this is a Dead Period for college basketball recruiting, in-person contact between a coach and a recruit is not permitted - but assuming he even was a coach, nothing wrong about being seen or making sure Mom and Dad are doing OK.
Correction - The NCAA Recruiting Calendar for Men's Basketball shows this to be a Quiet Period . During Quiet Periods, a coach is permitted to have direct contact with a recruit only if the recruit makes an unofficial visit to that coach's campus. For on-campus tournaments held in the Quiet Period, a loophole allows, effectively, any one of the players in town this weekend (after being eliminated from the tournament) to stroll into the office of Coach K or Roy Williams and chew the fat. The rich get richer.
As if the cynicism quotient on this blog already isn't high enough, I have to go there one more time. Coach K is a Hall-of-Fame Coach. His teams always 1) Play hard 2) Play together. His record speaks for itself - think about 77-22 in the NCAA Tournament. But at some point he morphed into something more - a motivational and leadership guru with wisdom to impart to folks in all walks of life beyond just basketball. Fair enough. He certainly isn't the first coach to cash in on this gig and there seems to be no shortage of corporate suckers that will gladly lap this stuff up. ($40K+ an engagement plus travel expenses - only in America).
One of the offshoots of this more-than-just-a-basketball-coach thing is the K Academy. It is a fantasy camp where you pay $10,000 dollars and for five days, get wisdom from the master and play on a team coached by a Blue Devil great. Apparently, this is a big deal as K has elevated a K Academy Championship to a status just below an NCAA Title.
Amazing. So for 10K and five days of physical sacrifice at the Washington Duke Inn and Golf Course, some corporate titans can be immortalized in Cameron by leading Team Battier to a K Academy 'ship. I wonder how the players who are responsible for those real NCAA titles feel about the positioning of those banners.
For all I know, those K Academy banners may be temporary and only there in the summer for the upcoming 2010 K Academy, but I can't resist a good rant - it is my blog and I'll rant if I want to :-)
The seamy side of AAU basketball has been well documented. Street agents and handlers. Shoe company influence, shady coaches, and boosters. But all of that crap goes out the window at the center jump - then it is just ball.
Sports in America is an incredibly meritorious system and nowhere more so as in basketball. These kids get to this point only with an incredible amount of hard work. Some of them will make it to the next level and an elite few to the NBA. It is fashionable to bash the quality of play - I bemoan the lack of mid-range game - everything is either dribble penetration or a three. But I saw four entertaining games on Saturday and it was a great time. Even got a chance to see Pitt Recruit John Johnson put up 35 or so in a losing effort for Team Philly.
