Pulling Up the Roots
NBA, NCAA Aim to Change Youth Basketball
By Ray Mernagh

There's a commercial featuring current NBA Rookie of the Year Kevin Durant that's been running for several months now. In it, Durant walks through the darkened tunnel of an arena and as he walks he strips off one jersey to reveal another. It's a metaphorical book detailing Durant's journey to the NBA. He goes through five jerseys-a local Boys and Girls Club, a middle school, a high school, his McDonalds All-American jersey, and his University of Texas jersey-before he gets to his NBA uniform, when the caption on the screen reads "where the next chapter happens."

It's probably not a coincidence the NBA-produced advertisement left two of the most important chapters - jerseys - out of the story. Nowhere to be found are Durant's PG Jaguars or DC Blue Devil jerseys. Those are the AAU teams that Durant played for as a youngster in the Prince Georges area of Maryland. Prince Georges county, and the areas around it, have a structured system of about 90 AAU teams that play throughout the country each spring and summer. They allow kids to get exposure nationally for college scholarships, and also locally for private high school scholarships - something financially strapped families relish as it gives their kids an alternative to the less-than-ideal DC area public school system.

But the NBA doesn't want you to know about that.

You see, the NBA-along with its co-conspirator the NCAA-wants you to believe that all of AAU basketball is a cesspool of slime and corruption in need of a good cleansing. NBA commissioner David Stern and NCAA president Miles Brand want to organize the summer basketball circuit. And while they're at it, they'd also like to put tighter restrictions on opportunities for college coaches to watch players in the month of April. Something about the kids missing too much class time traveling to tournaments.

Both ideas are ludicrous, not to mention disingenuous. This "cleansing" is about two powerful entities-the NBA and NCAA-combining in an attempt to expand their control over young basketball players. You would think the NBA would be more concerned with the recent integrity problem they have concerning their officials, while the NCAA might want to concentrate on keeping agents out of their dormitories. Have the cases of Tim Donaghy and OJ Mayo taught us nothing?

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon believes the AAU system serves all of college basketball well, and that's what should be most important.

"It's not good for all of college basketball," Dixon says when asked about cutting back the April evaluation time. "Low-major and mid-major schools need that April period because it gives them an opportunity to see a lot of kids in one place that can help them, while also giving kids exposure for scholarships to those schools."

Dixon isn't really sold on the idea of the NBA/NCAA cleaning up AAU basketball either.

"It sounds good in theory, but who decides what exactly needs to be cleaned up?" wonders Dixon. "We always hear the bad or negative stories, but the truth is that a large majority of AAU is about coaches in the community giving their time to help kids get college scholarships."

Trafford native Sonny Vaccaro is the often controversial "Godfather of Grass Roots Basketball"-grass roots being the PC term for what is still widely known as AAU-and he has one question for the NBA and NCAA: "What gives you the right?"

"What rights do a professional league and a college entity-the NCAA-have over the future of people who aren't in either league?" asks Vaccaro. "We're talking about 15, 16 and 17-year-olds that are developing, and they're being told what camps they can go to, what tournaments they can play in - they don't have the right!"

Vaccaro echoes Dixon when talking about the majority of those involved in the AAU system being in it for the right reasons.

"The overwhelming majority of these people are doing it from the seat of their pants," says Vaccaro. "These are mom and pop operations that are local situations to provide kids an opportunity to play in tournaments and in front of coaches."

Vaccaro also makes the point, like Dixon, about the depth of the situation.

"We're not only talking about kids that grow up and go to Pitt," says Vaccaro, "but also kids who go to Robert Morris and Point Park and junior colleges, that's how deep this goes."

Vaccaro thinks arrogance has a great deal to do with the NCAA and NBA thinking they can get away with these changes. For proof of this, he points to the "one and done" rule that the NCAA agreed to. The last two college basketball seasons saw, for the first time in many years, players that were talented enough for the NBA forced to play in college for a year before being able to enter the league.

Call it a quid pro quo, if you will.

For years the NCAA has provided the NBA with a free minor league system, but once Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant proved more than ready for the league-without the usual stopover on campus-both the NCAA and NBA had a problem. For the NCAA the problem was that the product on the floor was somewhat diminished, while the NBA missed out on the free marketing that both ESPN and CBS-owners of the $6 billion broadcast behemoth that is the NCAA Tournament-provided for players soon to enter the league. So the NBA instituted a one-year-in-college-rule to help the NCAA market stars like Kevin Durant and Greg Oden for a full year before signing their first pro contracts. It was a win-win situation - except for the players.

Lost amid all the talk about the United States Olympic basketball failures and lack of fundamentals was the fact that a small group of really talented basketball players-mostly African Americans-were being denied the right to earn a living even though they were qualified to so.

Funny, but nobody seemed to have a problem when Sidney Crosby chose not to go to college. Crosby worked all his life to be a professional hockey player in the Canadian junior system, and when the time came for him to join the NHL at 18 he did so. Then again, hockey isn't a revenue sport for the NCAA the way basketball is.

Kevin Durant spent his first eight years of basketball drilling under coaches like Taras Brown with the PG Jaguars. He'd spend up to eight hours a day working on his game, having his mom bring his lunch and dinner to the gym as he chased his dream. Durant wears uniform No. 35 in honor of Brown because his first coach died unexpectedly at 35 years of age.

Somebody needs to re-shoot that commercial.