Jordan High Coach Massey a Nike veteran

"Hey Coach Massey, how are you doing?"

Ron Massey, the coach at Jordan High since the 1981-82 season, is in his 15th year as a member of the Nike All-America Camp’s academic staff.

But when Massey’s classroom duties at the camp are over for the morning, he sits in the stands with the likes of yours truly. Naturally, early Friday afternoon just moments after I arrived at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports (where most of the camp’s action is held, just a few blocks of the downtown and the RCA Dome) after a very early morning flight from Atlanta to Indy, I prompt Massey for his perspective on the talent at the camp that got underway on Wednesday.

"I like Big Baby," he said, nodding toward LSU All-America Glen Davis, one of the 30 or so college standouts disguised as camp counselors this week.

They’re being put through a two-hour workout directed by former Orange Coast College coach and UC Irvine assistant Herb Livsey and another former college coach and NBA scout, Tates Locke.

One of the guys putting the college players through the paces is Poly High graduate Ben McDonald, a former NBA player and college assistant.

"I like watching the college guys more than I do the high school players," Massey said, with scouts from a dozen or so NBA teams joining us in watching the likes of Davis, Taurean Gree, Al Horford and Corey Brewer of national champion Florida, Ronald Steele, Jermareo Davidson and Richard Hendrix of Alabama (which came so close to knocking off UCLA in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in March), D.J. White (Indiana), Roy Hibbert and Jeff Green (Georgetown) and Jared Dudley (Boston College) battling every big as intently as they will next season.

Nine of last season’s counselors were selected in the first round of the NBA Draft on June 28 and there could be just as many chosen in 2007.

But the primary purpose of the 21st version of the Nike Camp (which began in Princeton before moving to Indy in the early 1990s) is putting some of the top high school talent in the country on display.

And one of those players is a 6-foot guard from Loyola Academy in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette, Ill., Jeffrey Jordan. You might have heard of his father, who was seated in a folding chair along the baseline during Jeffrey’s camp game early Friday evening: Michael Jordan --- as in (arguably) the greatest all-around player in basketball history.

There were only a dozen players from California (compared to the 25 or so who were attending the adidas Superstar Camp in Suwanee, Ga., and a like number in Teaneck, N.J., for the Reebok/ABCD Camp, which are going on at the same time) at the camp.

But most of those, including sophomore twins David and Travis Wear and their senior Mater Dei teammates, Kamyron Brown and Alex Jacobson, Quinton Watkins (Dominguez), Chace Stanback (Fairfax) and Brandon Richardson (Hawthorne), played pretty well in the moments I was able to glance at their games Friday.

The best high school players I saw Friday: swingman Robbie Hummel (Valparaiso, Ind.; he’s going to attend either Indiana or Purdue), guard E’Twaun Moore (East Chicago, Ind.), guard Austin Freeman (Georgetown-bound from DeMatha High in Hyattsville, Md.) and Chris Wright (both of them; the 6-0 guard from St. John’s in Washington, D.C. and the 6-6 dunkaholic from Trotwood, Ohio).

The game wraps up with a Top 24 all-star game Sunday evening. I think I’ll stick around for it.