For the better part of three days, the Nike All-America Camp in Indianapolis was a model of what a national high school ``invitation only’’ camp should be all about.
The camp was limited to about 130 players, there were only two games played simultaneously (on side-by-side courts in the National Institute of Fitness and Sport gymnasium) and the players, the vast majority of time, shared the basketball, took relatively ``good’’ shots on most possessions and made an effort to play solid defense, both on the half-court level and in transition.
All of that admirable basketball etiquette got tossed into the Monday morning garbage Sunday night.
Both the underclassmen and seniors all-star games quickly turned into run-and-gun affairs, with little effort to pass the ball enough times to get quality (aka, ``open’’) shot attempts and even less effort to run back in defensive transition.
All the while, hip-hop beat steadily over the public address system.
Hey! I’m as big a fan of the movie ``Hustle and Flow’’ as the next 51-year-old who believes ``Straight Outta Compton’’ is one of the 10 best records produced in America in the past three decades.
In fact, I bought the ``Hustle and Flow’’ CD as well as DVD and I truly believe Terrence Howard was every bit as deserving as was Philip Seymour Hoffman (the winner for ``Capote’’) for the 2005 Best Actor Oscar.
But I want to focus on basketball when I’m in a gym with the purpose of watching basketball.
In hindsight, I’d have passed on the all-star games Sunday Night and put my time to better use by spending a couple of extra hours trying to rate most of the players based upon how they played when I watched them Friday, Saturday and in the morning and early afternoon Sunday.
By the way, if you’ve ever attended a Pangos Camp in the Warrior Center in Cypress and stayed for the final all-star game, you know exactly of the ``deterioration’’ of the quality of play I’m talking about.
OK, time to climb off the hoops soapbox before someone looks over my shoulder and smacks me upside the head over this display of ``basketball elitism’’. I do feel a lot better right now.
Anyway, the best 10 prospects I observed among the seniors-to-be at the Nike Camp are (and roughly in this order): 6-foot-8 Kyle Singler (Medford, Ore., South), 6-9 Donte Greene (Baltimore Towson Catholic), 5-10 Jai Lucas (Bellaire, Texas), 7-0 Kosta Koufos (North Canton, Ohio, East), 6-7 Robbie Hummel (Valparaiso, Ind.), 6-8 Patrick Patterson (Huntington, W.V.), 6-3 E’Twuan Moore (East Chicago, Ind., Central), 6-4 Nick Calathes (Casselberry, Fla., Lake Howell), 6-6 John Diebler (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) and 6-5 James Anderson (Junction City, Ark.).
And the five juniors that impressed me the most are: 6-10 Greg Monroe (Grenta, La., Helen Cox), 6-10 Xavier Gibson (Dothan, Ala., Northview), 6-8 Samardo Samuels (Newark, N.J., St. Benedict’s), 6-7 Delvin Roe (Euclid, Ohio, St. Edward High) and 6-11 Kenny Frease (Massillon, Ohio, Perry).
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