Glendora’s Casey Jacobsen writes about his AAU basketball experience in Slam Magazine

You have to read what Glendora High school’s Casey Jacobsen, a Tartans Hall of Famer and one of the best basketball players in Valley history, wrote in Slam Magazine on greed and corruption in AAU basketball.

Said Casey: “By the time I was 13, I was traveling all over California and Las Vegas, Nevada for AAU tournaments. When I arrived in high school, that is when things changed. I first noticed the change on the annual basketball tournament in Las Vegas. I went to a shopping mall with my team and coaches in the “Caesar’s Palace” hotel on the Vegas trip. I was 14 years old and a member of Southern California All-Stars, a collection of the best high school players in Los Angeles. The coach/owner of the team was a man named Pat Barrett, an employee of Nike and a well-known man in the AAU basketball circles. Mr. Barrett took all of us into this giant shoe store in the mall and told each kid that they can have any two pairs of Nike basketball shoes we wanted. I was so excited! Although we were already sponsored by Nike and wore their sneakers, I had never had a “shopping spree” (can two pair of shoes be considered a spree?) before. Little did I know, it was just the beginning of what was to come.”

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