chi

SoCalHoops Commentary

A Counterpoint To The CHI Series On The Summer Season--(Aug. 3, 1998)

We just re-read George Rodecker's as yet incomplete series on basketball summer camps, recruiting, and the "shoe" wars, which is running over at College Hoops Insider. We've never met Mr. Rodecker, but we're concerned about the tone and, in some cases, the content of his series of articles about the summer "recruiting" period and perceived abuses of the current system. As you read the following article, you'll notice that it's long on innuendo and a bit short on facts. Some of the ideas are good, others are, in our opinion, ill-conceived. So we've tried to give another perspective to some of the statements with a bit of commentary interspersed. Here's the article with our commentary. If you've got some thoughts on this subject, feel free to write and let us know what you think.

Part 3

"It's totally out of control "

An interview with Ron Naclario - NYC High School Coach

George Rodecker, College Hoops Insider

Ron Naclario is a New York City Public High School Coach. The lifelong resident of Queens has been coaching at Benjamin Cardozo High School in his native Queens for over 20 years, 17 of them as the head basketball coach. He also works for The Hoop Scoop, a high school recruiting/player evaluation service. He has served as the New York City Editor since its inception in the early 80's. Ron also co-authored a book titled "Sweet Pea and other playground legends: tales of drugs, violence and basketball" with John Valente of Newsday. Anyone familiar with the New York Metropolitan area basketball scene knows Ron. He is literally everywhere. We mutually agreed to the interview while we were both in Philadelphia to watch Fresno State take on Temple. Ron was there to watch one of his prize graduates Rafer Alston, the Fresno State point guard. When we finally got together to do the interview, it was three weeks later at the ECAC Holiday Classic Final between Princeton and Niagara in New York City. Always perpetual motion, I was lucky to catch him sitting still long enough to slow down and speak with me. Ron Naclario offered up his thoughts on the summer camp situation with CHI's George Rodecker on December 27.

CHI: The whole concept of the summer camps is under criticism. There appears to be too much outside influence around the kids. Fingers point to the AAU, college coaches the NCAA as well as your fraternity: high school coaches. What's your read on this?

RN: I'm a high school coach and that means that I'm with my kids 12 months a year. I want to make sure that when they're playing outside ball, that they are with people I trust. A lot of the outside people may do good as far as getting them exposure by taking them to the right tournaments, but they're often unable to give them any coaching or they won't be able to correct any of their mistakes. So, all of a sudden bad habits can develop. The other problem is that once the AAU coaches start getting involved, they find out that by having the better players on their team, they can end up getting invited to the better tournaments. Then they get the plane tickets free, and then all of a sudden their teams are getting sponsored by sneaker companies and getting sneakers for free that enable them to go out and recruit even more kids. Eventually, they end up getting a salary from the sneaker companies as a consultant. Then it becomes a matter of the AAU coaches wanting to control your kid instead of you lending your kid to the AAU coaches for the summer.

SoCalHoops: If Mr. Naclario is with his kids "12 months a year" then he is certainly the exception to the rule. Most high school coaches aren't as dedicated and many don't do anything with their kids once the season ends. As far as "bad habits" developing or what the "right tournaments" are is really anybody's guess.

CHI: People constantly use the term street agent. How would you define a street agent?

RN: A street agent is a person who is involved in basketball strictly for his own personal gain. Often the street agent seeks to gain control over a player to get him to choose to attend a school from which he, the street agent, receives perks for himself in the form of kickbacks. Those kickbacks can be free tickets that he can scalp and receive money for, or it could be some grateful booster paying him off. On the pro level, if a street agent gets a player delivered to a professional player representative, he can expect to receive one to two percent of that players salary. A professional player representative can expect 4% of a $3 million salary, which is $120,000 annually, he then pays the street agent 1 or 2% of the players salary. That's $30-$40,000- $50,000 a year for the street agent. Most professional player representatives aren't going to say no to the person delivering a kid at his feet. "If you can get me a client guaranteed to make me $150,000 a year, I'll gladly give you $50,000 of it just to easily get a easy $100,000".

SoCalHoops: What "street agents" have to do with the vast majority of high school players or the system of summer open evaluation is really a mystery.

CHI: How does anyone regulate these street agents?

RN: It's almost impossible to regulate the street agent. If you can put the whole process into the right peoples hands, where they, the right people, can do more, then the wrong people have less of an influence and less of a chance to do what they do. If the high school coaches actually can get involved with helping the kids to select schools and the college coaches and the high school coaches jointly get involved with choosing an agent or a financial planner, then the process may improve. If a particular kid is that good, then you can hopefully eliminate the street agent. The other problem you have is that the high school guys do not know that much about this whole process or you have college coaches with ulterior motives themselves. They just go from one kid to the next and don't really care about the kids themselves at all.

SoCalHoops: Let's see, "if the high school coaches can actually get involved. . ." What's stopping them now? If they're involved 12 months out of the year, then why aren't they helping kids choose schools. Where are they now? Are they uninvolved? If so, we suggest that it's by choice and not by design. A coach will get involved if he wants to or is dedicated enough to do so. And what makes a college or high school coach qualified to pick "an agent or financial planner?" If they were adept at representation of professional athletes or financial planning would they be coaches or wouldn't they be agents or financial planners themselves. The idea of "legislating" such involvement or counseling seems, at best, not well taken, and at worst, foolish.

CHI: What would the NCAA have to do to enable high school coaches to have more control and take the street agents and move them out of the game?

RN: The big thing is to move the recruiting to during the high school year and then the summer recruiting becomes a dead period. By doing this, you would increase the value and the need of all the legitimate recruiting evaluation services such as Bob Gibbons, Tom Kachalski, The Hoop Scoop and Recruiting USA. Then the college coaches subscribe to them and theses services go out and do your leg work for all the schools. You read it in August and then figure who you want to go out and go after to recruit. You need to change the way the process is now. If an AAU coach has money and wants to go out and break the rules, there is nothing you can do about it. If you are a high school coach, then you are likely also a teacher. Breaking the rules might cost you your job. You are governed by a set of rules and regulations.

SoCalHoops: We've got a news flash: College coaches will subscribe to the better scouting services no matter when the recruiting period takes place. The cost of these scouting services is nominal, and for a major program, hardly shows up as a line item in a budget of millions of dollars. Secondly, who's going to see the kids during the high school season? College coaches who are busy with their own teams? Is a major college program going to be able to visit a small school in a rural area which may only have one player who is worthy of a visit? Rather than benefiting the players who are looking for the scholarships, this attempt to "return to the past" seems designed only to stroke the egos of the high school coaches, many of whom do not have the first idea of how to get their players recruited.

CHI: What about some of the high school coaches who are said to recruit their teams from all over the country. How does that element of the equation get controlled?

RN: It's almost impossible to curtail or control recruiting on the high school level. I see what is going on here in the east and the northeast with certain schools. Like Mt. Zion Christian Academy in Durham, North Carolina. All of a sudden, they're receiving money from recent graduate Tracy McGrady. It's rumored that their coach got a couple of hundred thousand dollars from the McGrady adidas sneaker contract and the school supposedly got even more. So if you can go out and get the right kid, It'll help put money in your pocket. But on a local level, it's almost impossible. How can you tell your kid that you want him to go to a junior college rather than to Princeton, if he has the grades just because of the money involved. How can you tell a kid not to go to a certain school because once there, the coach might treat him like a father figure would; disciplining him, working with him, as well as giving him a kick in the butt when he needs it. Just forcing him to do the right thing. A lot of these kids come from single parent families, and that is a very hard thing to do. Coaching in certain schools means more than at other schools.

SoCalHoops: Er, um, ok. Can you repeat that?

CHI: What are the difficulties and the temptations for a high school coach like yourself in today's environment? How do you manage dealing with it?

RN: If I have a kid in the NBA that I have done everything that I can for, and then someone comes along at a late stage and all of a sudden, he's making a hundred thousand dollars a year off the kid agent-wise. I've done the same thing before and never got a penny for it. You see so many of the high school coaches getting consulting fees for this and that, I feel that I'm doing just as much for my kids as they are, so you say why can't I get a little piece of the pie. I feel that I do just as good a job if not more. I have never had anyone approach me about doing something for my kids or me. And I don't work with just the kids on my team. I work with kids all throughout New York City.

SoCalHoops: We agree, high school coaches should be paid more. So should sanitation engineers, nurses, most government workers, and anyone who works for a non-profit or charitable enterprise. And other than expressing his frustration with being underpaid, we trust that Mr. Naclario isn't suggesting that a pro player should be required to give some of his contract money to anyone in particular. We suspect that when pro players give up a portion of their earnings it's because the person getting a "piece of the pie" really did something to enhance the economic value of the player. And how do you legislate loyalty? In short, you can't.

CHI: You have had a couple of prime time high school players such as Rafer Alston and Duane Woodward. What went on in their AAU play and college recruiting that was less than above board.

RN: What I didn't like was that these two kids are very different. Rafer Alston is a kid who is a very high level player. Because of his academics he had to either go through the junior college route or prep school route, and there were some schools that I knew came in and had street agents trying to do something as far as getting the kid his diploma and were looking at getting some alumnus to get him to sit out and go to a big time school. Well, if he starts out cheating in the beginning, in the end, he is going to expect things to be handed to him. Duane was a late developer; the schools that came after him did it as an afterthought. I am seeing it now with Duane's younger brother Brian. He already has the grades and he will be a very high level player like Rafer. You can start seeing the schools coming at him and the AAU coaches trying grab him and telling him what they can do for him. "If you play for me, I can get you to the 5 Star camp for free and I can get you an SAT score and get you free sneakers". It unfortunately overrates the kids' importance in the world, instead of letting him know that he has to work for everything he gets.

SoCalHoops: Again, unfortunately, Mr. Naclerio's perception of events here does happen. Offers of shoes and camps are one thing, but an SAT score, now that's an interesting "offer". And here is where parents, strong high school coaches, and good common sense come in. Don't steal, don't do drugs, don't cheat.

CHI: What influence do the sneaker companies exert at the high school level? At what price?

RN: If you are at the right high school, you are getting cash as well as getting sneakers, so that you can go to the tournaments. If you're with adidas or Nike, you can get invited to their respective tournaments. For example, a Nike triple-header is coming up January 11th at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It appears like every team involved is a Nike sponsored team. So it seems that when kids are picking schools, they're paying attention to which sneaker company is involved with the school, and what are they going to get and how many trips will they go on, instead of the academic programs the school offers.

SoCalHoops: Shoe company "involvement" is vastly over-rated. Sure the shoe companies "sponsor" camps and tournaments. But look at the Nike National Championships which just took place. Sure there were "Nike" sponsored squads. But there were also teams wearing nothing but Reebok (QBL Lakewood for example) and adidas. The Pump Best of Summer features kids who play for all different types of teams, including unsponsored high school teams. The Big Time features teams and players from all over, many not "sponsored" by shoe companies. The reality is that players play the game in as many different ways as there are to make a layup, and the shoe companies don't give their equipment away, they sell it at a discount. Shoe company involvement in the sport has increased the visibility of players, teams and the sport in general and has provided opportunities to players and schools they might never have had without such corporate sponsorship and underwriting.

CHI: What would you change about the summer camp and recruiting system that might improve the integrity of the whole process.

RN: The problem is that as long as you have the summer camps with the sneaker companies sponsoring them, the problems will continue. The sneaker companies don't really care if the college coaches are there or not. So they lose out on 500 coaches paying $100 each for the informational book they put together. It's really chump change in comparison to the big prize: a sneaker endorsement. As long as they can get the up and coming stars in their camps, that will give them the breakthrough to hopefully develop a relationship. Down the road if one of these kids becomes the next Kobe Bryant or Tracy McGrady, or potentially the next Michael Jordan, then they already have one foot in the door and a close relationship. At that point they can start greasing the kid so when it comes time to sit down, they already know him well enough and they can grab the kid for their own financial benefit. It's never going to be 100% right, but it's got to be changed, because right now, it's totally out of control.

SoCalHoops: Huh? Shoe companies don't care if college coaches see the players? Of course they do. And it's not exactly "news" that shoe companies want to sell shoes. So what's "out of control?" The summer hoops scene is no more "out of control" than is the regular high school basketball season. Open enrollment, illegal high school recruiting, and academic ineligibility violations. The summer season is in fact a pretty controlled environment. Ever attend one of these open evaluation events? College coaches can't even shake hands with a senior, and everyone knows the rules. Coaches watch, players play. And everybody's entitled to their own opinion. It's a little like watching a Vegas craps game: To the outsider, who doesn't understand the game, it's chaotic, with too much happening at once. But to those playing in the game, watching their own bets, the time between rolls of the dice can seem interminable. Controlled chaos. And the idea of legislating away the summer season strikes us as not a very good idea.