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NCAA Rd. 1: Letran leads 'Magic 4'
July 31, 2008
If the first round is an indication, expect more exciting action in the second round of Season 84 of the NCAA basketball tournament.
The Knights saw their sweep bid foiled no thanks to a 67-71 loss to the three-peat seeking San Beda Red Lions before a big Wednesday crowd at the Cuneta Astrodome.
Despite the loss, the Muralla-based dribblers remained atop the heap with a 6-1 (win-loss) slate, a full game ahead of the Jose Rizal Bombers and the Lions.
Jose Rizal, which edged Philippine Christian U, 60-58, is tied with San Beda at second spot on 5-2 cards but clinched the second seed following its king-sized 79-74 victory over the latter two weeks back.
At fourth spot was the Mapua Tech Cardinals, who are on a two-game slide to skid from No. 2, to No. 3, and finally, to where they are right now.
Mapua Tech has three losses against four wins.
Just barely outside the magic four were San Sebastian and College of St. Benilde with 3-4 cards apiece.
The Stags are riding the crest of a two-game streak while the Blazers just benefited from a Management Committee decision turning one of their four losses to a win against San Beda on the grounds that Nigerian Sam Ekwe wore a wrong uniform.
The Lions massacred the Blazers, 74-51, in that game.
At the bottom were PCU and Perpetual Help with 1-6 cards.
While the Altas lost their last six outings following a shock opening day win over San Sebastian, the Dolphins’ defeats were mostly heartbreakers.
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Basketball Getting Dunked in Las Vegas Cesspool: John Helyar
By John Helyar
July 31, 2008
Last week in Las Vegas, most of America's top teen basketball players made their last drives to the hoop and their last dives into the cesspool that is their summer circuit.
About 60 percent of the 250 top-ranked prep hoopsters played in one of three tournaments in Las Vegas, capping a two- month swirl of camps and tourneys at a wholly appropriate site.
This circuit is really run n' gun roulette -- each kid trying to display the kind of flashy game that can land a young baller on a winning number: a lush future National Basketball Association contract and a signature shoe line. Their futures are in the hands of power brokers in the stands -- some legit (college coaches and NBA scouts) and many as smarmy (agents and their so-called runners) as the seedier side of the Strip.
What kind of player-development ``system'' is this? By the time these hoops prodigies leave Las Vegas, many will have played 100 high-intensity games this summer. The Boston Celtics played 108 games in the whole 2007-2008 season. Yet the teenagers have done so not in the name of learning the game but to make a name for themselves.
This is clearly more a star search for shoe companies -- which underwrite much of the summer circuit -- than a way of honing competitive excellence. Basketball has globalized, as surely as other industries, and the American game hasn't been competing much better than American cars. A sampler of U.S. performances in international tourneys: sixth place, 2002 World Championship; bronze medal, 2004 Olympics; bronze medal, 2006 World Championship.
Better luck in Beijing, Coach K! But hey, you've got a big contract with Nike Inc.; you know what it's all about. The sleaze in prep hoops, which like the sun's arc peaks in summer, is less a breeder of champions than corruption.
O.J. Mayo
ESPN broke the latest scandal in May. Its ``Outside The Lines'' show reported that a ``runner,'' (basically, a rules- skirting go-between from agents to student athletes) had plied prep star O.J. Mayo with cash, clothes and more for years. The No. 3 pick of this year's NBA draft is now with the Memphis Grizzlies.
According to ESPN, the runner got his hooks into Mayo on the summer circuit, where this 15-year-old guard burst out of the obscurity of Huntington, West Virginia, into a top-ranked player nationally. The runner eventually delivered Mayo as a client to Los Angeles-based agent Bill Duffy, according to ESPN. All parties deny wrongdoing (the NCAA is now reportedly investigating), though Duffy and Mayo promptly severed ties.
Youth Initiative
The cesspool leaches into the NBA and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, of course, since they inherit the players shaped, or misshaped, by this culture. They became troubled enough to launch a joint cleanup effort in April called the Youth Basketball Initiative.
NBA Commissioner David Stern and NCAA President Myles Brand announced it with much fanfare (if few specifics) at college basketball's Final Four in San Antonio, but it sure seems like business as usual this summer.
If anything, the shoe companies are fighting for position with even sharper elbows. In June, Adidas AG busted off a nice move by taking 16 blue-chippers on a long trip to Africa for a tournament. Now that's how to play prep-star keep-away from Nike!
James Tyler of San Diego has been playing prep-star keep- away with Nike this summer, too. The Swoosh has been courting his son, Jeremy, now one of the nation's top-ranked rising juniors, since he was 13 years old and, as a 6-foot 8-inch man- child, laying waste to every middle-school team in his path.
LeBron Academy
The summer circuit provided Nike the ultimate enticement: an invitation last year to its LeBron James Skills Academy in Akron, Ohio. Jeremy Tyler was the sole rising sophomore invited to the crème de la crème of Nike's summer camps. Then again, he's considered the crème de la creme of his class, a 6-foot 11- inch forward out of San Diego High.
Yet James Tyler risked his son's top-stud status this summer by greatly reducing his time on the circuit, due to his great disgust.
``They're not interested in the kids,'' he says. ``They're only interested in getting the kids they can market.'' He refused to turn over his son for the summer to people who just wanted to turn a profit on him.
Tyler says he drew some of his strength to resist from the one summer stop with an anti-commercial agenda: the ``Top 100 Camp'' of the National Basketball Players Association. The NBPA bars agents, shoe people and other business reps from its Charlottesville, Virginia, grounds.
Top 100 Camp
The Top 100 Camp augments players' on-court time with lengthy off-court seminars on subjects like managing recruiting pressures and other stresses. The NBPA runs a parallel program during the camp to educate their parents in these areas.
That helped steel James Tyler for his defiance. When Nike started pressuring Jeremy to leave Top 100 early for its Amare Stoudemire ``big men'' camp, the father told them to get lost.
NBPA chief Bill Hunter sees Top 100 as empowering players and parents -- some have even started support networks -- but, he admits, ``It's gotten harder to get the superstar blue-chip kids.''
In a way, you can't blame these ballers for preferring flattery at shoe-camps to reality's bite at the Top 100. It's how they've been taught to play the game. Even Jeremy Tyler bucked his father last week and played Las Vegas, a place where reform looked like it had about as much chance as an ice cube on a sidewalk.
Months From Startup
Greg Shaheen, the NCAA's point man on the Youth Basketball Initiative, is more optimistic. That venture appears to be moving about as fast as a basketball before the 24-second shot clock, still months from startup. This isn't due to resistance from business interests, Shaheen insists, but because NCAA and NBA officials have been closely consulting with them and striving for consensus.
He reports that even those who reap commercial rewards off the summer circuit privately admit it's dysfunctional.
``This environment wasn't created in a day and it won't evolve in a day either,'' says Shaheen.
(John Helyar, co-author of ``Barbarians at the Gate,'' is an editor-at-large for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
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