BasketBall Connect

by Steve Mergelsberg

Sonny Vaccaro is ending his ABCD camp, the annual recruiting cattle call at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end for the summer hoops seasons filled with recruiting scandals, corrupt AAU coaches and backroom sneaker deals.

I am a former basketball coach on the high school, college and professional levels for over 25 years and know first hand how high school basketball has gotten "out of control"!

The NCAA has spent years trying to regulate these summer camps, when the better move would be to eliminate summer recruiting entirely. But any change to the current system will affect people financially. Changes would take money out of the coffers of Nike, Reebok and Adidas, the companies who hold these camps. Nike isn't interested in making a rising stud into a better player, it's interested in signing him to a contract. At these camps, the answer to the question, "Can he play?" isn't nearly as important as, "Can he sell?"

Every kid from the 8th to the 12th grade thinks he is going to play in the NBA! Hopefully, the ABCD departure from the summer scene is a start to bringing high school basketball back to a sense of reality for the kids. Maybe, the kids who attend these commercialized, profit-seeking meat factory camps will be more involved with their high school teams in the summer months instead of the seedy element surrounding summer recruiting.

It is all business with these high-profile summer camps and it is why our universities compromise what should be sacred academic standards to winning teams.
Lets hope the result will be better for basketball and the kids!