One big risk: Kendrick Perkins is the best high school big man in the county. In his world, the 2003 NBA draft looms large. Should college coaches recruit him?

Sporting News, The, July 8, 2002 by Mike DeCourcy

Kendrick Perkins climbs out of bed so early each morning he occasionally beats the humidity to the Ozen High track. He steps onto its surface by 6 a.m. to begin his daily workout routine, which includes two hours of running, two of weightlifting, two more spent developing his skills and, later on, another mile jog just to show he's serious about all this.

He runs to gain stamina, lifts to gain muscle and practices to gain confidence and precision with his scoring moves. Those are the nominal reasons Perkins, a resident of Beaumont, Texas, and the best high school center in America, spends so much of each summer day in training. The practical reason for his intensive effort is more elusive.

Is he working to become an NBA lottery pick, or an All-American?

"Right now, I'm leaving all my options open," Perkins says.

So long as one of those options remains college basketball, Perkins will be pursued by coaches dreamily picturing his massive flame in their colors. He is 6-11 and weighs 270. He is so gifted that even after an admittedly lifeless performance at last summer's adidas ABCD Camp, most analysts rated him higher than any of the senior big men there.

Were it not for Akron small forward LeBron James--a talent so extreme some experts believe he would have been the top NBA draft choice as a high school sophomore--Perkins would be the No. 1 player in the prep class of 2003.

That is a difficult package for college coaches to ignore, even as they recognize the strong possibility Perkins is beyond their reach. Nine U.S. high school players have been chosen in the first round of the NBA draft over the last four years. With the summer evaluation period for basketball recruits opening next week, the colleges must decide whether it is worth spending time and money trying to recruit the nation's No. 1 big man. It's hard to imagine Terry Holland fretting over whether to chase Ralph Sampson for Virginia or John Thompson debating the merits of scouting Patrick Ewing, but that is how the process has changed in the last two decades.

"At this point, it would almost be wasteful to spend significant portions of July trailing Kendrick Perkins," says recruiting analyst Dave Telep of TheInsidersHoops.com. "He fits the profile of a guy likely to jump to the NBA. I think most schools are wise enough, at this point, not to make Kendrick Perkins a I-A option.

"Most of the elite-level schools will hope their recruiting a guy that's playing against Kendrick Perkins, so if they need to they can go back and say they were there one day watching him. That's how the game has to be played."

All Memphis coach John Calipari can say about Perkins, because of NCAA regulations, is whether the Tigers are recruiting him. Indeed, they are, along with Texas, Arizona, Florida and a fair number of others.

But no one is better qualified than Calipari to discuss the merits and perils of recruiting draft-minded players. He lured guard Dajuan Wagner to Memphis last season, though many believed he would not enter college. The Tigers gained a commitment from prep power forward Amare Stoudemire, who later withdrew that pledge and entered the draft. They signed junior college small forward Qyntel Woods last fall but lost him when his NBA prospects soared. Stoudemire and Woods went in the first round of last week's draft.

Thus, Memphis worked to land three players who spent one of their combined 10 years of eligibility with the Tigers.

Calipari, a bit weary of defending himself on this subject, would rather ask the questions.

"Of the top 40 high school players," he says, "how many of them would like to go directly to the NBA?"

All 40, perhaps.

"Darius Rice--he said he was going directly from high school to the NBA," Calipari says. "Now, he's going to be a junior at Miami. How can you say you're not going to recruit Darius Rice?"

Good point. And you could say the same about incoming recruits Shavlik Randolph of Duke and Kelenna Azubuike of Kentucky.

"If you're at Arizona, UCLA or Memphis or Kentucky," Calipari says, "you're going to be able to recruit the best players in the country. Now, if you're not going to recruit the best players, what you're saying is that every four years, I'm going to have a good team. And you're fired."

Calipari says he believes it is essential that a team pursuing a draft prospect have alternative recruits in place. When Woods announced he would not join the Tigers, Memphis immediately offered a scholarship to 6-7 Rodney Carney of Indianapolis, whom Calipari considers a steal.

Cincinnati's Bob Huggins believes there is a place for a player who appears to be a short-term collegian, so long as he fits into a program the way DerMarr Johnson did with the 1999-2000 Bearcats. They needed a shooting guard, and Johnson needed at least a year of polish.

But Huggins has quickly withdrawn from recruiting players he perceives as lacking even that much interest in NCAA ball. He fiddled with the pursuit of big men Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry, who are now with the Chicago Bulls. "But I didn't spend any time on it," Huggins says. "I didn't think they had any chance of going to college." He has given up recruiting James, though Huggins is well-established in Akron from his days coaching there.