Nike, adidas battle for top high school players

Sporting News, The, July 1, 1996 by Mike DeCourcy

Says George Raveling: "By anybody's standards, I would say we're getting 85 percent of the top kids."

Says Sonny Vaccaro: "If you took the California kids off their roster, if the state fell into the ocean tomorrow, they would have a regional camp."

Clearly, the summer's most curious basketball competition is more heated than ever. Because if California were to fall into the ocean, Vaccaro's own home would be under water.

In this corner, wearing Nike sneakers, stands Raveling, former USC coach in his first year of coordinating the Nike All-American Camp, set for Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis from July 7 through 11. In the opposite corner is Vaccaro, former director of the Nike camp, who took his idea with him and secured new sponsorship. The adidas ABCD Camp is July 6 through 10 at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ.

They are battling to attract the most talented college basketball prospects, creating a competition, like the television ratings game, that is less consequential than the participants make it seem. If the results are close, both sides can prosper.

Nike gets 6-8 Shane Battier of Detroit, 6-6 Schea Cotton of Bellflower, Calif., and 6-9 Chris Burgess of Irvine, Calif. ABCD gets point guards Tony Harris of Memphis and Khalid El-Amin of Minneapolis and versatile Lamar Odom, a 6-8 guard from New York's Christ the King. Perhaps this year's talent favors Nike, but Vaccaro's camp last year had the nation's top three prospects: Kobe Bryant of Ardmore, Pa., Lester Earl of Baton Rouge, La., and Tim Thomas of Paterson, N.J.

Nearly 200 players are happy for the duel to continue. When Vaccaro and Nike operated as a team and one such camp existed, the top 120 prospects were invited and everyone else paid tuition to high-level camps and hoped to be noticed. Since Vaccaro and Nike split five years ago, Nike has increased its group to 160, about the same as ABCD.

The invitational camps are the first tour stops for big-time college coaches during the July evaluation period, which begins July 8 and runs through the end of the month. The camps are commonly portrayed as meat markets, although the atmosphere is relaxed, not sinister. Coaches gather in the stands and hope to be noticed by the players they covet, but NCAA contact restrictions are effecfively policed, allowing the players to concentrate on demonstrating their skills.

"Basically, it's not the camp itself that's being attacked. It's the personalities involved," Vaccaro says. "The camps, as they are, are great for the kids."

Although their stays and meals are free, players may not receive free transportation from the shoe companies, according to NCAA regulations. All equipment and apparel must be returned when the camp is finished. Mat stuff once was part of the package, before Raveling, ironically, began pushing for reform on the summer circuit when he was coaching USC. Vaccaro still holds it against him. The word "hypocrite" was used.

There was some talk that when former talent coordinator Bob Gibbons departed following last year's camp, Nike would have a difficult time attracting a quality group to IUPUI. Instead, the camp's strength with California players will pay off in its best field in years.

Burgess, a fine athlete with astonishing skills whose play conjures memories of Bill Walton, may be the best player among the 1997 seniors. Cotton performed selfishly at last year's camp, but remains a marvelous physical specimen who could mature toward greatness. At 5-7, Kenny Brunner of Compton, Calif., is the smallest of a great batch of point guards but is powerful and explosive.

Raveling also claims to have top sophomores Jaron Rush 6-6, Kansas City, Mo., Korleone Young (6-7, Wichita, Kan.) and Jason Capel (6-6, Chesapeake, Va.). "I think you'll be surprised at the quality of players we were able to get"

Vaccaro insists he would move his camp to some other week and leave Nike alone if the NCAA's evaluation period weren't just three weeks long. That rule isn't likely to change, so he eagerly looks to next summer, when California talent will substantially decline and ABCD may rule again.

Until then, he's proud to have such players as point guard Arch Miller of Beaver Falls, Pa., 6-3 guard Anthony Perry of Jersey City, N.J., and 6-8 forward Edmond Saunders of Waterbury, Conn. He is most excited about Harris, the best senior point guard, and Odom, whom Vaccaro calls 'as gifted as any high school kid I've ever seen." As coordinator of the Dapper Dan and Magic's Roundball Classic, he saw Moses Malone, Dominique Wilkins, Shawn Kemp and Shaquine O'Neal.

"It's not so much me and Nike competing, although I thrive on that and they do also," Vaccaro says. "I don't think ifs been a contest since I started."