The scene at Nike’s EYBL circuit events is not much different than most others in summer AAU basketball. Court after court of teenage basketballers, often lined by college coaches, ranging from small Division III and NAIA schools to Division I blue bloods like North Carolina, Duke, Kansas and every other program in between. Hundreds, if not thousands of college coaches descend upon these events — and others like them sponsored by Under Armour and Adidas — not only to evaluate potential talent but also to show prospects their level of interest. Most of these events take place during “evaluation periods,” which the NCAA defines as a time when college coaches can watch prospects at NCAA-certified events and contact them by phone but aren’t allowed to speak with them face to face. During these periods, a program’s recruiting currency is its attendance. If one assistant coach watches a prospect’s game, they’re likely interested but not a priority. If two assistants show up, it’s safe to assume he’s one of their biggest targets. And if the head coach joins them, it signals to a prospect they’re badly wanted at that school. For the most elite prospects, like 2017 No. 1 overall recruit and former Missouri forward Michael Porter Jr., that can mean dozens of coaching staffs tracking a prospect’s every movement beginning in late April all the way through the end of July. In between, coaches and prospects are allowed to contact each other and even visit the school’s campus, but during these few evaluation periods, showing up is the name of the game.
What seems like a benign way for coaches to evaluate potential future players while also indicating interest to those prospects has come under fire as more allegations of corruption and impropriety arise in grassroots basketball. Incidents like the alleged payments to family members of Kansas forward Silvio De Sousa, or shoe companies funding AAU programs of certain high-level prospects like Marvin Bagley III have caused not only the NCAA, but even the FBI, to take a serious look behind the curtain of college basketball recruiting. A working group overseen by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and entitled “The Commission on College Basketball” was formed by the NCAA’s Board of Governors to examine, among other things, the relationships between NCAA schools and apparel companies. And by early August, a committee formed by the National Association of Basketball Coaches will reportedly suggest drastic changes to the summer basketball recruiting circuit, according to former ESPN basketball insider Jeff Goodman.
Among them is the creation of four regional recruiting camps funded by the NCAA and another “elite camp” that would feature the best players from each of the regional camps. The camps will be staggered to allow staffs to attend each of them, according to NBC Sports, and it’s likely that college coaching staffs would be allowed to nominate as many as 35 prospects to attend so they can watch specific players they’re targeting in action.
The NABC’s goal is to drastically decrease or even eliminate shoe companies’ influence over summer basketball and college recruiting. But Chris Neff, head coach of Missouri-based MOKAN Elite’s 17U team, thinks the rule change would do more harm than good for the vast majority of prospects who aren’t being courted by shoe companies.
“You just hope that the people who are making the rules have the best interest of all these kids in mind, and I fear a little bit that camps don’t allow the entire country, these basketball players, to be seen. I think it lends itself to maybe just being the upper 10 percent. Man, there’s 90 percent more kids out there that, they’re good and they’re working hard to get those other little scholarships that are available and those other little roles that are out there for all these universities, over 350 universities that have to fill a roster. And you can’t put, you think of over 350 and all of them have 12 to 15 man rosters, there’s not that many kids going to be at them camps.”
The main attractions of grassroots events are the elite-level players, typically the top 150-200 players in the country in a given class. But given the aforementioned number of not only Division I schools, but colleges sponsoring basketball in general, often the true beneficiaries of the summer circuit are less-recruited players who can compete with highly-touted prospects and draw the attention of coaches who might not have been recruiting them before. At the Division I level alone, roughly 1,000 prospects per year sign at that level, with many of them not having access to those coaching staffs if it weren’t for their grassroots program.
“I’ve always been a guy to not do away with summer basketball because I think there’s so many opportunities for young men,” Missouri head coach Cuonzo Martin said. “...There’s 351 Division I schools and 400-plus colleges everywhere, everybody has an opportunity to go somewhere and be successful. When you take away those opportunities in the summertime and those guys don’t get exposure, then there’s a lot of guys that are put in tough situations who are struggling to make ends meet, when they could have the opportunity to get scholarships and go to college. So I definitely don’t want to do away with that, and I think for me and other coaches, it’s a great way to evaluate talent.”
One of the biggest criticisms of the potential new rules has been exactly that — how coaches are expected to evaluate talent in a camp setting where the amount of live, 5-on-5 basketball will be limited and more than 500 players will be sharing court time. Under the NABC’s proposal, as many as 2,400 players would be nominated by college coaches and then selected to participate in one of the four regional camps. They’re expected to be coached by professional coaches, whether from the NBA or its G-League because college coaches will only be allowed to evaluate.
Meanwhile, circuits like the EYBL or Under Armour Association likely aren’t going anywhere. Shoe companies will still sponsor them to market their brand and their apparel to prospects, the prospects will still play in them because once their high school season ends in early March, they won’t wait until June to play organized basketball again, and scouts and reporters will still cover them because of the amount of interest fans — and even college coaches — will have in them. The only people not allowed will be the ones these events benefit the most: college coaches. And instead of charging coaches $400 to attend the event, organizers can simply develop live streams and pass that same charge along to the coaches. To see players live, programs would almost certainly have to host their own high school team camps, which would severely limit which prospects can attend and also decrease the quality of competition they would see prospects competing against.
For Neff, who has coached at both the high school level and on the grassroots circuit, more important than rule changes upending the summer circuit is enforcing the rules and guidelines that are already in place.
“I’ve always thought that everything gets fixed if there’s some sort of a deterrent,” he said. “I think you’ve got to hammer the people that do it wrong. And truly hammer them. … Because there’s not one of us in my position or the position of the people in my program that doesn’t know the rules. They all know it. You took the test. It’s been discussed. Everyone knows. So, it’s conscious. You’ve made the choice to break it. So you just gotta hammer them.”
