Shoe firms earn trust of players
NCAA’s summer hoops plan facing skepticism.
As Armaan Franklin pondered the question — would he rather play at a basketball event sponsored by the NCAA or Nike? — he smiled, shook his head, and broke into laughter.
The 18-year-old from Indianapolis was playing in his last Peach Jam, the wildly popular finale to Nike’s Elite Youth Basketball League that drew more than 20,000 people — including dozens of top college coaches and NBA stars Kevin Durant, Chris Paul and Russell Westbrook — to North Augusta, S.C., earlier this month.
Franklin wore a white jersey for his Chicago-based team, MeanStreets, bearing the Nike swoosh, a pair of Nike shoes, and stood in front of a backdrop featuring the apparel giant’s logo. Thanks to Nike — which, like Adidas and Under Armour, sponsors leagues that compete to attract America’s best teenage basketball players — Franklin, rated the 140th-best player in his high school class by Rivals, also had played in front of raucous crowds this year at events in Atlanta and Dallas.
When Franklin finished laughing, he answered, simply, “It would definitely be Nike. I’ve really enjoyed the experience so far.”
Nearly three months ago, a commission led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recommended, as part of its response to alleged corruption in college basketball uncovered by the FBI, that the NCAA launch its own basketball camps during the crucial July recruiting period, and prohibit college coaches from attending other events, including those sponsored by apparel companies.
These new NCAA camps, Rice said in a news conference in late April, should be the showcase events for a new youth basketball program that, with the assistance of the NBA and USA Basketball, teaches teenage basketball players not just fundamentals of the game but also “academic and life skills, health and collegiate eligibility.”
In college basketball circles, the Rice commission’s recommendations were met with widespread praise. But in shoe company-sponsored youth leagues, according to interviews with more than a dozen coaches, officials and players at Nike and Adidas events last week, the idea that the NCAA somehow will shoulder its way into the hypercompetitive youth basketball market — and potentially box out shoe companies in the process — has been met with a mixture of skepticism, defiance and outright mockery.
“It makes absolutely no sense to me,” said Andy Borman, team director for Nike-sponsored NY Renaissance, and a former athletic department staffer at San Jose State and California-Berkeley.
“What’s happening right now, flat-out, is a media stunt. It’s a PR move by the NCAA. ... It’s a joke,” said Borman, who played for Duke’s 2001 national championship team and is a nephew of Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski.
About 800 miles to the northeast of Peach Jam, in a waterfront gym in Manhattan draped in Adidas banners, Kevin Howard, coach of the Little Rock, Ark.-based Joe Johnson Hawks, expressed similar doubts.
“Unless the NCAA is going to pay for their travel, and give these kids gear from Nike, Adidas and Under Armour, kids are still going to play in these leagues,” said Howard, whose team competed at the Adidas Gauntlet Finale in New York. “It’s gonna be hard for the NCAA to compete.”
Retired Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of USA Basketball, who served on the Rice commission, pushed back at the suggestion that Rice and colleagues were prodding the NCAA to try to launch a youth program to compete with the so-called grassroots leagues run by Nike, Adidas and Under Armour.
“We don’t want the NCAA to try to take over grassroots. ... What we’re looking for is a more inclusive environment in the summer, with the three big stakeholders — the NCAA, the NBA and USA Basketball — all having a bigger voice,” Dempsey said in a phone interview.
Nike, Adidas and Under Armour all declined to comment. In interviews, grassroots coaches and officials said regardless of what Rice commission members say, by directing the NCAA to create its own youth camps in July and then bar college coaches from attending other events, the commission essentially was asking the NCAA to try to compete with shoe company events.
And, in a competition between shoe companies and the NCAA for the allegiance of thousands of teenagers — coaches, officials and players said — an NCAA-run basketball camp will face significant challenges relating to what marketing professionals call “brand image.”
“The NCAA is looked at as an evil empire by the really talented young players,” said Seth Greenberg, the former Virginia Tech coach and ESPN analyst who works part time for Adidas, running several camps.
“There is a growing mindset among the parents and the players who feel that the elite players are being exploited, that the TV contracts (for college basketball) are so crazy that everyone’s making money but the kids,” Greenberg said. “Shoe companies aren’t going anywhere. Grassroots basketball isn’t going anywhere.”
The NCAA declined to comment for this story, as did the National Association of College Basketball Coaches, which is working with the NCAA on implementing Rice’s proposals.
The presence of top college coaches gives shoe company events significant cachet, coaches and officials said, and the NCAA barring coaches from attending July events likely would have an impact, potentially reducing turnout of some players and fans.
But youth league officials doubt the absence of college coaches would scare away teenagers who entertain dreams of playing in the NBA, and signing endorsement deals with one of the shoe companies.
The criticism of Rice’s proposals in these communities underscores the reality that, unlike NCAA President Mark Emmert and other top college sports officials, many grassroots league officials don’t view the five- and six-figure payments allegedly arranged by an Adidas executive for the families of top recruits with outrage or revulsion.
Karl McCray, founder of the Atlanta Celtics, had a different complaint about the system.
“I just think the worst thing in the world comes every March, when those games (the NCAA Tournament) will make billions and billions of dollars and those kids will get peanuts,” McCray said.