LAS VEGAS – Just another Manic
Monday in a town where Manic takes on a multitude of meanings, 24/7 . .
.
*Las Vegas High is located nearly
as far to the east as one can go in this town before the cactus plants begin to
outnumber the 24-hour massage parlors that seem to be the staple of every strip
mall (yes, the pun was intended) in Las Vegas.
And Las Vegas High is where I
pounded a Diet Pepsi and piping-hot bag of fresh-popped popcorn just minutes
after watching the 9 a.m. adidas Super 64 clash between the Colorado Select Blue
Under-17 squad and the Southern California-based IEBP (Inland Empire Basketball
Program) team.
The early “brunch” was awesome and
the game was also worth the 25-minute drive on Sahara Blvd.
Reggie Jackson (are you old enough
so that name still conjures visions of prodigious home runs before you
automatically assumed the guy doing the smacking of the ball was chemically
aided?) is a player I first became aware while watching an April adidas event in
Las Vegas and – just like a dependable “it tastes just like at the movies!” bag
of popcorn – he didn’t disappoint.
The 6-foot-3 senior-to-be at Palmer
High in Colorado Springs may be one of the five best “combo” guards in the
national senior class. And he has the ability (arms that seem to reach
sideline-to-sideline, nimble feet and rare-to-find focus) to be something more
than just an “exceptional” defender on the college level.
The head coaches I noticed who were
there to watch him (in some cases, I’m assuming that’s why they also made the
Sahara haul): Al Skinner (and two of his assistants/Boston College), Mark Fox
(Nevada), Doug Wojcik (Tulsa), Kerry Keating (Santa Clara) and Jeff Bzdelik
(Colorado).
Look for the head coaches at some
other programs (some of those usually ranked in the Top 25) to jump on that
bandwagon shortly.
*A 20-minute drive southeast on the
515/93/95 freeway took me past one of every major electronics outlets in America
en route to Henderson and Green Valley High.
It was time to squeeze into the
auxiliary gymnasium at Green Valley where a Reebok pool play game between the
Oakland Soldiers and Urban DFW (Dallas Fort-Worth) Elite, better known Monday
morning as “Drew Gordon vs. J’Mison Morgan”.
The game (the Soldiers breezed) and
the individual matchup (the Soldiers’ UCLA-bound Gordon and U-DFW’s Morgan had
impressive moments but both were in almost immediate foul trouble) were mild
disappointments – at least in terms of how much disappointment you will allow
yourself about a July 22, late-morning game you might forget about two days
later, anyway.
Gordon (San Jose Mitty, going about
6-8 and 215 or so) has missed most of July after suffering a broken bone in his
right hand during the USA Basketball Youth Festival in Colorado
Springs.
He’s lacking in a real low-post
offensive game and has a tendency to “play too fast” on the perimeter but is a
tremendous prospect. The next ounce of fat that crops up on that body will be
the first.
Morgan (Dallas (South Oak Cliff)
goes about 6-9 and (I’m guessing) 260 or 270 and supposedly has dropped a great
deal of weight in the past year.
But he still got caught out of
position, defensively, much too often Monday morning and seemed to tire fairly
rapidly as well.
He’s got exceptional hands, is a
“quick” if not “big” jumper and has a relatively good feel for how to play with
his butt in the low post.
All of those things are why it
seemed like 150 coaches were scrunched against the gym walls, including all of
those (again “it seemed”) from the Big 12 Conference.
Now it was time to make that
diagonal northwest drive on the 515/93/95 (I lose track quickly on “when becomes
what” on that thing) to Rancho High.
*It was another large crowd of
coaches (yes, I know that is stating the obvious) as SoCal-based Double Pump
Elite faces Seattle Rotary Select (guess where it is based . . .) in an adidas
Super 64 clash.
Former Stanford (and Montana, in
case you didn’t realize it) and Golden State Warriors’ coach, and now superb
basketball TV commentator, Mike Montgomery was in the gym and seemed extremely
cheerful about not actually having to be there as he would have been if
he was still a college coach.
He was hanging out with his son,
John, a recent graduate of Loyola Marymount University and even more recently
hired member of Jeff Jackson’s Furman staff.
How quaint! Father and son hanging
out at an early-afternoon basketball game in Las Vegas! It nearly qualified as a
“Kodak moment” of sorts.
The game?
So-so.
I’ve seen Washington State-bound
Mark McLaughlin and junior-to-be guard Peyton Siva play much, much better in the
past three months for Rotary Select.
In this game, 6-7, 260-pound
sophomore-to-be (at Kentwood High in the Seattle ‘burb of Kent) Joshua Smith
looked like the best post prospect in his class in the West, though. And the kid
just turned 15 on May 14!
On to Cox Pavilion for another
adidas game, one that would prove to be the highlight of the first two days of
action during the three national tournaments in town . . .
*With every head coach and
assistant in America packed into the lower gym in Cox Pavilion (OK, I’m
exaggerating again), the Atlanta Celtics jumped out to 7-0 and 16-9 advantages
over the Southern California-based Pump-N-Run Elite team that beat the Celtics
in the title game of the adidas tournament in Cincinnati about 2 ½ weeks
ago.
Derrick Favors (6-9 plus), touted
by some as the best junior post in the country (I think DeMarcus Cousins of
Alabama is every bit the prospect and a lot more versatile, offensively . . .
but I digress) cranked in about four dunks and blocked two shots in a three- or
four-minute stretch of action when it looked as if Atlanta was going to
overwhelm PNR.
Then guard play became a factor . .
. oh, did it ever.
Jrue Holiday and Jerime Anderson
(who plan to sign with UCLA in November), and Larry Drew (North Carolina-bound)
proceeded to dictate everything to the Celtics other than where they were going
to be eating later that night.
A head coach at Pacific-10
Conference program (and, no, it wasn’t Ben Howland) made an interesting
statement afterward:
He said he thinks that the trio of
Holiday, Anderson and Malcolm Lee (the guard from J.W. North in Riverside, CA),
collectively, are better prospects than were Jordan Farmar, Arron Afflalo and
Josh Shipp when Howland signed them as part of his first UCLA recruiting
class.
There is a lot of validity to that
perspective . . .
Anderson, Drew and 6-9 juniors
David and Travis Wear (Santa Ana Mater Dei) and Greg Smith (Fresno Edison)
played as well as they have all month.
But the 6-3 (or whatever he is)
Holiday was ridiculous, at both ends of the floor.
A healthy version of Dwyane Wade
could have been on the floor and in a PNR uniform and he wouldn’t have been more
impressive and dominant than Holiday was Monday night.
One last thing: Wrapped around that
game I watched the Ohio Basketball Club play twice, against EBO (Luke Babbit was
a stud!) and then against the Las Vegas Prospects.
Ohio State-bound B.J. Mullens of
the OBC is so much the best center prospect (and, perhaps, the No. 1 overall
prospect as well) in the national senior class that I’d have to think longer
than I want to right now to come up with who is No. 2.
That’s all for now, boys and girls
. . .