Here’s Summer Line on Prep Basketball Powers : Los Angeles Games Give Coaches and the Fans a Preview of Next Season’s Lineups

I n 1968, the Watts Games were formed to help dissolve the racial and ethnic problems that caused the riots three years earlier. The program says that it was the founders’ belief that “understanding, fellowship, and mutual respect can be fostered through athletic competition.”

That’s the honorable. This is the practical: Perhaps nowhere in America is there a better indicator of next season’s top high school teams. The pregame handshakes are noble, but it’s the jump shots and power moves that are noted.

There are more than 9,000 athletes in 12 sports at the games, now called the Los Angeles Games to reflect the greater representation of teams.

To varying degrees, a prediction is attached to the winners of each sport--baseball (32 teams), football (64), men’s basketball (112), women’s basketball (64), men’s soccer (40), women’s soccer (8), softball (16), men’s volleyball (20), women’s volleyball (40), water polo (32), swimming (300 participants), tennis (300), track and field (400), women’s gymnastics (150), and wrestling (250).

The forecast is perhaps most accurate in the men’s basketball tournament, billed as the largest of its kind in the nation. It finished Sunday with defending state champion Crenshaw beating Fairfax, 72-68, in the final at El Camino College.

Not surprisingly, the other two semifinalists--Cleveland and Manual Arts--are also traditional powers, suggesting to many that these four teams will again be strong next season. How iron-clad is this forecast?

“It’s historically been accurate, especially when you get to the second weekend,” said Huntington Beach Ocean View Coach Jim Harris. Preliminary games were June 21 and 22, with the winners advancing to last weekend’s final rounds. “Anyone who gets there has something.”

Crenshaw obviously has something. The tournament winner four of the past five years has seen its school win three of the last four state championships. Assistant coach Joe Weakley said that although the teams have done well, he uses the tournament to experiment with underclassmen.

“What you try to do is find out exactly who can play on that next level of basketball from the jayvee (junior varsity) program,” he said. “What I try to do is just do the best with my young men that I can.”

As to whether it is a highly accurate preview of the upcoming season, Weakley disagreed. As an example, he pointed to last year, when Crenshaw was missing its leading scorer, Stephen Thompson, who was attending a basketball camp on the East Coast. The Cougars breezed through the first three rounds but were crushed by Santa Monica, 56-30, in the semifinals. They lost again in the consolation game, to Ocean View, 52-51. Weakley is reluctant to call it accurate, despite Crenshaw’s success.

“You see a bunch of young errors,” he said. “This is not our varsity squad, really. It’s the youngsters coming up from the jayvee program, and we’ve only got four or five returning from the varsity squad. Most of these guys will be playing varsity, but this is not the varsity squad, because there may be two or three others who may beat a couple of these guys out.

And, “Who knows, (some) guy may get his leg broken or something of that nature.”

If there is a misleading element, it is that the area’s top players are away at basketball camps during the tournament. Two of the best, Sean Higgins and Chris Mills of Fairfax, were in Princeton, N.J., at the Nike camp when their teammates played Crenshaw on Sunday in the final. To Fairfax Coach Harvey Kitani, the presence of his leading scorer and rebounder might well have made up for the four-point deficit in the final.

“If they were here, we’d be much more explosive offensively,” Kitani said after Fairfax beat Granada Hills, 62-57, in the quarterfinals on Saturday. “We’re missing a lot of our firepower. We’re just scrapping.”

Even more indigent than Fairfax was Granada Hills, which had only six players in uniform Saturday. Two had to work and another two were playing in the football tournament, which was going on at the same time as the basketball quarterfinal.

Another factor, according to several coaches, is that the City teams are better-oiled because they have been allowed to play in spring leagues. After Manual Arts beat Inglewood, 68-44, on Saturday, Inglewood Coach Art Bias referred to this.

“They’ve got an edge,” said Bias, whose team was taller but couldn’t run with Manual Arts. “I don’t like to use that as an excuse, but they’ve usually played 20 or 30 games in the spring leagues, while we have to sit back and watch.”

Everything considered, however, those who finish well in the L.A. Games have had the uncanny knack of doing the same nine months later in their high school tournaments.

“In the first couple of games, you end up playing a couple teams you don’t know anything about,” Cleveland Coach Bob Braswell said. “As you get later in the rounds, you look back at some of the names. You recognize the Crenshaws and the Clevelands and the Fairfaxes as you get deeper and deeper in the tournament.”

Said Harris, thoroughly pleased about his team’s quarterfinal showing: “If you can get to the final eight, you’ll definitely be a contender in your section and your league for sure. There’s a couple teams that will get knocked out (early), but it’s still pretty darn accurate.”