It Has Become a Game for All Seasons : Basketball: Some coaches say the proliferation of summer leagues is not good for the players.

High school basketball players are used to spending the summer months inside steamy gyms, playing in summer leagues. But recent developments have increased organized summer basketball to levels that have some people concerned.

In the past several years, a spate of summer tournaments have been added to the already crowded summer league schedule, including the Artesia Summer Shootout and the Carson Grand Finale. The rise in summer tournaments has high school players spending a greater portion of their summers in the gym and, according to some, far too little time just being kids.

“Summer insanity is what I call it,” Mira Costa High Coach Glen Marx said. “I think it’s crazy. Players in Division I programs don’t play as much as these kids do in the summer.”

Issy Washington, whose 10-year old Slam-N-Jam Invitational Tournament at Cal State Long Beach is among the oldest competitions of its kind, has noticed the increase in local tournaments in recent years.

“It used to be, about five years ago, that you could count the number of tournaments on one hand,” Washington said. “Now all that’s changed. Basketball has become very popular. I’d say some high school players, especially the really good ones (who participate in elite all-star camps), play maybe twice as many games in the summer as they do in the regular season.”

The explanation behind the rise in summer tournaments depends on who is doing the explaining. Supporters point to the money that host schools raise for financially strapped basketball programs by charging entry fees for the tournaments. Also, with NCAA recruiting rules restricting access to high school athletes during the regular season, many top players look to summer ball as their best chance to catch the eyes of the college scouts.

Some also point to the limited scope of competition in summer league play as a rationale for the growing tournament trend.

“When you play in a league, you see the same teams over and over,” said Dean Crowley, associate commissioner of athletics for the Southern Section. “I think that’s why a lot of the teams enter the tournaments. (With tournaments), you get a chance to see a lot of different teams.”

Others, however, say that as the tournaments have become increasingly popular, teams have experienced growing pressure to enter as many as they can in order to keep pace with their competitors.

“The coaches are almost forced to have their kids play all year long because that’s what the opposition is doing,” Washington said. “Nowadays, that’s the way you have to coach.”

Said Marx: “It’s like in a theater. If the row ahead of us is standing, then we have to stand up, and then the people behind us stand up. It just goes on and on.”

Marx limits his players to no more than one game a day during the summer, and he is not alone in his concern over the number of games the players play in leagues and tournaments.

North Torrance Coach Bill Atkinson also puts a cap on his team’s playing time.

“I try to limit the games my team plays to around 20,” Atkinson said. “Some schools play 40 or 50 games in the summer, but I think that’s too much. A kid doesn’t get a chance to be a kid, and I see a lot of the kids get burned out.”

But Marx and others are bothered by more than just the rising number of games that the tournaments bring with them. As he conceded, the extensive summer leagues “have been around since I was playing high school ball,” and have always kept high school players inside the gym for much of their vacations. The real trouble, according to Marx, is the heightened intensity of tournament play.

“I don’t have so much of a problem with the leagues as I do with the tournaments,” Marx said. “In the leagues, it’s pretty relaxed, and you can play all the kids. But in a tournament it’s more competitive and you have a tendency to play only your top six or seven players.”

Not everyone is as concerned with the tournaments as are Marx and Atkinson. Washington, for one, scoffs at the notion that the increased play has any ill effects on the players.

“That’s baloney,” Washington said. “If they didn’t have the tournaments to play in, the good players would find a place to play anyway. I have never seen anybody have a nervous breakdown from playing too much basketball. I think it’s better than having the kids sit around idle. That’s when they can get into trouble.”

Redondo High Coach Jim Nielsen likewise disputes claims that the increased play is a negative. Nielsen’s team will participate in three summer leagues and some seven tournaments before the summer is through, and he thinks the extra play can only benefit players.

“The more you play, the better you get,” said Nielsen, a former standout at North Torrance and Washington State. “It’s just like anything else.

“I think entering the tournaments is the most important thing you can do for the team, provided you don’t sit on the sideline and yell at the kids. There’s not the pressure on them to perform quite like there is in the regular season, so if they make a mistake it’s no big deal.”

Meanwhile, as the debate continues, the people most affected by the summer tournaments express few qualms about the extra play.

“I’d like to play more,” North Torrance senior Ryan Delapina said. “I’d rather make the season even longer. I’m still going to play at the park anyway. It doesn’t matter. I’d play anyway, even if there was no league.”

Redondo sophomore Tremaine Mayeaux agrees that the competition is beneficial.

“Actually, I think that it’s making us a better team,” Mayeaux said. “We’re a young team this year. We get to know each other better by playing games like this.”