THE PLOYS OF SUMMER

This is the other side of March Madness.

Midsummer Mayhem.

In the stifling heat of July in Nevada, more than 3,000 high school basketball players and 550 college coaches descended on the desert for the five-day, 310-team Adidas Big Time tournament, the gargantuan event of the NCAA’s controversial 24-day summer evaluation period.

The games rolled on, one after another. Three minutes between halves, seven minutes between games, from 9 a.m. until almost 11 p.m. every day in 12 dizzyingly similar high school gyms stretched across the seemingly unending boulevards of Vegas sprawl.

For a coach, this is nirvana: hundreds of prospects on parade.

Vegas has become the home of one-stop shopping, and in the cramped auxiliary gym at Green Valley High one night, an all-star team of coaches rimmed the court. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski was seated in a plastic chair behind one basket, with Kansas Coach Roy Williams at the other end. UCLA’s Steve Lavin, Stanford’s Mike Montgomery and Arizona’s Lute Olson were on the sidelines. And Kentucky’s Tubby Smith stood because there was nowhere left to sit.

For the NCAA--which often seems to wish the C in its initials stood for Control--this is the image of Chaos.

The summer scene has long been unseemly, but the sordidness of the almost entirely unregulated world of summer basketball became concrete last season with the federal prosecution of former Kansas City summer coach Myron Piggie--a onetime crack dealer and Nike-affiliated coach who pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection with $35,500 in payments he made to players still in high school.

UCLA’s JaRon Rush was suspended for 24 games for his involvement with Piggie, missing most of the season, and UCLA was ordered to repay the NCAA $45,321 in 1999 tournament earnings.

Rush turned pro after his abbreviated sophomore season, went undrafted, and his career is a shambles.

Rush’s brother, Kareem, a Missouri player, and Oklahoma State’s Andre Williams served shorter suspensions.

And in what might be the most resounding decision yet, Duke is awaiting the final fallout of payments Corey Maggette accepted from Piggie.

Though Maggette turned pro after his freshman season before the Piggie scandal broke, the NCAA could order Duke to vacate its 1999 runner-up finish and return a huge sum of tournament earnings for using an ineligible player.

Ultimately at stake are even bigger dollars and a more complex issue: CBS is paying $6 billion for the rights to televise the NCAA tournament, and the prize isn’t worth that if players turn pro after one year of college--or zero--because of amateurism issues and the bigger dollars that await.

Hardly anyone is naive enough to believe the Piggie case--which came to light largely because of the power of a U.S. attorney and a federal grand jury--is the only one of its kind.

“I don’t think it’s isolated, but I think it probably is one of the most serious,” said David Price, the NCAA vice president of enforcement, who admitted as he stood outside a Vegas gym that the Piggie case “pretty much fell in our laps.”

Cash payments are only one summertime scam.

Last season, St. John’s star Erick Barkley was suspended in one of several NCAA scrapes because the famous New York Riverside Church team had paid $3,150 of his $21,500 tuition when he attended Maine Central Institute, a prep school. (The NCAA, however, is signaling it is inclined to look more kindly on educational expenses.)

The use of cars or sweetheart deals on vehicles is common but hard to prove.

Perhaps most seriously, summer teams can be an easy conduit for a college seeking to buy a player’s signature on a national letter of intent.

One coach who won’t speak for the record was happy to explain how he bought a player: He arranged a $10,000 donation from a third party to the nonprofit organization that oversees the summer team.

Voila, the player--and presumably the summer coach--had their money, the university had the player’s name on the bottom line, and the third party looked like a philanthropist.

When college isn’t even a factor, the payoff can be biggest of all. After Adidas talent scout Alvis Smith and Joel Hopkins, the former coach at Mt. Zion Christian Academy in Durham, N.C., delivered the virtually unknown Tracy McGrady to the Adidas ABCD all-star camp in 1996, McGrady remembered them when he signed a six-year, $12-million endorsement deal with Adidas when he jumped directly to the NBA.

Smith and Hopkins each receive $150,000 a year for six years, as reported in the recent book “Sole Influence: Basketball, Corporate Greed and the Corruption of America’s Youth.”

The possibility of players jumping directly to the NBA has upped the ante, and it has added new scouts to the stands--Kim Hughes, director of player personnel for the Denver Nuggets, was in Las Vegas just in case some of this summer’s stars are next summer’s draft prospects.

If they are, of course, the potential “cut” for a summer coach, street agent or bird-dog scout becomes much bigger than it would be if college is the destination.

The NCAA knows it has a problem. The bigger problem is trying to fix it.

The NCAA’s only authority is over its own coaches, so next year the number of days they can evaluate players in July will shrink from 24 to 14.

There is talk of eliminating summer recruiting altogether in two years, but that appears to be merely an attention-getting ploy.

“If you close off the summer entirely [to the coaches], you might end up with a new cottage industry,” Price said.

“You might also leave the summer wide open to the outside influences we are trying to control or shed.”

For once, the NCAA and Sonny Vaccaro, who helped start the controversial shoe-camp revolution at Nike and now heads Adidas’ basketball programs, agree.

“If the [college] coaches aren’t allowed, there are no rules,” Vaccaro said. “Let’s say they take this away: They’re going to open Pandora’s box. You’d see more pick-up, unauthorized things than you’d ever seen before.”

The Trip to the Strip

Trying to tell the good guys from the bad guys at the Adidas Big Time tournament was like trying to pick the next slot machine ready to pay off big.

This one? That one? Over here? Over there?

The tournament is the biggest of the summer, but it is only one of the events that pack the July evaluation period. (Like Adidas, rival Nike held its own invitation-only all-star camp earlier in the month. Nike held a smaller tournament, the Peach Jam, in North Augusta, S.C., the same week as the Las Vegas event, drawing its own coterie of teams--including that of controversial Southern California summer coach Pat Barrett, a paid Nike consultant.)

The scene can be dizzying.

Players wander the Strip unsupervised well into the night.

The most prominent among the prospects pay no expenses at all, flying to Las Vegas on their summer team’s dime and staying at such hotels as the Luxor for free. (NCAA rules allow expenses to be paid.)

Then, of course, there is the shoe company gear--shoes, lavish warmups, mostly provided by Adidas and Nike.

Perhaps most troublesome of all, the players are in the care of summer coaches not accredited by any organization--not the NCAA, not the Amateur Athletic Union, not the National High School Federation, not even Adidas or Nike, the companies that play a large role in bankrolling the summer scene in search of the next Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant.

And though the coaches all seem to say they “just want to help kids,” it is exceedingly difficult to identify who really is.

“Ninety percent are in it for the right reasons,” said Dan Wetzel, co-author of “Sole Influence.”

“But the other 10% control 50% of the talent.”

The action at the games is tame enough.

A bunch of big-name coaches and assistants wearing school-logo shirts stand or sit where they can be seen by the players, then chat up the summer coaches after the games.

The most prominent college coaches call the smallest-time summer coaches “Coach,” and flatter their moves in games that often aren’t well coached at all.

“That guy could have something good to say about you, create an opinion in the player’s mind,” one assistant coach said.

Arkansas Coach Nolan Richardson bemoans the fact that the summer coach has taken such a central role in recruiting, but it is often the summer coach who gets recruiting calls, even during the school year.

“I’m an old high school coach, and now there are players I’ve recruited where I never talked to the high school coach, I’m embarrassed to say,” Richardson said. “I didn’t have to.”

The NCAA is on hand at the tournament site, but the enforcement representatives are watching mostly for mild violations such as breaches of the rules that allow no contact during July between a college coach and a prospect other than a once-a-week phone conversation or an in-person exchange of a greeting.

“I may be naive, but I don’t think the approach is going to be here at the games,” Price said. “I think it’s going to be away from the arena. Too many eyes here.”

Some coaches try to find out where teams are practicing, and at night, with some players and college coaches staying on the Strip, contact is a given.

“We say hello, but some are more aggressive than others,” one player said. “Some will follow you to your room.”

As Price recognizes, coaches scoff at the idea that serious cheating would happen at the tournament site.

“I don’t think anybody’s stupid enough to hand somebody a shoe box full of money here,” one said.

Slowly, in the wake of widespread suspensions of college players last season for violating amateurism rules, high school players say they are more cautious about accepting anything that is offered to them.

“Most players, they’re being real careful about that,” said Errick Craven, a guard from Torrance Bishop Montgomery High who plays for the Pump N Run team from the San Fernando Valley and has committed to USC, along with his twin, Derrick.

“There are people out there that do it. But most all the players I talk to, they’re real careful, more so than in the past. In the past, it was ridiculous.

“People are more cautious, more aware about what’s going on. More careful about their eligibility.”

Jason Braxton, a guard from Moreno Valley who plays for Canyon Springs High and a summer team called Inland I, said there is less confusion about the rules.

“Everybody knows you can’t take money, you can’t take free stuff,” he said. “I want to stay eligible.

“Before it wasn’t as clear. I heard people say it, but I wasn’t really worried about it. Now that I see they got [Rush], I don’t want to take any chances.”

Robert Whaley, a forward from Benton Harbor, Mich., who plays for the Michigan Mustangs and has committed to Missouri, had the most succinct analogy: “Why take $10 now when you can get $100 later?”

The Pumps, Kool-Aid and the Fish

The players in the summer are the same, but the Players are different.

Among the leading figures at the Vegas tournament were two Adidas-affiliated entrepreneurs from the San Fernando Valley, David and Dana Pump.

The Pumps were seemingly everywhere--leaning against a wall watching a game with Florida Coach Billy Donovan, huddling in the stands with Olson, yukking it up with Utah Coach Rick Majerus high in the bleachers.

They are not coaches, but the red-haired, 33-year-old twins have built an empire by insinuating themselves into nearly every niche of the recruiting industry and college basketball world their entrepreneurial spirit can penetrate.

They got their start running day camps as 16-year-olds, catching their big break when Vaccaro gave them a hundred or so T-shirts.

Now their company, Double Pump Inc., not only has traveling teams--three competed in Las Vegas, led by their flagship Pump N Run--but also runs camps, tournaments, a scouting service with 200 subscribers at $500 each, and a lucrative venture fielding exhibition teams known as the California All-Stars to play preseason games against colleges, sometimes for well over $10,000 a night.

Last year, their six exhibition squads combined to play close to 75 games. Their opponents included every Pacific 10 Conference school except Stanford and Oregon State as well as other high-profile national teams.

“They don’t know a pick from a roll, but they know if you make $10 and spend $5, you’ve made $5,” said Vaccaro, who works closely with the Pumps and gave them their entree into the world of big-time coaches.

The next business the Pumps are eager to break into is as consultants to schools hiring coaches, drawing on the relationships they have with assistant coaches and the athletic directors they court by inviting them to retreats.

The interlocking relationships and businesses raise questions, and the only rules the Pumps are bound by are the ones they set for themselves.

“People think, ‘Oh, if the school plays you [in an exhibition game], don’t they think you’re going to help them with players?’ ” Dana Pump said. “Dana and David are not in the player business. Once I do that, I’ve alienated myself.

“‘It’s such a misconception. It really hurts me when people say, ‘Oh, they’re helping this school.’ Coaches call us and say, ‘Pumper, I need you to help me with this kid.’ I’m not in that. Everyone calls. I don’t tell kids where to go to school. I don’t want to. That would jeopardize my whole business.”

Elvert “Kool-Aid” Perry comes at summer basketball from a different angle than the entrepreneurial Pumps.

The coach of two teams in the Las Vegas tournament from the San Bernardino area--Inland I and II--Perry characterizes himself as a champion of the poor urban player and is upset because he believes summer coaches are being demonized.

“I’ve been involved with AAU for 17 years. I see the benefits, and I see that you have bad people too,” Perry said. “If a priest molests a kid, does that make all priests are bad?

“I think one thing that will happen if you diminish the days [of the NCAA evaluation period] is you put kids out in the streets,” said Perry, who also works as a youth counselor. “Basically you’re asking them to go to the drug dealer.

“People who make six figures are making rules about people on welfare. That’s ridiculous.”

Perry’s style on the bench might be off-putting to some--he wears baggy shorts, a T-shirt and a backward baseball cap and sometimes curses loudly at his players--but Braxton, a solid prospect at guard, is fiercely loyal.

“He’s the best. He gets you motivated to play. I wouldn’t play for anybody else,” Braxton said.

Perry, who receives gear and some funding from Adidas, is also bothered that the NCAA looks askance about summer teams’ involvement with shoe companies even while NCAA schools and coaches have lucrative shoe contracts.

“People don’t understand I have nothing but love and great respect for Sonny Vaccaro,” Perry said. “He’s done more for inner-city kids than [NCAA President] Cedric Dempsey has ever done.”

Another figure from the Southern California scene on hand in Las Vegas was David Benezra, coach of the Los Angeles Rockfish teams.

Benezra, a former college assistant at Northern Arizona who also coached at Santa Monica Crossroads High, is sponsored by Adidas and Power Bar and also has a subscription-based recruiting news Web site.

Though his program has recently sent a spate of players to California--Julian Sensley, a forward who plays as if he’s 22 instead of 17, is the latest to commit--Benezra says some players can be influenced and others can’t.

In the end, a player’s summer coach might have little control over the player at all.

“I like to think we can influence kids to do good things. But even then I can’t make them do the perfect thing,” Benezra said. “You can’t coach them to make the perfect play, and now you’re talking about life decisions?

“A poor kid who has nothing, you think he can take the long view and say a scholarship is the thing I want? Right now he’s thinking, ‘This guy wants to give me $5,000 or $10,000.’

“If you took the Top 25 guys in the class, probably half those guys, somebody is trying to do something with. There are those kids who want to be shopped.

“An agent I know is saying he hears [a player] is being offered $75,000. That would really be on the high end. Usually you hear more like $10,000.”

With those kinds of potential stakes, it’s little wonder if it seems as if more and more people are trying to get in the game.

“I say it’s like there’s an AAU team on every corner in America,” Benezra said. “Every 30 seconds somebody’s forming an AAU team.”

Searching for Solutions

Just about everyone agrees on one thing: This isn’t working.

But how to fix it?

“If I’m the czar, the first thing I’d do is have some type of criteria,” Majerus said.

“If you can license hairdressers, you can license AAU coaches.”

Criminal record checks seem like a simple enough place to start.

The question is this: Who should be responsible for accrediting coaches?

Contrary to perception, the AAU conducts only three of the many boys’ basketball events attended by NCAA coaches during July. (In the wake of the Piggie scandal, however, the AAU membership application now requires coaches to attest they have never been convicted of a sex crime or any felony. Otherwise, they must seek approval through the national office.)

The NCAA? There is a jurisdictional issue, and besides, the NCAA isn’t likely to be eager to put a stamp of approval on some of the very people it suspects of corruption.

Adidas? Nike? Some would call that the fox watching the henhouse.

There are other requirements Majerus would like to see-- requirements of players.

Make them attend instructional programs on NCAA rules and academic requirements as well as seminars on drug use and family issues, including domestic violence.

And finally, Majerus said, establish academic requirements in order to play summer basketball so players aren’t skipping summer school to tour.

“If you don’t have certain academic criteria, you have no business taking a month off,” he said.

There are other ideas.

AAU President Bobby Dodd made his proposal during a meeting with Dempsey.

“We suggested if the summer coach is this bad element, the pimp or street agent--and let me say I think 99% of summer coaches are in it for the right reasons.

“We recommend a very simple solution: Don’t let the NCAA coaches talk to any of them [at tournaments or camps.]

“Don’t let the kids see summer coaches talking to the college coaches. Don’t let the summer coaches say, ‘I know Coach So-and-So, and I can get you here, I can get you there.’

“The kids in the summer see Mike Krzyzewski, Nolan Richardson, Roy Williams--pick any name--and the kids get a false sense when they see those coaches coming up to their summer league coach.

“It gives [the summer league coach] such a rush, I think it’s better than sex, alcohol, anything else. People get caught up, absolutely, into believing they’re something they are not.”

Roger Milstein, a former L.A. area summer league coach who was known for stressing academics with his Team Avia program-- Stanford’s Arthur Lee and Bill Walton’s sons Nate and Luke were among his players--says cutting off contact isn’t the answer.

“I don’t know how you operate without communication. People who are trying to break the rules will do it other places,” Milstein said.

“But the summer has to be controlled. Make sure the kids are limited to a couple of tournaments. Make the guys bring transcripts. Require so many hours of academics or SAT preparation to play.

“It shouldn’t be about winning games. The whole thing is whether kids get scholarships.”

College coaches are working on their own solutions, led by Jim Haney, executive director of the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches, and Purdue Coach Gene Keady, the group’s president.

About 150 coaches spent most of a four-hour meeting of the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches during the Adidas Big Time tournament discussing proposals to keep the NCAA from eliminating summer recruiting entirely, though that is no longer considered likely.

One concept is that USA Basketball, not Nike and Adidas, should run the camps recruiters are permitted to attend.

But the unified theme among many coaches emerging from the meetings was about access--more, not less. That would be a reversal of the NCAA trend.

“The problem is, the third-parties, the AAU coaches, whatever,” Memphis Coach John Calipari said. “You better give us access, because if we don’t have it, somebody else does.”

Under NCAA rules, coaches cannot telephone recruits until the summer after their junior year in high school, and are limited to one call a week.

Now they are faced with the possibility of having to turn to other sources for evaluations of what happens in camps and tournaments.

“If you eliminate our access to kids, you’re opening the door to the element we’re trying to eliminate,” said Matt Doherty, the new North Carolina coach.

Lavin said establishing earlier relationships with players is key.

“‘I think there’s a real concern because everything’s accelerated,” he said. “Kids are going to the NBA early. They’re making their decisions about school earlier. So as a result, coaches feel there needs to be access to players and the families and support groups to educate them.

“Everything’s getting done sooner. Kids are committing as juniors. Kids are committing in the summer before they get to their senior year. They’re committing before a coach ever comes to their home or they ever visit a college campus.

“The issue runs deeper than how many days in the summer, whether it’s 14 or 24 days, that’s not going to solve the problems that have plagued college athletics for 30, 40, 50 years now.

“You go back historically, the problems have been in different areas, whether it’s alumni, boosters, or a coach, or a high school coach. Now it’s AAU coaches or agents.

“People are continually circumventing the rules. So when you make new legislation people look for creative ways, the people who aren’t going to work with integrity.

“I just think cheating takes different forms. Issues of integrity have always been there. That doesn’t mean the NCAA or NABC shouldn’t keep working to protect what is good about the game or what needs to be put in place. It’s a preventive model you’re working on, but it’s not going to be fail-safe.”