Basketball Rife With Recruiting

It’s time to confront the most provocative topic in high school boys’ basketball: Can a team win a championship without recruiting?

The answer is no.

Most of the top programs have transfer students. Those players didn’t just show up because they liked the school colors.

Engaging in undue influence, a.k.a. recruiting, is illegal. But there are ways to skirt the rules, such as players contacting other players, parents passing information to other parents, club coaches steering players to favored programs.

Proving a head coach illegally recruited athletes happens about as often as a full-court shot goes in. First, head coaches aren’t stupid. Second, open enrollment has made most recruiting rules obsolete.

Even in this era of Pursuing Victory with Honor, a campaign launched by the Josephson Institute, it’s a rarity when an administrator rises up to take down a program that’s evading the rules unless it’s blatant, like Artesia using ineligible players from foreign countries two years ago.

Recruiting goes on in other sports, but nothing like basketball, where player movement happens at a frantic pace depending on availability of playing time and which assistant coach has connections to the hottest travel team.

Coaches rarely turn away transfer students, even if they check in with disturbing backgrounds.

Take the case of Frank Robinson. He averaged 39 points last season for Chatsworth High’s junior varsity team. He couldn’t play varsity because of transfer rules. This fall, he broke the jaw of a teammate in a fight. The school immediately suspended him. Before Chatsworth could decide his punishment at a hearing, Robinson transferred to Littlerock, the school he attended as a sophomore.

He then moved into the Sylmar district almost two months later with his legal guardian. Because Chatsworth never expelled Robinson, he’s eligible at Sylmar. And the Spartans suddenly have a very good basketball team, but at what cost?

“The message being sent is you can beat up a kid, go to another school and there’s no consequences,” said Reseda Coach Mike Wagner. “It’s a horrendous message.”

It’s just another example how winning programs keep winning. They find ways to manipulate the rules.

It would be nice to believe that some school is going to have a group of neighborhood kids show up one day as freshmen, stay together for four years and celebrate a championship by cutting down the nets in their senior year at the Arrowhead Pond or the Sports Arena.

“There’s no way in a million years,” said Dana Pump, president of Double Pump Inc., which runs camps and all-star games. “It will never happen, not in my lifetime. Coaches aren’t like they used to be. They used to be like ‘Hoosiers,’ old-school guys. The profession has changed.

“It’s kind of like college basketball. It’s about winning. It’s like they’re begging kids to go to schools. There’s always somebody out there who will want to take a kid, use him for a couple months. It’s a shame, but it’s the truth.”

Howard Levine, coach at Van Nuys Grant for 16 years, has accepted the fact he probably won’t win a City championship.

“You got to have players and there are certain teams that seem to have a monopoly on players,” he said. “You’re virtually going against all-star teams that are stacked in the Southern Section and City. We can get close and see how close we get if things break our way, but you have to have horses and a lineup that resembles a college lineup--size, quickness, shooters and unselfish players.”

Three years ago, Levine was fortunate enough to work with the best player in his coaching career, Gilbert Arenas, who went on to play for Arizona and was a second-round draft choice of the Golden State Warriors. Even Arenas briefly considered transferring for the lure of playing on a potential City final team.

“I’m not going to recruit,” Levine said. “Everybody goes out there to do the best you can. If you’re a teacher and a professional, you know it’s not all about winning.”

Barbara Fiege, the commissioner of the City Section, said she still believes it’s possible to win a championship following the rules.

“I’d like to think so, or otherwise I’d have to quit,” she said.

The evidence shows to win a championship in boys’ basketball, you need a transfer student or two every season.

It doesn’t mean a school did something illegal to get the players, but there is reason to be suspicious.

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Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.