New Battleground in Recruiting War

North Carolina coach Matt Doherty knows his biggest recruiting battles are no longer waged against Duke, Kansas or Kentucky. The new opponent is the NBA.

“There’s no question it’s more difficult. In the past at North Carolina, we always went after the best players,” he says. “Now you’re afraid to do that because you don’t know who might go to the NBA.”

In an era when high-school players and college underclassmen are jumping to the NBA in increasing numbers, even a coach like Doherty can’t rely on the ingredients that once made North Carolina attractive to so many top recruits -- the tradition, the television exposure, the travel, the education.

Last season, Doherty courted two of the nation’s top recruits--Eddy Curry and DeSagana Diop. Both bypassed college and went No. 4 and No. 8 in the NBA draft last month.

The continued defections of players to the pros are creating big problems not just for Doherty but for coaches at many of the nation’s elite basketball programs.

Even player-friendly coaches, Louisville’s Rick Pitino and Florida’s Billy Donovan among them, are battling the perception that players don’t need to refine their skills in college.

“Right now if a kid says ‘I’m a Top 10 pick and I’m going to bypass school,’ you have to make a decision,” says Donovan, who signed Kwame Brown, who subsequently became the top pick in the NBA draft. “Kwame told me all along he wanted to go to school. But if you’ve got a kid in the summer saying ‘I’m going’ you have to decide whether you’re going to recruit him.”

The decisions are being made at almost every big institution in the nation, including Notre Dame, which has had just two players leave school early since 1976.

“We’re pretty much a four-year institution, but the whole climate has changed,” Irish coach Mike Brey says. “I’m not going to tell kids ‘We’re Notre Dame, we’re a four-year place’ and then finish last in the Big East every year. The game has changed, and we have to adjust.”

The college game isn’t adjusting well.

Almost all the prospects at this week’s Nike All-America Camp in Indianapolis say that they discuss the NBA, and the high-school camp is starting to show signs of that.

Last weekend, NBA scouts sat side-by-side with college coaches when the summer recruiting period officially opened.

Players, such as Amare Stoudemire, a 6-foot-9, 240-pound forward from Orlando, Fla., also are trying to change their image. Stoudemire admits there’s a 50-50 chance he’ll jump to the NBA and showed up in Indianapolis with his own public relations agent.

At Adidas camp in New Jersey, another top prospect, LeBron James, discussed skipping his senior year -- of high school.

“Recruiting has changed ‘Poom!’ in the last year,” says Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, who has won three national championships. “I don’t know if anybody knows where everything is going. The game is in a state of flux, it’s chaotic.”

Most coaches hope something can be done to stem the flood of early departures that have gutted programs. Solutions, however, are hard to find.

Some would like to see a minimum-age requirement, an issue that has been discussed by NBA commissioner David Stern.

“If we could get something like that, it would be marvelous,” says Purdue’s Gene Keady, a past president of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. “Hopefully, something can be done, but to do that, you’d have to get rid of the Spencer Haywood rule.”

The rule, which was adopted in the 1970s, allowed college players to leave for the NBA before they completed their eligibility -- if they could prove financial hardship.

Haywood was the first player to leave college early. Since then, more than 400 high school, college and international players have followed in Haywood’s footsteps and nearly half of those early entrants have occurred since 1996 -- the year after Kevin Garnett jumped from high school to the NBA.

Immediate changes, however, appear unlikely.

“You have to have the players’ association in agreement with the owners and the NCAA, and the last time, the players association turned that down,” says Arizona coach Lute Olsen, who had three players depart early from national runner-up team last season.

If an age requirement were adopted, it probably wouldn’t go into effect until after the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement expires following the 2003-04 season.

Coaches like Olsen and Krzyzewski, however, don’t believe that’s the solution, and the players don’t believe it would work, either.

“If you think you’re personally ready, it’s got to be a consideration for you,” said Shavlik Randolph, a 6-8 forward from Raleigh, N.C. “If I knew I would be a Top 5 or Top 10 pick, it would be hard to turn down.”

Randolph’s is considered one of the nation’s top five recruits and lists Duke, Florida, North Carolina State and Doherty’s Tar Heels as finalists for his services -- if he doesn’t go to the pros.