Play Their Hearts Out

by George Dohrmann

  In 1991, Nike fired Vaccaro and a year later he landed at Adidas. He had a smaller budget but the same objective: to establish Adidas as a basketball brand. The best college programs, thanks to his earlier work, were with Nike, so “I had to go younger,” Vaccaro said. “The only place I could do battle with Nike was at the youth level.” He brokered sponsorship deals with top high schools and signed five of the most influential AAU coaches in America. The first was Gary Charles, coach of the Long Island Panthers, who that summer controlled six-foot-eleven center Zendon Hamilton, considered the best prep player in the nation.

  It hardly made a ripple at the time, but Adidas’s move into the AAU game changed basketball. Nike quickly followed Vaccaro’s lead, aligning with high schools and forming its own stable of grassroots coaches, which included Pat Barrett. Not long after Joe Keller discovered Tyson Chandler in 1996, Nike and Adidas sponsored AAU teams in almost every urban center in America.

  Vaccaro’s decision to go younger was followed by the drafting of high schooler Kevin Garnett by the Minnesota Timberwolves with the fifth pick in the 1995 NBA Draft. Garnett’s early success, coupled with Vaccaro’s infusion of capital, fueled the rise of the AAU game. The search for players who might one day become NBA stars moved from college down to the prep-school level. The AAU season from April to August became the most important time of the year for players to showcase their skills.

  Keller’s dilemma when he returned to coaching was not unlike Vaccaro’s when he arrived at Adidas. He couldn’t compete for the older kids, so he decided to go after the younger ones. In an oligopolistic market, a new operator must find a way to circumvent the barriers to entry. One example commonly used by economics professors is the aluminum market, which for most of the twentieth century was controlled by Alcoa. Competitors finally broke through by perfecting the process of recycling aluminum and by discovering new sources of bauxite. Independent coaches like Keller often tried to build teams around recycled players, kids that sponsored coaches had passed on or cast aside. But that was hard work. You had to do more coaching and hope for a late growth spurt or a sudden jump in ability that would push your players into the upper echelon of prospects. Keller chose instead to find a new entry point into the market. He theorized that if he cultivated a strong relationship with kids and their parents long before the more prominent coaches came after them, their loyalty to him would prevent them from jumping to another team. Then, if the shoe companies wanted access to his great players, they would have no choice but to give him a contract like Barrett’s, with the fat salary and all the free gear his players wanted.

  Keller’s plan had some obvious flaws (foremost among them, everything banked on trust), but it was a plan nonetheless, and that was more than most coaches had. He first had to decide how young was young enough. How soon did he have to align himself with kids and their parents? He wanted to go only as young as he had to, since it would likely take until their freshman year of high school before his players would surface on the shoe companies’ radar. Keller debated this for weeks, repeatedly asking himself the question: How many years would it take for him to build the kind of loyalty that Barrett and all his free shoes couldn’t break?

  He settled on an answer one night while sitting on the sofa in his apartment with Violet. They were talking about Joey, Keller’s nine-year-old son from an earlier relationship, whom he rarely saw. “Maybe you should coach a team he can play on,” Violet suggested. “It would be a way for you to spend more time with him.” With little evidence to sway him otherwise, Keller agreed. Nine- and ten-year-olds would be the target. Though Keller’s aims were grand, his intentions looked, on the surface, uncomplicated: He was merely a father starting a team for his son.

  Shortly after he returned to coaching, Keller called Barrett and told him: “I’m getting back into the game. I’m gonna start up a new team.”

  The two men spoke periodically, but their dealings remained frosty. Keller would not normally discuss his plans with Barrett, but he laid out his vision for a team made up of the best fourth- and fifth-graders in Southern California. He then offered Barrett a proposition: In exchange for shoes and uniforms for his players, Keller would call his team the Southern California All-Stars.

  Barrett was still with Nike and he had an abundance of resources. What Keller asked for was a pittance compared to what Barrett gave his older players. In exchange for so little, he got to expand his brand, and if Keller happened upon another player with the upside of Chandler, Barrett must have assumed that Keller would pass him off when he got older. There seemed no downside for Barrett, though that didn’t stop him from making Keller work for it. He hemmed and hawed, and in the end, when he offered Keller twenty pairs of shoes and some money for uniforms, he framed it as if he were coming to the rescue of poor little Joe.

  More than the shoes and money, what Keller believed he got in the deal was permission to dangle a tempting carrot in front of the kids and parents he recruited. SCA was a Nike-sponsored program, and, as a subsidiary, Keller considered his team to be Nike-sponsored as well. It was a loose application of the transitive theory, but because it aligned with Keller’s motives it made perfect sense to him. He continued to call the team the Inland Stars, using SCA only in tournaments he knew Barrett would attend, but he wasn’t bashful about throwing around his supposed ties to Nike. He created a flyer that he handed out to parents and posted in gyms, parks, and community centers. It included a giant Nike swoosh and read:

  NIKE PRESENTS

  SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ALL-STARS TRAVELING BASKETBALL TEAM

  ————

  4th & 5th GRADERS

  ————

  Sponsored Program

  Professional Coaching

  Team Discipline

  Fundamental Exercises

  Private Training

  Knowledge of the game

  Exposure for college

  Plays against top talent in the country

  ————

  FREE NIKE GEAR

  He also paid for an advertisement in the sports section of the San Bernardino Sun. It read, in part: The Southern California All-Stars, a Nike-sponsored traveling team, is looking for boys basketball players 10 and under ….

  No one at Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, knew the name Joe Keller, but it is doubtful executives there would have protested had they learned of his actions. They had shown little interest in knowing what coaches like Barrett did with the gear and money given to them. “Other than making sure the coaches deliver the best players to our events, we don’t care what they do,” Vaccaro said. Because coaches were considered consultants, the shoe companies could always distance themselves if one did something unscrupulous that made headlines. “We could just say that the coach was operating on his own.”

  In such an environment, Keller’s embellishments in the newspaper and on his flyers wouldn’t even register. And if Nike wasn’t going to stop him from calling his team a Nike-sponsored outfit, who would? The business cards he had printed up were white, with the SCA logo in one corner and, in the other, a giant black swoosh.

  When Rob Bock, the coordinator of youth sports for the Rancho Cucamonga Parks and Recreation Department, saw Keller’s ad in the San Bernardino Sun, he thought of the AAU coaches who held practices at the community center gyms around the Inland Empire. They yelled too much; they didn’t know basketball; they never seemed to have children of their own. Rob had been so dismayed by what he saw that when his oldest son, Andrew, showed an interest in basketball, he decided to coach him rather than expose him to one of those men.

  Rob was a large man with big cheeks. He had a dawdling gait and a sleepy way of speaking that reminded me of Droopy, the cartoon dog who used to appear in episodes of Tom and Jerry. He met his wife, Lisa, while they were students at Fontana High, and they married with the blessings of both their families, even though Rob was white and Lisa was black. Andrew looked like neither of his parents. He was light-skinned, with pa
stel-brown eyes. Even as a young boy he was constantly concerned about his hair, an obsession his parents could never explain. He changed hairstyles regularly, from short curls to a sheared look to a short Afro, chasing the latest trend. Years later, one of his teammates would watch him run the court during warm-ups, note that he had switched his hairstyle, and say, “Andrew’s hair is his thing. His hair and that he can shoot.”

  At the time Rob spotted Keller’s ad, Andrew was ten and stood five foot two. He had a reputation as one of the best young shooters in the Inland Empire. When he shot the ball, parents in the stands would shout “Good!” before it reached the basket and teammates would often start back on defense before the ball reached the rim. He played point guard for a rec team that Rob formed and immediately showed a feel for the game that coaches like to say can’t be taught. He was also skilled at drawing fouls and getting to the free-throw line, where he rarely missed.

  Rob had been a scrappy guard at Fontana High, a tenacious defender with an average outside shot. When Andrew began dominating rec-league games, Rob allowed himself to dream of Andrew starring at his alma mater and then landing a scholarship to UCLA or Arizona. He would catch himself entertaining this fantasy and remember how farfetched it was—only 3 percent of high school basketball players nationally get a scholarship. Yet as Andrew kept draining 3-pointers, Rob began to believe that one of his paternal obligations was to find out how good his son could be. At the time he spotted Keller’s newspaper ad, he believed strongly that Andrew could be special if put on the right track.

  A week later, Rob and Andrew met Keller at the Rancho Cucamonga Family Sports Center for an individual tryout. What Rob first noticed about Keller was what he held in his hand: a briefcase. A basketball coach who carries a briefcase? Rob thought, and in that moment Keller seemed more legitimate than any coach Rob had encountered. Keller asked Andrew to start shooting the ball, and for thirty minutes Andrew made 3-pointers, shooting off the dribble or off a pass. When hot, he could make six or seven in a row, and by Rob’s guess Andrew made more than 60 percent of his attempts, an astounding rate for anyone, let alone a ten-year-old.

  When the workout was over, while Andrew was off getting water, Keller told Rob: “I really like your son. He looks like he could one day play at the college level.” Like any good salesman, Keller told Rob exactly what he wanted to hear at precisely the right moment. Keller talked of college coaches and NBA scouts he knew (a lie). He said his team would travel all over the country to play the best teams (an overstatement). He promised that Andrew would get unlimited free shoes and gear from Nike (an embellishment). Later, Keller added, “Being with a Nike team will help your son get exposure.” Rob began to think that placing Andrew on Keller’s team was like putting him on a bullet train toward a college scholarship, and Nike was picking up the fare.

  The conjured Nike affiliation was a powerful tool, seductive in a way that exceeded even Keller’s estimations. Even parents not prone to grand athletic dreams for their children were swayed by it.

  Shortly after adding Andrew to the team, Keller met with Rome Draper, Sr., whose son played with Andrew. Tall and thin, Rome, Sr., looked like a black Vincent Price, with a narrow mustache that he trimmed from the top down. His son had the same proud cheekbones, disarming dimples, and thin lips, so it was fitting they shared a name: Romyandana Draper. It’s a moniker that should have an interesting origin, should mean something in Cherokee or Swahili, but it was simply a mash of letters conjured up by Rome Sr.’s father, an army private during World War II who was in the South Pacific when Rome, Sr., was born. Rome, Sr., also joined the army and was a truck driver and mechanic at Fort Ord, then he worked truck maintenance for the U.S. Postal Service.

  Rome, Jr., adopted his father’s style—neatly ironed clothes, a short haircut—and also inherited his warmth, his acceptance of others regardless of whether they failed to meet his exacting standards. As Andrew Bock was known for his hair, Rome was characterized by his compassion. He instantly became a genuine friend to whomever he encountered, and Keller would come to gauge potential recruits on how they acted toward Rome. If a kid couldn’t get along with Rome, that was a red flag.

  Rome, Sr., did not love basketball as Rob did and never considered sports to be a possible future for his son. He had to be convinced by Rob that Rome was a talented player and that he should harvest his gift. When Rob showed him Keller’s flyer, Rome, Sr., was instantly skeptical: “Nike is going to pay my son to play basketball?” Rob assured him that it was legitimate. “But these boys are only nine or ten. What would Nike want to do with my boy?”

  A few days later, Rome, Sr., met Keller and stood on the sidelines as Rome went through an audition similar to Andrew’s. Rome was not extremely tall for his age, about five foot five, but he had long arms. Rome, Sr., was six foot two, so Keller projected that Rome would be at least that tall. No one part of Rome’s game stood out, but he had good hands and could rebound, dribble, and shoot, and Keller knew from Rob that Rome usually deferred to teammates on offense.

  Keller gave Rome, Sr., the same pitch he had given Rob. He stressed how he could help Rome get a college scholarship. Rome, Sr., knew nothing about grassroots basketball. He didn’t know that Keller knew more about welding than about how to get his son a scholarship. But his skepticism faded as he listened to Keller’s pitch. Asked if he was ready to join the team, Rome, Sr., said eagerly, “Oh, yeah, we can do this.”

  Whereas Keller once struggled to find talented kids, the floodgates opened in the month or two after he first spotted Demetrius. Being able to tout his ties to Nike was a big part of it, but he also began to view kids differently, to see skills he might have undervalued before he had Demetrius. Andrew was the heady point guard who, when defenses collapsed around Demetrius, would make the open 3-point shot. Rome, with his amiable nature and willingness to do the small things, was the perfect complimentary player, and he could help Demetrius with his rebounding from the small forward spot.

  After Andrew and Rome, Keller quickly filled out a roster of ten kids. Among the additions was Joseph Burton, a burly center who was part Native American—Keller took to calling him “Indian Joe”—and a quiet shooting guard named Jordan Finn. In his initial phone conversation with John Finn, Jordan’s father, Keller mentioned his relationship with Nike so many times that John began counting. At the end of a twenty-minute talk, John tallied fourteen mentions. John worked for a mineral company and sold fertilizer to stores all over the West Coast. He believed that when someone sold something too hard, the product often didn’t live up to the billing. Yet John not only agreed to let Jordan play for Keller, he eventually moved his family from Orange County to the Inland Empire to be closer for practices and games. Like Rob and Rome, Sr., he was convinced not by the power of Keller’s personality or the breadth of his basketball knowledge but by the perception Keller created that the Inland Stars were an elite group with special status.

  At the first practice he attended, John Finn marveled at how Keller instructed the boys on a complex offense known as “Flex,” which involves a pattern of movements run continuously until a player gets open. Some high school coaches consider it too advanced, but John watched as Keller taught it to Nine- and ten-year-olds. He was so awed that it wasn’t until years later, when reflecting on his first impressions of Keller, that it dawned on him that never during that first workout did the boys practice ball handling, passing, or any other basic skills. Choosing style over substance was something legendary UCLA coach John Wooden cautioned against in Practical Modern Basketball, a book Keller never read but that is considered a bible in the coaching community. “The finest system cannot overcome poor execution of the fundamentals,” Wooden wrote. “The coach must be certain that he never permits himself to get ‘carried away’ by a complicated system to the extent that it ‘steals’ practice time from the fundamentals.” Keller would not disagree, but he would add that Wooden’s teachings were less applicable to the grassroots game, where a coach�
��s primary goals were to collect elite players and get people talking about them.

  This was one of many areas where Keller’s methods diverged from what would be considered normative coaching behavior. He never diagrammed plays, not during time-outs, during halftime, or even in practice. He never used a grease board or scribbled on a chalkboard. He also never recorded games to show them to his team later. Rob and John often taped games to show to Andrew and Jordan individually, and occasionally they tried to show Keller something they had recorded. Most often, he waved them off.

  Keller also never used a whistle, a coach’s most basic tool. It is an instrument of control, but in the right hands it can be a subtle tool, like a conductor’s baton. Keller simply preferred to yell. To stop movement during the drilling of Red Sea, he just shouted “NO!” so loudly that it startled the boys to a halt. He then dragged a player by his jersey to the spot where he should have been and shouted “AGAIN!” to restart the sequence. As the mistakes mounted, so did the number of times Keller shouted “NO!” After the third time he screamed: “NO! NO! NO!” Keller’s players probably would have welcomed a whistle, as it produced a gentler sound.

  Keller took the boys to the movies and shopping at the Ontario Mills mall, but he did not take them to basketball camps or one-day clinics. Keller was passionate about his team, and his affection for some of the boys ran deep, but he was not drawn to teaching. He did not devour books on basketball, watch instructional videos, attend coaching clinics, or even pick the minds of more seasoned colleagues. Keller bragged that he learned by doing and not by studying, but it would be more accurate to say he didn’t like learning at all.