Play Their Hearts Out

by George Dohrmann

  Keller doubted him but was also too distracted to worry about it. Since before New Jersey, when Mats discussed the idea of him becoming the middle school grassroots guru, he had been building on the idea to franchise the Jr. Phenom Camp. He put together a packet for prospective buyers for what he called a “regional” Jr. Phenom Camp and required those who read it to sign a confidentiality agreement, because he worried that Reebok or Nike would steal his idea. He gave the packet to coaches he knew across the country, and by the Las Vegas Easter Classic he said he had fifty regional camps sold or about to be sold.

  The purchaser of a regional Jr. Phenom Camp franchise paid Keller $15,000 up front. That included $10,000 a year for the mandatory two-year commitment and a required $5,000 for Jr. Phenom gear—T-shirts, headbands, shorts, hats, and other merchandise—to be sold at the event. (The merchandise cost Keller $2,500 to manufacture.) Every player attending a regional camp received an official Jr. Phenom Camp reversible jersey, which Keller sold to the franchise buyer at a cost of $40, a markup of $17. Keller also sold insurance, asking $200 per camp. He paid only $1,500 total for coverage of all the camps, with an additional $25 for every camper he added to the policy.

  The prospectus Keller handed out to buyers estimated that with a minimum of 200 attendees and with all merchandise sold, the operator of a regional Jr. Phenom Camp would net $50,500 a year. A more staggering sum was the one that popped up on Keller’s calculator when he sat down to tabulate his expected profits:

  Franchise Fees: $10,000 × 50 = $500,000

  Merchandise: $2,500 × 50 = $125,000

  Jerseys: $17 × 200 × 50 = $170,000

  Insurance: $175 × 50 = $ 8,750

  TOTAL: $803,750

  That total did not include Keller’s profits from the national Jr. Phenom Camp, which in its inaugural year netted nearly $100,000. It did not include profits from the girls’ Jr. Phenom Camp, debuting in August. It did not include income from sponsors of those camps or the regional camps. It also took into account only fifty regional camps sold, with 200 kids per camp. Keller believed he would have more than 100 camps sold by June and that many camps would involve 300 or more kids. “When it’s all said and done, I’m going to make four million dollars,” Keller said. “Mark my words, Joe Keller is making four million this year.” He was not rubbing his hands together as he spoke, but his glee was obvious.

  Mats understood the money involved, which is why he traveled to Las Vegas. He came to urge Keller to hand the boys over to Taylor for the rest of the season and to begin telling some kids that they would be graduating to Mats’s EBO program. After New Jersey, Mats thought that Keller would inform a few of the kids, and he arranged for Demetrius, Rome, Aaron, and G.J. to receive a pair of the shoes that his EBO team wore. Keller delivered the shoes but didn’t say where they came from. When Mats approached Gerry to say he was excited to have G.J. playing for him in the future, Gerry ignored him and warned Keller that Mats was moving in on his kids. “I feel like I walked into an ambush,” Mats said.

  Watching Team Cal defeat the Arizona Stars 60–47, Mats took note of how Keller did more yelling than coaching, how Demetrius and Roberto refused to pass to each other, and how parents in the stands grumbled about it all.

  “I hope this works out with D.T. coaching the team the rest of this season,” Mats said. “Because if it doesn’t, I don’t know if Joe is going to be able to keep the team together much longer.”

  In defeating the Arizona Stars on Friday afternoon, Team Cal looked considerably better than the disjointed, careless team from a day earlier. Players heeded Taylor’s call to behave more like friends and teammates. They cheered one another on and slapped hands after they made baskets. But Taylor wasn’t focused on the positives as he pushed open the glass doors of the community center and walked briskly to my car.

  “That’s it. Joe and I are going to get into it,” he said. “Wait until Joe gets in this car. We’re going to have it out.”

  Taylor’s blond hair fit his California roots, as did the large white sunglasses always perched atop his head, even at night. He had a rotating collection of more than 100 throwback jerseys, including prizes like Pete Maravich’s Louisiana State jersey and Jerry West’s from West Virginia. He came across as calm but forceful, and his voice was like a cannon’s boom. Words shot out in quick bursts. Spit flew. Like Keller, he had mastered the art of profanity. His particular skill was merging two curse words to form a profane original such as pussybitch.

  Taylor had been set off by an incident during the second half. He was encouraging Demetrius and the other players to push the ball upcourt against the slower Arizona Stars’ players. But his instruction came at the moment Roberto took the ball one-on-four and forced a shot that missed badly. Taylor was leaning down in front of Aaron, explaining defensive positioning, when Keller shrieked at him: “You don’t know what the hell you are talking about!” It took all of Taylor’s willpower not to run up the sideline and grab Keller by the throat.

  When Keller climbed into the car, taking the seat directly behind Taylor, he said, “D.T., I thought we played pretty well, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. Look, Joe, we gotta talk,” Taylor said. His voice was always raised, but it was now louder than usual.

  Keller began to say something.

  “No, no, listen.”

  Keller tried again to break in.

  “No, let me say what I gotta say without you fucking interrupting. Then you can say all your bullshit you gotta say.”

  Taylor talked quickly, in shouts, and he repeatedly wheeled around in the passenger’s seat, trying to look at Keller as he spoke.

  “You don’t fucking treat your coaches that way. I am not some fucking punk-ass bitch who never coached before. I’ve coached longer than you and at a higher level than you. You do not disrespect me or anyone on the bench.”

  Keller again tried to interrupt.

  “Let me finish! Let me finish! Talk about a sensitive guy; let me say what I gotta say. … All I said was ‘Push it.’ And then we turn the ball over and you have a heart attack and start yelling at everyone. I didn’t say, ‘Jam it down their throats and shoot it one-on-four.’ All I said was ‘Push it up the floor.’ If your guys are not smart enough to know that doesn’t mean go one-on-four, well, then, I apologize for that. But you were wrong for what you did, because it sends a bad message to the kids.”

  Taylor was breathing hard and pausing often, but Keller stopped trying to defend himself. He just stared out a window as Taylor punctuated almost every sentence with “God damn, Joe!

  “If you had ever been an assistant coach, you’d know not to treat guys like that,” Taylor continued. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you treat me like that, let you chew me out like I don’t know what the fuck I am doing. Show me some fucking respect on the bench.”

  Taylor moved on to the way Keller treated the players.

  “Joe, you can’t be swinging your arms, screaming, ‘What the fucking, fucking fuck, fuck.’ God damn, Joe, you are better than that. A kid plays hard but he misses a layup, and you yell, ‘Fucking Aaron, fucking get him out of there. Fucking fuck, fuck, fuck.’ You are acting like a goddamn idiot. A goddamn idiot. The fans are looking at it. The refs are looking at it. And it just don’t look good. You cleaned up your look, you are looking nice, but you are yelling at me, yelling at the players, yelling at the refs. You are out of control!

  “Today the kids finally got to feel good. They are running off the court. They are playing hard. They are slapping hands. They are helping each other on defense. They are all getting in the huddle. But then there is their leader, bitching like we are not a team. No wonder these kids freak out so much. God damn, Joe.

  “How do you not have a grease board? How are you not diagramming things for them in every huddle? How do you not tape these games and then show them what they are doing? Give them a chance, Joe. Coach them. Don’t take them out after every mistake. Don’t yell at them after eve
rything. Coach them, Joe, coach them.”

  Few people had ever spoken to Keller this way. Fewer still weren’t banished instantly from Team Cal. When Taylor was done, when the car fell silent save a low bass line coming from a Snoop Dogg CD Demetrius had left in the player, Keller said nothing. He just looked out the window at the Las Vegas skyline.

  In the tournament final on Friday night, Team Cal faced Houston Hoops at the recreational center on UNLV’s campus. The Hoops were one of the better Under–15 programs in the nation and were affiliated with Nike. Coaches from both shoe companies filled the gym in anticipation of a showdown between two teams with high profiles.

  After two days of playing before small crowds, the stage suddenly got bigger, a fact not missed by Demetrius. During warm-ups, he wore a weighted black vest that looked as if it was bulletproof. He had heard that some NBA players wore them pregame so they would feel lighter and bouncier. He jumped rope with it on while his teammates ran layup lines. He also was the only player with his jersey untucked, and he wore black shoes while the rest of Team Cal wore the royal-blue Adidas that Keller handed out on the first day of the tournament.

  Early in the game, Keller heeded Taylor’s criticisms. He didn’t yell at the boys, and he even encouraged them when shots didn’t fall. When Vondrae missed a jumper from the left side with eight minutes left in the first half, he looked to the bench in anticipation of being scolded or pulled. Keller started to say something but turned away from the court and retained his composure. When he looked back at Vondrae, he clapped his hands violently and forced out a positive line: “That’s … all right … Vondrae. … Keep … pushing … it.”

  Houston Hoops went on an 8–0 run with about five minutes left in the half, turning a 2-point Team Cal lead into a 26–20 deficit. The Hoops were bigger and stronger and in much better shape. They got out on the break and took advantage when Keller’s players were too tired to get back on defense. When Team Cal had the ball, the Hoops didn’t let Demetrius penetrate and doubled Aaron in the post. Only G.J. understood how to attack their matchup zone, but when he got into the lane and looked for cutting teammates, no one had moved into the open space he created.

  With two minutes left in the half and the Hoops’ lead growing, the cork popped on the anger bottled inside Keller.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he yelled at Aaron as he walked off the court during a time-out. Aaron anticipated the bashing and before getting to the bench tried to defend himself.

  “D shot before we could run the play.”

  “No, he didn’t. Shut the hell up.”

  Aaron ripped off his headband and threw it under the bench. “Fuuuuuck!” he yelled, and then he sat down and covered his face with his hands.

  Taylor sat down next to him and put his hand on his knee. He looked up at Keller, who was thrashing the other players. “You know who is watching?” Keller screamed. “You guys are playing like a bunch of limp dicks!”

  Houston Hoops pulled away further in the second half and won 67–53. It was not unexpected. Like the Boston Saintz in New Jersey, they were older, and the objective wasn’t so much to win the game as to give the boys a taste of what they would face as they got older. Demetrius scored 13 points, but only 3 in the final twenty minutes. Late in the game, he took over ballhandling duties from G.J. but just dribbled atop Houston’s zone, as if running out the clock.

  “The thing I have always loved about Demetrius was the way he competed,” said Mats, who watched the game from the stands with Pickett. “But tonight he stopped competing.” He pointed to a corner of the gym, where Keller and Taylor had gathered the team. “Look at that. Joe and D.T. are talking, but he’s not listening to them. He’s tuning them out. He’s tuning everyone out.”

  23

  Dave Taylor (in Lakers jersey)

  In advance of the Adidas Superstar Camp in the first week of July, someone within the company’s grassroots division—possibly Kalish or Pickett—compiled a list of seventeen players from the 220 attending the four-day event outside Atlanta. All of the players invited were among the best in the country, but these seventeen were special. They were termed “Highlight Athletes,” and Adidas considered them the elite of the elite. They would be pushed to media outlets and photographed the most and, in the competition between the shoe companies to control the best kids, those seventeen would be used as proof that Adidas held its own with Nike and Reebok.

  Most AAU coaches, regardless of their shoe-company affiliation, believed Vaccaro’s Reebok ABCD Camp had the most talent of the three, with Adidas’s camp second and Nike’s a distant third. The number-1 rising senior, Greg Oden, and the top-ranked junior-to-be, O. J. Mayo, were at the ABCD, making it seem as if the other camps got the leftovers. But Adidas had made huge strides in its second year without Vaccaro, and the Highlight Athletes represented that progress.

  The seventeen players were divided into two groups. The “Priority B” athletes included seven-footers Brook and Robin Lopez, Mats’s Stanford-bound twins; Javaris Crittenton, who was headed to Georgia Tech; and a number of other players who either had or would commit to top college programs, including Erving Walker (Florida), James Keefe (UCLA), Wayne Ellington (North Carolina), and Nolan Smith (Duke). Also among the second tier of Highlight Athletes was Michael Beasley, who in three years would be the number-2 pick in the NBA draft by the Miami Heat, one of four Priority B players who would be in the league within three years.

  The six “Priority A” athletes, those considered the phenoms of the phenoms, were Eric Gordon (Indiana), Darryl “D. J.” Augustin (Texas), Thaddeus Young (Georgia Tech), and B. J. Mullens (Ohio State)—all future NBA players—as well as Korie Lucious (Michigan State). The sixth Priority A, the last of the players Adidas considered its most precious, was fourteen-year-old Demetrius Walker.

  It was a resounding statement about Adidas’s expectations for Demetrius and also the company’s investment in his future. His ability, in the company’s view, was on par with some of the most polished and talented players in the country, some of whom were three or four years older. He was not only expected to hang with the other kids at the camp but to outshine them and then to perform as well as or better than the sixteen other Highlight Athletes. Such expectations were outsized, even for “the next LeBron,” which some grassroots coaches had begun calling Demetrius (often facetiously) after the Sports Illustrated article. Even if he was “fourteen going on LeBron,” LeBron’s breakout moment at a summer camp—against Lenny Cooke at ABCD—had not come until before his junior year.

  Adidas ratcheted up the stakes in what was already a defining week for Demetrius and Keller. Adidas’s grassroots brass as well as its top coaches would be at the camp, as would more than 100 college coaches. For most, it would be their first opportunity to see Demetrius play and judge whether the hype was warranted. For Keller, the performance of Demetrius and, to a lesser degree, Aaron and G.J. would validate or put into question Adidas’s decision to tie the future of its grassroots division to him and the Jr. Phenom Camp. Grassroots coaches could be a catty bunch, and many arrived in Atlanta full of skepticism about Demetrius and Keller. They doubted Demetrius was as good as advertised, and most hoped he’d fall flat, as that would diminish Keller’s star. The older players would be gunning for Demetrius. It had taken some until their junior or senior years to get invited to the Superstar Camp, and they wouldn’t take lightly that Demetrius was there straight out of middle school. As Vaccaro said when told that Adidas had invited Demetrius: “They’ve turned that kid into the hunted.”

  In contrast, almost nothing was expected of G.J. and Aaron, who were at the camp only as favors to Keller. As a smallish pass-first point guard, G.J. possessed a game ill suited for the all-star camp format. Games were short—forty-four minutes of running clock—and players dominated the ball in the hopes of impressing the college coaches. G.J.’s unselfishness would work against him. Aaron was too slight to play inside against power forwards like Beasley and Young, so he w
ould have to transition to a new position, small forward. On Team Cal, Aaron was never permitted to drive to the basket or shoot from the outside, the offensive skills most often associated with a small forward. When Keller told him about the position switch on the flight to Atlanta, he felt like an actor told of a new role moments before the opening curtain. “I’m going to get killed,” he said.

  Games were staged on one of four tightly drawn courts in a warehouselike building at the Suwanee (Georgia) Sports Academy. The complex was cordoned off so coaches were kept separate from the players, to whom they could not speak, per NCAA rules. On one side of the rectangular building, the college coaches sat in metal folding chairs that ran along the baselines of all four courts. On the other side were the players, their AAU coaches, and a spattering of spectators.

  Superstar campers were divided into twenty-two teams of ten that were named after Adidas-sponsored colleges like UCLA, Indiana, and Louisville. Each team played at least one game a day, from Tuesday through Friday. The Superstar Camp, as well as the Nike and Reebok versions, mixed in just enough skill sessions and lectures to give the illusion that the camp was more than just a series of games. But the games were the main attraction. College coaches watched them, as did scouting-service types like Clark Francis, who used the camps to determine a player’s ranking heading into the school year.

  Adidas didn’t strive for balance when dividing the athletes into teams; it stacked certain squads so as to create exciting matchups. How else to explain the Louisville team, which included Ellington, Augustin, and Keefe? Or Virginia Tech, which had Beasley, Nolan Smith, and Russell Westbrook (UCLA)? Demetrius’s team included six-foot-eight Quincy Pondexter from California and seven-footer Hamady N’diaye from Florida. It was a good but not a great team, and much of the backcourt scoring would fall to Demetrius, easily the most heralded of the guards. Aaron’s team looked stronger, if only because the six-foot-eleven Mullens was at center. G.J.’s team might have been the most talent-rich, but with trigger-happy guards Calvin Haynes III from California and Crittenton among the backcourt rotation, G.J. would be lucky to touch the ball. “Aaron’s team is by far the best,” Keller said when sizing up his players’ prospects. “And D’s team is the worst in camp.”