Play Their Hearts Out

by George Dohrmann

  Ohio State didn’t couch their interest in Roberto. Coach Thad Matta offered him a scholarship when he visited the campus for the Ohio State–Michigan football game in November, and one of his assistants began working with Bruce to make sure Roberto had the course credits he needed to be eligible to play for the Buckeyes as a freshman. He reviewed Roberto’s transcripts and advised Bruce on what summer school courses Roberto should take. Like UCLA, Ohio State also violated an NCAA rule in pursuing Roberto: Former Ohio State player and CBS college basketball analyst Clark Kellogg called Bruce and lobbied on behalf of his alma mater. (As a former Ohio State player, he was forbidden under NCAA guidelines from contacting recruits or their families.) “I heard that the missing piece to the puzzle was a kid in California,” Kellogg told Bruce. He mentioned that his son, Nick, a guard in the class of 2010, would likely play for Ohio State and said that head coach Thad Matta was building the Buckeyes into a perennial national title contender.

  Even if Roberto had wanted to accept the Buckeyes’ scholarship offer at that time, he could only verbally commit to the school, an oxymoron of sorts that complicates the recruiting process further. A player can verbally commit at any time, and kids as young as eighth-graders have pledged their allegiance to a school, but either side can break their commitment without penalty. The earliest a recruit can sign a binding letter of intent is in November of his senior year. If Roberto had committed to the Buckeyes in the fall of 2007, it would have left a year for him to change his mind or for another program, like UCLA, to persuade him to switch. If the Ohio State coaches didn’t like the way Roberto’s game was progressing or found another recruit they liked more, they could simply pull the offer. Some schools had a reputation for being more disingenuous than others, another factor kids had to weigh when selecting a school.

  The role played by some grassroots coaches also muddied the recruiting waters. There was a time not that long ago when the top high school players almost always stayed close to home for college. Indiana kids went to Indiana, Kentucky kids went to Kentucky or Louisville, North Carolina players went to one of the schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference. This was due mostly to the fact that only local schools pursued them. A coach in, say, Kansas didn’t have the resources to track the prospects in California, and even if he did hear about a top player there, he had no chance of competing with coaches from UCLA or USC, who were better positioned to develop a relationship with a recruit and his family. The rise of grassroots basketball shattered this localism, first by providing coaches an opportunity to scout kids they wouldn’t otherwise have seen. At events like the ABCD Camp or the Adidas Superstar Camp and big team tournaments like the Kingwood Classic in Houston, a coach could watch kids from almost every state in a single day. For recruiters, it was like signing on to Amazon.com after spending decades picking through what was available at the corner store.

  That alone would not have drastically changed the business of recruiting. Scouting a kid who lived two time zones away was a waste of time if you didn’t have a way to establish a relationship with him. Enter the grassroots coaches, the quintessential middlemen. College recruiters quickly devised creative ways to cultivate their loyalty, the most common of which was to hire them as assistant coaches. Adding the right grassroots coach to a staff could open up an entire region’s worth of kids.

  Not every AAU coach dreamed of moving to the college ranks—for the biggest, it would have required a pay cut—so recruiters devised other means to secure their favor. They paid them to work summer camps and had rich alumni donate money to their nonprofit organizations. One of the more ingenious (and infamous) practices was exposed in 2003, the year that Connecticut paid $22,000 to the Beltway Ballers to play a preseason exhibition game. The Ballers were organized by the same Baltimore organization that operated an AAU team that included Rudy Gay, one of the nation’s top 10 players, who Connecticut just happened to be recruiting. Maryland coach Gary Williams, who would lose out on Gay when he picked the Huskies, complained about Connecticut’s actions, leading to news stories about how other schools used the same method to line AAU coaches’ pockets. Connecticut had paid $25,000 to the Louisiana Futures for an exhibition game the previous year. That team was affiliated with the AAU program of Brandon Bass, another prized recruit.

  Any rational person would recognize these maneuvers for what they were: bribes. Money was exchanged in the hopes that the AAU coach would influence a recruit’s college choice. The NCAA passed a rule preventing exhibition games like the ones Connecticut had organized, but no one doubted that schools would find new ways to grease the recruiting wheels. The NCAA had no jurisdiction over grassroots coaches. As Pat Barrett once said, “The NCAA can’t touch me.”

  After their visit to Iowa State, Carmen and Justin were unsure whom to trust and jaded by the process. In the weeks that followed, as schools like Arizona, Arizona State, and Cal called and sent emails, Carmen didn’t need to temper Justin’s enthusiasm. “It’s all bullshit until they offer me a scholarship,” he said. Early in the summer, when the coach of Justin’s grassroots team, the Compton Magic, asked Carmen to call an assistant coach from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), she treated it with the same indifference. UNLV assistant coach Lew Hill, with whom she spoke later, offered the same lines as the other recruiters: UNLV was “interested” in Justin; they would keep an eye on him during the grassroots season.

  “Same old shit,” she told Justin after the conversation.

  In July, Justin played in the Adidas Super 64 with the Compton Magic. All of his games were held on UNLV’s campus, either at Cox Pavilion or the Thomas & Mack Center. Before his first game, Carmen noted that Lon Kruger, UNLV’s head coach, was in the stands. At subsequent games she saw him as well, and she noted that he always arrived early and never left before the game was over.

  Following the tournament, on the first day UNLV could contact Carmen under NCAA rules, Hill called again. He asked if she and Justin would return to Las Vegas for an unofficial visit. Justin was in the process of attending camps at UCLA, Arizona, and Arizona State, all paid for out of her pocket, and Carmen didn’t want to waste money like they had on Iowa State. But the Compton Magic coach urged her to make the trip. He had also spoken to Hill and said UNLV’s interest was sincere.

  In early September, Justin and Carmen drove to Las Vegas for the unofficial visit. Compared to their trip to Ames, it was modest. They toured the campus and met with academic staff, and Justin went to a football game with members of the basketball team. The next morning, they met with Kruger in his office.

  “I’ve been watching you, and I really like your game,” Kruger told Justin, and he mentioned his commitment on defense. He then surprised Justin by focusing on what he thought were his weaknesses. “Your ballhandling needs work, and your shot could be more consistent. Also, I think you can be too passive on offense. It is good you look to get others involved, but sometimes a player needs to be selfish.”

  Had Demetrius or Aaron been sitting across from Kruger at that moment, his bluntness might have turned them off, but Justin knew he was a work in progress.

  Carmen would say later that she liked Kruger instantly because he answered her questions with a refreshing directness.

  “So how does this all work?” Carmen asked him at one point.

  “We would really like to have Justin,” he answered.

  “But what does that mean?”

  Kruger explained how schools had different “levels” of recruits that they were pursuing and that he had to offer scholarships to several kids in the hopes of getting the numbers he wanted. UNLV had four scholarships to give to players in the class of 2009, and he hoped to land two guards and two frontcourt players. Justin was one of the guards they were looking at.

  “Who else are you looking at?” Justin asked.

  “Anthony Marshall and Elijah Johnson,” Kruger responded, naming two guards from the Las Vegas area.

  The meeting ended without Kruger offering Jus
tin a scholarship, but the tenor was completely different from that of their conversation with McDermott at Iowa State. Kruger seemed to be saying that if Justin wanted to go to UNLV, he would offer him a scholarship.

  At the end of the month, Justin returned to Las Vegas to play at a one-day showcase event where top players were split into teams and scrimmaged. Recruiters were forbidden from attending, but afterward Justin and Carmen visited Kruger again.

  “When does a coach really put a scholarship on the table?” Carmen asked him.

  “Well, right now we are down to those three guards, and we’ll take the first two that commit,” Kruger said.

  “So are you offering a scholarship?” Carmen said.

  “Yes, I am offering Justin a scholarship.”

  Justin looked at his mom and then tried to hide his smile as he said to Kruger, “Coach, I really appreciate that. Do you mind if I take a little time to talk to my mom and think it over?”

  “Of course,” Kruger said, and he walked them out of his office.

  Carmen and Justin went to a P. F. Chang’s near campus. Over orange chicken, they listed the pros and cons of committing to UNLV. It did not have a great academic reputation, but Justin had long talked of running a hotel or restaurant one day, and UNLV offered a degree program in hospitality management. He would be the first player from the 2009 class to commit to that school, and that was risky. If the coaches weren’t able to lure other talented recruits, he could be stuck on a bad team. On the bright side, he could help the coaches recruit, steering them toward players he wanted as teammates. The deliberations eventually came down to a simple question: Should Justin take the scholarship in hand or wait on an offer from a bigger school? Committing now felt like the more responsible move. Carmen knew other parents would disagree, saying that Justin was good enough to play in the Pacific–10 Conference, but she had succeeded in getting Justin to this point in large part because of a willingness to do what other parents would not, like moving Justin from team to team and saying goodbye to Team Cal when kids were lining up to join the team. The goal had always been to land a scholarship, and now that scholarship was on the table.

  After dinner, Carmen drove to a store near campus and Justin picked out a red hooded sweatshirt with UNLV on the front. She then drove him to the athletic department building.

  “What’s going on?” one of the assistant coaches said as Justin walked into the basketball offices, wearing the sweatshirt. That coach and others followed him into Kruger’s office.

  “Coach, I accept your offer,” Justin said, and Kruger clapped his hands and scooted around his desk and wrapped Justin in a hug.

  “Hold it!” Carmen yelled, trailing Justin into the office. She pulled out her camera and made Kruger pose for pictures.

  Many people were surprised that Justin was the first of the Team Cal players to secure a scholarship. They were also shocked that he honored his commitment to UNLV after coaches from Oregon State and other schools later tried to change his mind. “I know I can play in the Pac–10,” Justin said when I asked if he was ever tempted. “I don’t need to prove it to anyone.” No one would say Justin was as gifted as Demetrius or Aaron or many of the other boys, but from the beginning he might have been the surest bet to achieve his dreams.

  He was, after all, his mother’s son.

  In the summer before Demetrius’s junior year, Barrett advised him to go to a basketball camp at USC. So-called elite camps were recruiting tools, a way for college coaches to get kids on campus and evaluate them against other players. Demetrius had no offers from major schools when he attended the camp, but he played well there, and on the final day Trojans coach Tim Floyd invited him to one of the luxury boxes at the Galen Center.

  “We’ve been watching you for a while and you are a California kid and we think you fit with our style of play,” Floyd said. “So, there is a scholarship waiting for you on the table if you are interested.”

  The offer surprised Demetrius, and it took him a second to respond. He thanked Floyd, told him he really liked USC, and said that he wanted to talk to his mother about the offer. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go to USC, but he left the camp elated nonetheless, because he had what felt like a real offer.

  But was it?

  Later in the summer, the USC coaches met with Darius Morris, the guard who’d spent a year on Team Cal. He had grown to six foot three and was one of the better players and students in Los Angeles, recruited by Stanford and Michigan, among others. More than most recruits, Darius closely followed the scholarship offers that schools made. Knowing who else recruiters were after gave a hint of how serious they were about him. Before his visit to USC, Darius called other players and was surprised by how many of his peers held an “offer” from the Trojans, including Demetrius, Roberto, and Justin Cobbs, another guard who’d played briefly for Keller.

  When Floyd offered him a scholarship during their next meeting, Darius didn’t hesitate to raise the issue. “What’s the deal with all these guys you’re offering?” he asked, and he named Justin Cobbs in particular.

  Floyd stumbled through a response. “We had to offer [Cobbs] because, well, he played well at our camp. But we are still evaluating him. It’s not a full offer.”

  Darius looked at his father, shook his head, and before getting up and leaving said, “You can keep your offer, then, because it doesn’t mean anything.”

  The safest way for Demetrius to view his offer from USC was that the Trojans might be interested. Another supposed “offer” was even more tenuous. Barrett called Demetrius and said that the UCLA coaches had asked him to pass along word that they wanted to sign Demetrius. This was a fabrication. Upon hearing of this, Bruce called one of the Bruins’ assistant coaches, who said, “That’s not true. We don’t even have Demetrius on our board [of potential recruits].”

  One of the few surefire methods for Demetrius or any player to gauge if a school was truly interested was to count the number of times a head coach attended his games. If Tim Floyd took the time to watch Demetrius play over others, his interest was most likely genuine.

  In the summer of 2007, the biggest week of the grassroots season came in July, when Nike, Adidas, and Reebok simultaneously held tournaments in Las Vegas. Due to rising operational expenses and criticism over their role in recruiting, the shoe companies did away with big all-star events like the ABCD and Superstar Camps, which had long been the centerpiece of the summer. Now the best time for kids to showcase their abilities to the largest collection of recruiters was in Las Vegas at the Reebok Summer Championships, Adidas Super 64, or the Nike Main Event. Games were held at high school gyms all over the desert, and college coaches in rental cars trekked from gym to gym to scout the kids they favored.

  Before the start of Roberto’s first game in the Nike Main Event, Bruce pointed across the gym at the coaches from schools recruiting his son: Ohio State, USC, Louisville, Kansas, and Tennessee. It was possible they were there to scout other players, but several had told him in phone calls leading up to the tournament that they would attend Roberto’s games, and a few made a point to nod in Bruce’s direction when they crossed paths outside the gym. (Coaches were prohibited from talking to recruits or their parents during the tournament.) In contrast, no coaches from major programs were in attendance at the start of Demetrius’s first game in the Reebok Summer Championships. Chico State, Boise State, Long Beach State, Cleveland State, the University of San Francisco, the University of Detroit, Missouri State, and the University of Texas at El Paso were represented, but not USC.

  “Maybe [the USC coaches] have already seen what I can do, so they don’t feel like they gotta watch me again,” Demetrius said after that game.

  During warm-ups before his remaining games in Las Vegas, he would look out of the corner of his eye at the coaches sitting in the chairs that lined the far wall of the gym. He looked at their shirts, hoping to see the familiar maroon and gold of USC or the colors and logos of the other schools he hoped would recruit
him, like Memphis and Villanova. At halftime of Demetrius’s final game of the tournament, Floyd walked into the gym, but even that proved little. Was he there to scout Demetrius or to watch Malik Story, the SCA guard from the class of 2008 who had verbally committed to play for the Trojans?

  “Man, I don’t know what is going on,” Demetrius said after the tournament. “USC offered me, so they must be interested, but, man, this shit is confusing. You just never know where you stand with nobody. It’s, like, please, just somebody tell me the truth.”

  32

  Demetrius Walker (left) in one of his first games with JSerra in 2008

  Tom Stengel sliced into a New York strip steak and announced, “This is perfect.” He meant the meat, which he had barbecued moments earlier, but the description also applied to the setting. It was a still July evening, and Tom and his family had gathered at a thick table on the back patio of his new home on the southernmost edge of Los Angeles County, in a city called La Habra Heights. He had recently moved there from Fullerton, and while a departure from Orange County often signified a step down, Tom had upgraded in a big way. His home was more than 4,000 square feet, not including the guesthouse, and was in the midst of renovations that included a completely redone interior, a new pool, and a nine-hole putting course. He would later value the property at $3.75 million.