World Hoops

Over the past couple weeks, I have been reading The Last Shot by Darcy Frey, which tells the story of college basketball recruitment of a few high school basketball players from Coney Island, New York.  Since beginning the book, I have been looking more closely at topics related to the book.

This past Saturday, Nike hosted the Nike Hoop Summit, which was a showcase game played between Team USA and the World Team.  Team USA was comprised of the best seniors in high school from the United States, and the World Team had the best seniors in high school from the rest of the world.  It was a fantastic event which showcased the best talent form across the world, yet I couldn't help but see all the parallels to Darcy Frey's book and the rest of my basketball knowledge.

In the book, it is mentioned that shoe companies try to build relationships with young players as early as possible.  The Nike Hoop Summit is the perfect example of this.  Nike pays for the whole thing, gives them free uniforms, shoes, and other gear.  Nike feels that their payoff will be that when one or two of these players become the next big thing in the NBA, they will have built enough good credit with the player and a strong enough relationship to convince him to sign his endorsement deal with Nike instead of Adidas, Under Armour, or countless other brands.

In addition, I think this is too big of stage to be putting high school kids on.  Before these kids have even stepped foot on a college campus, they are being compared to the best players in the entire world on national television.  While listening to the broadcast, I heard them mention that there were many NBA scouts in attendance.  While this does make sense considering most of these players won't go to more than a year of college so they could be in the NBA pretty soon, I think people have to realize how many of these kids probably won't end up being NBA prospects a year or two from now.