I have been fortunate to be a skills instructor for the Nike Skills Academies every summer since their inception. While I would like to say that I simply do it for the good of the players and of the game, I have a much more selfish reason to do it as well. I learn a great deal from my fellow instructors and coaches and I love it.
The Nike Skills Academies (the best players from the Paul Pierce, Vince Carter, Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire position academies head to the LeBron James Skills Academy), are great laboratories for thought and the sharing of ideas about the game. There are so many different ways of approaching basketball, and learning the way that others do it and see it is a great education in the game.
Nike has continued to develop what I consider to be a great concept for the development of players during the summer. The Nike Skills Academies have allowed high school players to get high-level instruction and concentrated drill work during two different weeks of the summer, a time that is usually reserved for young players to cement bad habits while playing three or four games in a day. Pete Newell used to say that basketball is over-coached and under-taught. At the Skills Academies, basketball is taught -- and taught very well.
Of course, mention a shoe company in today's environment and you will meet skepticism. That is not a bad thing; Nike and any other shoe company that deals with young players should pass the smell test in whatever it does. Is Nike doing this just to sell shoes? Of course Nike wants to sell shoes. But the company can sell shoes and market its products and still be a good corporate citizen and do what is right for the game and those who play it.
Breaking Down The Talent
For an assessment of the top college and high school players Jay Bilas coached at the LeBron James Skills Academy, click here.
When you shine a light on Nike's efforts with the summer culture, the "Swoosh" has taken a positive step toward meaningful change. While not perfect, the Skills Academies provide opportunities for talented young players to learn the nuances of the game, and get a taste of how intense and focused a player needs to be to make it in the college or pro game.
Generally speaking, high school players lack the requisite intensity and concentration required to excel out of the gate at the college level. The players constantly hear coaches and former players preach to and plead with them to "work hard" and "stay focused." The truth is, very few high school players really know what that means. I certainly didn't when I was in high school.
When a camp lecturer tells young players to "work hard," the young players often believe they are already doing that. They may give good effort at what they are doing, but they don't really know exactly what to work on, how to properly work on it and how hard they have to go in their workouts.
When a coach tells a player to "talk" or communicate on the floor, what do the players say and how and when do they say it? When a player is shooting, is he shooting game shots at game spots at game speed? Is the player using the correct technique and getting feedback on his or her shooting? Is the player just "getting up a lot of shots" or is the player practicing making shots under game conditions? Are the players doing concentrated drill work to improve their weak hand?
If you watch closely, you will see that most are not doing those things on their own. And with ridiculous restrictions on high school and college coaches as to how much and when they can work with their players, too many young players don't truly understand how to practice the right way.
The Skills Academies allow players to work with some of the best teachers and basketball minds in the country on a daily basis, and the truly smart and aware players check their egos at the door and are alert to the teaching points and techniques they can perhaps add to their games. The instruction at the academies is not intended to change anything taught to the players by their own coaches, it is to supplement and reinforce in players the "right way to play." It is for the players to become better individually so they can make their teams better.
It is for the players to get the opportunity to work with the likes of Kevin Eastman (current Boston Celtics assistant coach and former college head coach), Craig Ehlo (former NBA star), Paul Cormier (former college head coach and longtime NBA advance scout), Fran Fraschilla (former college head coach and current ESPN analyst) and some of the very best high school coaches in the country like Don Showalter, Herman Harried, Norm Persin, Lorenzo Hands, Sean O'Toole, Kevin Boyle, DeRon Carbajal and Carlton DeBose. When I'm around those people, I feel really good about the game. They not only know it, they "get it."
Although he is too humble to accept this simple fact, the Skills Academies are such a great success in large measure because of the knowledge, enthusiasm and teaching ability of Eastman. He has dedicated his life to the game, and I have not been around a better teacher. I always have a pen ready when Eastman speaks, because he only speaks when he has something meaningful to say, and I know I will learn something. And Eastman always has a pen ready when someone else speaks, because he is an incredibly diligent and willing learner. When you are around Eastman, it becomes clear that the more you learn about the game, the more doors open to what you can see in the game -- and then you can learn more from there.
Ehlo who? Ehlo, the former Washington State and NBA standout, works with the wings at the camp, and I often wonder whether the young players really know who he is and how great of a player he really was. Ehlo is such a mild-mannered and humble guy that he would never trumpet his NBA career to the players. But when Ehlo talks, the players should really listen. There were few players in his class at working without the ball and getting open, and Ehlo gave the players some valuable advice about reading defenders and defenses to find openings.
He still had one of the most memorable moments in camp history the very first year of the academies. When giving shooting instruction to the likes of Kevin Durant, Jerryd Bayless and Derrick Rose, Ehlo was talking about shooting technique and balance, and told the players to imagine they were shooting out of a phone booth. He was met with blank stares or outright confusion. Then it became clear that none of the players had any idea what a phone booth was. It was then when we all felt really old.
Speaking of old: I worked with both the high school and the college players. On the bus one day to the first college workout, Oklahoma sophomore Willie Warren had the line of the camp. The night before, Miami senior Dwayne Collins took a knee to the midsection contesting a shot and was advised to sit out the next day's workouts and stay in the hotel. As the bus was leaving, Warren asked, "Where's the old dude from Miami?!" That is where we are now in this game. A senior is now an "old dude." I couldn't stop laughing.
Very fortunate: The college players who have attended this camp over the years are really lucky to have had longtime college coach and pro consultant Tates Locke as the college camp director. Locke designs the workouts and is a sage voice for these young players. He has seen everything in the game and nobody cares more about these players than he does. Locke doesn't teach to hear his own voice. He teaches for the benefit of the players and the game itself. Locke is one of the gems of basketball, and if you haven't been stung by his caustic wit, you haven't really lived.
NCAA over-regulation: I will say this for the bazillionth time: The NCAA has great people and does a really good job for the most part. But -- and there is always a "but" when referencing the NCAA -- there are times when the organization treads into areas that they should not. Rules are rules, but there is no rule of law without the rule of reason. The NCAA needs to let common sense win out, and needs to let go of the ancient mores of amateurism. At the LeBron James Skills Academy, the high school players are issued gear for the camp. They get a duffel bag with a couple of pairs of shoes, workout clothes, flip-flops, socks and a backpack to store their stuff while they play. At the end of the camp, the players get to keep the gear. Sounds reasonable, right?
But, by edict of the NCAA, the players are not allowed to take the gear with them from the camp. They can keep only one T-shirt. Nike has to collect every other stitch of gear issued to each player, fully account for it down to the last sweaty tube sock, and ship it to the players' homes.
While that does not seem like a big deal, it probably costs about $50 per player to collect, launder and ship the gear. That is an unnecessary expense, and a silly way to do things that defies common sense. And if someone can think of a legitimate reason this regulation exists or a pervasive problem that it stops, please let me know. If it is so dangerous to let the high school kids take the gear home with them, why are the college players allowed to do so?
More NCAA over-regulation: To again demonstrate that common sense is quite uncommon when it comes to the NCAA, there was the issue of transportation. After several days of skills work in Akron, Ohio, the high school players were to travel to Cleveland (about an hour away by car) to play in the King City Classic. In Akron, Nike had buses to take the players from the hotel to the practice facility and back. Common sense would dictate that those buses would be utilized to transport the players to Cleveland and be used for the same purpose there. Instead, the NCAA mandated that Nike purchase Greyhound bus tickets for each player and send them to Cleveland. The same Nike-chartered buses that dropped the players off at the bus station in Akron picked the players up at the bus station in Cleveland. Remarkable.