abcd day one

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SoCalHoops Recruiting News

ABCD Camp: Day 1 Recap
& Report--(July 7, 2001)

Today was the first day of ABCD Camp, and for those who don't know or who haven't been there, it's a real eye-opener, a camp where the talent level is just consistently excellent across the board. This first day was devoted to a lot of administrative details in the afternoon, with kids and coaches coming in from all over, registering, getting their shoes, uniforms issued, and other assorted adidas clothing (and here's an interesting footnote--all of the clothing, shoes and whatnot, must be returned by the players after the camp; they can purchase the gear, but can't keep it without paying for it....and who says the shoe companies give the stuff away?).

Before we get to the nitty gritty, here's some general info for you about ABCD Camp. All the camp participants, who are there strictly by invitation only, are housed at a single hotel, the Hasbrouck Heights Hilton, which is located about 15 minutes outside of New York City in New Jersey (it's in Bergen County, in Hackensack). The camp itself uses the gym and recreational facility at Fairleigh Dickinson University, which is about 10 minutes away from the hotel. The facility has four fullsize courts, and there's an indoor running track which has a black barricade encircling the courts, to keep the coaches and spectators separated from the players (here's another footnote--this camp is conducted during a live evaluation period, but it's not a "contact" period, meaning the coaches are not allowed to speak at all with the players).

There are about 240 players at this camp, and just about every top coach from the adidas travel team circuit is here as well, and many of them are working the camp as coaches, or commissioners. The camp itself, while hosted and organized by Sonny Vaccaro, is really run by Gary DeCesare and Bobby Harstein, who bear the titles of "Camp Directors". The Director of Academics is Rich Kosik.

Academics? What's that got to do with basketball? Well, actually quite a bit, because if all of these top players can't or don't qualify academically, all the basketball skills in the world will not get them degrees at a four year college, and after all that's why 99.9% of the players at this camp are here, to get a college scholarship. So adidas and ABCD impressario Sonny Vaccaro has made arrangements with the top SAT and ACT test prep organization, The Princeton Review, to conduct morning classes for each of the players. Those who have already taken and recieved qualifying scores on the SAT will take other courses concerning life skills, psychological tools and other skills geared towards academics and basketball.

Stressing academics is more than just lip service at this camp. Players are expected to attend these academic courses from 9:00 a.m. until 11:15 a.m. each day. Players who are late to class, who don't attend, or who don't participate will, we were all told at tonight's orientation, lose game time, potentially whole games. Likewise, players who oversleep, are caught out after curfew (which is 11:30), who miss the buses to the gym, etc, are also potentially subject to losing game time. This is a camp which demands the best and why not, this is a camp which is just loaded with some of the best high school basketball players in the country.

Anyway, here's how it went today:

12:00 noon-5:00 p.m. ---Players arrived and checked into the hotel and got their stuff. Mostly it was guys meeting old friends, teammates, and just hanging around and getting comfortable. Camp coaches were yukking it up in the lobby, and generally everyone was relaxing and having a good time.

4:00 p.m. -- While the players were getting settled in, the staff (camp counselors, coaches, etc), were meeting to go over the ground rules. Some of those ground rules included things like discussing playing time. Generally there are two groups of five players on each team, no more, no less. Each group is theoretically supposed to get half the time in each game, which consists of four 8 minute quarters, stop clock. One group of players gets the first and third quarters, while the other group gets the second and fourth quarters. There was a lot more discussed, but that's about the most interesting and the most important stuff.

4:30-6:00 p.m. -- Players and coaches had dinner, and did a lot more hanging around.

6:00 p.m. -6:45---This is when the entire camp, players, staff, counselors, coaches, guests and recruiting scouts met in the hotel's grand ballroom. There were general introductions, and then a real surprise guest appeared and it was none other than Kobe Bryant, who really had everyone just enthralled. Kobe appeared last year, and by all accounts, his presentation this year was mile apart from what it was the year before. Last year, he showed up, said a few words, and then asked for questions..... reporetedly, there were none. This time, he was full of advice for the campers, with little bits of wisdom, attitude, and stories of the playoffs, his NBA experiences, and what it takes mentally and physically to get to and stay at the top. We would have like to have taped the talk and the question and answer session, but didn't. Maybe we can find someone else who did because Kobe is a really, really special kind of player, who has a real assasin's mentality about the game and his competition.

6:45-- Following Kobe's talk, the players boarded the buses and headed for the gym. Upon arrival, the players were assembled in the stands, and at about 7:30 p.m., the team assignments were announced. From about 7:30 p.m. until 10:30 p.m., players practiced with their teams and then played in controlled scrimmages. There are 22 teams of 10 players each (ok, so that would be 220 players, right?--then why are there jersey numbers up into the 240 range?....oh well, we'll figure it out tomorrow).

10-30--11:30-- The players all went up to the top of the hotel, where there is a player lounge with video games, big-screen televisions and free pizza and snacks. From there it was back to the hotel rooms where it was lights out (at least that's theoretically what's supposed to happen....we're betting though that some televisions and video games will still be on because no matter how good these kids all are, they're still kids and this is a camp.....).

Tomorrow, Sunday July 8 will mark the first day coaches can be present, but the games for coaches won't start until 2:00 p.m. Most college coaches we've talked to who plan on attending tomorrow have told us that they will head over to Eastern Invitational Camp in the morning and then head to ABCD for the afternoon and evening games. The afternoon games will finish up by 5:00 p.m., and then after dinner (which runs from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m., games will gain start up from 7-9:30 p.m. (with games at 7:00 p.m., 8:15 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.

Each day will follow a similar pattern, with academic classes in the morning, followed by games in the afternoon and evenings. . . think adidas Double Pump, but with every player on every team of the same caliber as the best you'd ever see at one of the regional or local camps . . . in fact some of the teams here are just ridiculous when you look at the talent. How about a team which has LeBron James, Leon Powe and Bobby Nash? How about Anthony Roberson and David Padgett? Or Lenny Cook, Tim Drisdom and Antonio Lawrence? Major Wingate and Darius Washington? It just goes on and on.

We could also go on and on, but it's about 3:00 a.m. and even by west coast time standards, we need to get some sleep. We'll post the list of players shortly. Stay tuned.