Section B · Page 10
The University Daily Kansan
Monday, May 4,1998
And this little Piggie rushes for Nike money
Rush was initially recruited by Roy Williams to play at Kansas but has committed to UCLA. After Rush criticized Williams' coaching style, Williams said Kansas was no longer interested.
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Spradling, a Kansas City summer coach. "The shoe companies want a piece of these kids so they can build a relationship for the future."
Piggie has been portrayed as everything that is wrong with a system that inflates high school star egos. He claims to be a misunderstood champion of poor youth.
"I'd like to ask what those pen pushers have done in the inner cities lately?" Piggie said. "I want to help kids and get them off the streets. With Nike's help, I give them a shot at an education and a life."
Before he got into coaching summer teams, Piggie was charged in 1987 of conspiring to distribute cocaine and making three sales of cocaine totaling more than half an ounce to an informant and assault with a deadly weapon. He was shot in 1989 by an off-duty police officer in an unrelated incident.
Piggie said he got a bad rap because he coached three All-American players last summer.
Numerous college coaches have told reporters Piggie spent the last year with his hand out to any college programs that would listen. The Basketball Times reported that Piggie took recruiting junks to more than one school, attained a new set of gold teeth from a prominent program and made it clear that palm greasing was not frowned upon.
"People thought I was controlling them, but I was just trying to help." Piggie said. "Colleges offered positions if Jaron would come there. If I was in it for anything else but the kids, I would have a college coaching job."
Spradling, who has coached with the 76ers in the past, said Piggie is not the party at fault for Rush's hot dog behavior that got him dumped by Williams and signed by UCLA.
"I don't blame Myron for what he has done, I blame the people who have given him money and power," Spradling said. "Myron didn't put himself there. They put him there."
Rush's name continued to be near the top of recruiting lists until he verbally committed to Kansas last fall and said it would take an act of God to stop him from playing in Allen Field House.
After several months, Rush pulled back from his decision, criticizing Williams' substitution methods.
"Roy subs too much for me, but I still might want to go there." Rush said. "I really don't know what I'm going to do. I haven't talked to (Williams) lately, and I talk to UCLA about every two weeks."
When word of that interview got back to Williams, it sealed Rush's plane ticket to La La land. He told Rush that Kansas wouldn't be recruiting him any more. Rush signed with the Bruins a couple of months later.
Reports of last summer's Nike All-American camp have pushed the NCAA towards changes in the summer basketball system.
The Apex of Recruiting
Alexander Wolff, Sports Illustrated's basketball writer, said the advent of high school players like Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant finding instant success in the NBA means top players don't have reason to be on good behavior anymore.
When Piggie trotted out his three
stars, Rush, Young and Maggette, The Sporting News's Decorysa said the players acted as though the camp was invented for them.
"One year there were great kids like Chris Burgess (who signed with Duke) who were just normal kids, but those kids' ideas were so out-of-whack they thought they were privileged." Decourcy said. "Those kids wouldn't talk to anybody, and they played like they didn't really care. It was wrong for those kids to act the way they did."
Decourcy said these high profile players, delivered to the camp by the Nike-sponsored Piggie, failed to impress him, but he explained the futures of these stars.
"There is no penalty for these kids working with people who might not be out for their best interests," Decourcy said. "The top three players on the Kansas City team went to Duke, UCLA and the NBA. We can keep telling kids to stay away from these things, but there's little meaning when that is the result."
Texas Tech coach James Dickey is opposed to third parties like Piggie in recruiting. He said he was not against summer programs because players need to play to improve, but he is against summer recruiting.
A Better Future?
"We should spread out recruiting during the school year so third parties aren't involved in any way," Dickey said. "We shouldn't just have camps so kids can be coached."
Sampson said if he were in charge he would cut back on shoe company power but he saw certain problems with cutting back on summer recruiting. College basketball programs can save money by watching 600 Division-I-caliber athletes play at one time. What's more, college coaches don't have to leave their teams during the season.
"I try to spend as much time with my players as possible; the Northwestern gambling situation shows what can happen when you don't watch after your kids enough," Sampson said. "If we were just recruiting during the school year, we'd leave our teams too often."
A committee of the NCAA, the Division I Acadmeics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet, designed a new model for recruiting last summer in hopes of restructuring summer camps and, in the process, decreasing the power of summer coaches. The hope is that high school coaches will again become important figures in players' lives.
Part of the program would be the creation of regional USA Basketball camps during the summer. Evaluation by college coaches could be limited to those camps. The camps would help strengthen the USA Basketball program, create equal evaluation opportunity and remove some outside influence from the sport.
Williams won't talk about Rush any more, and inquiries through the University's sports information department were turned away.
The Nike All-American camp for high school players opens June 4-10 in Indianapolis. Piggie will deliver Jaron's brother Kareem Rush, a junior at Pembroke Hill, to the camp.
The sports information department said Roy Williams also will be there.
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