NCAA-NBA partnership eyes a name

In April 2008, the NCAA and the NBA announced a partnership to "to add new structure to youth basketball." It has been a long process, but they finally have a name -- iHoops -- and a web site that will officially launch in the Fall (shouldn't it be iHoops dot net??). When the partnership was first announced, John Feinstein yawned and made a great Gong Show analogy.

Right now, i am giving iHoops the benefit of the doubt. Yes, I am critical of NCAA and its members for the role its rules, its coaches, and its athletic representatives play in contributing to the mess of youth basketball. And by mess, I am not only referring to recruiting problems/scandals, but also to player development.

At the Reebok Eurocamp (much more on that later), an NBA scout and former longtime college basketball coach made this insightful point to me:

"The NCAA needs to look at itself in the mirror -- and change its behavior before it can change behavior of others. Look at how much money coaches make today versus five, 10 years ago. The NCAA and its members can talk all they want about educational values, but Calipari's salary alone sends a powerful message of what college basketball is really all about. And it's not just Cal...there are more than a handful of college coaches now making more than NBA coaches."

Obviously, it's not just how much college coaches are paid, but also the economic reality and institutional values (or lack thereof) that create this compensation structure.

I have a lot of respect for many of the key participants, including Adam Sliver, Greg Shaheen, Coach K, who contributed a terrific message in my first book, The Student-Athlete Survival Guide, and Len Elmore, a friend even if we don't always agree. (Nate Jones responded on Money Players to Len's views on NBA age requirements.) iHoops will only have a meaningful impact, in my opinion, if the NCAA membership can, against very long odds, reform itself and develop a more reasonable set of rules governing recruiting, educational requirements and player development. Oh, and actually get its coaches and boosters to follow them.

Kevin Weiberg, who heads the NCAA/NBA initiative, said this::

[Weiberg] said iHoops is designed to combat a trend in which the secondary school structure has become less important in the development of young basketball players.

“That development has moved more into the club system,” Weiberg said. “While that is not necessarily bad in and of itself, it is more of an unstructured system. Our goal is to provide more structure to nonscholastic basketball, and to communicate with participants and their parents and guardians a much more education-based message that goes beyond the development of athletes to the values of education and academic achievement.”

Yes, it is an unfortunate trend that high school basketball has become devalued, but this has more to do with budgets in high schools (the ongoing financial crisis is going to wreak havoc on sports funding) and the reality of college recruiting (summer is the best, most cost-effective way for schools to evaluate players.)

I just spent 3 days with Bob Hurley, Sr. in Italy. He is an incredible coach, teacher and mentor. In the end, we need more Coach Hurleys coaching in both high school and college, more than we need press conferences, rules and even partnerships. But, hey, the partnership is finally moving forward. I just hope $30 million -- the amount reportedly being invested by the NBA and NCAA -- of good will come from this.

--Marc Isenberg