Money Players

It's the horse, not the jockey

ESPN's Andy Katz reports that K-State gave assistant basketball coach Dalonte Hill a $420,000 a year deal. Hill was one of Michael Beasley's AAU coaches for DC Assault and is responsible for bringing Beasley to K-State..

Apparently this deal makes Hill the highest-paid paid assistant coach in all of college basketball. ESPN's Andy Katz described Hill's deal as "stunning" and "whopping" and points out that the basketball community is "beffuddled." Cue the ole Casablanca standby, including the far more instructive part where Captain Renault proves that commerce (shocking) prevails over moral outrage:

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! [a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: Oh, thank you very much.

Let's look at Hill's deal rationally. K-State's athletic director Bob Krause seems to have an excellent grasp of the economics of college basketball:

"A youngster like Michael Beasley is a once-in-a-lifetime [player]. We have youngsters in the queue, and Dalonte and the entire staff is a big part of that. We're looking at a long-term investment. You can throw money at stuff but that's not the point. You're making an investment to keep the momentum going."

Success in college sports is pretty simple. Bring in the best available players and give them good coaching. In the era of "one and done" the premium is on recruiting. No doubt "x and o's" coaching matters, but it's more important to devote resources to recruiting activities. If athletic departments are investing in private jets to make it easier for head coaches to recruit, why not invest in assistant coaches who have deep relationships with top recruits? In the final analysis paying an assistant coach $420k reflects the marketplace for those at the top of the player procurement game.

Curious thought: What's the difference between an AAU coach, a runner, a college recruiter, and an agent? The skills seem very interchangeable and, in fact, I know several who have worked their way up the career ladder -- or down, depending on how you view this whole business.

--Marc Isenberg

Reebok's Chris Rivers on NCAA-NBA partnership

At the Final Four the NCAA and NBA announced an "historic partnership" to improve youth basketball. My friend Chris Rivers, Reebok's director of basketball sports marketing, writes a must-read column in Basketball Times. This month he offers his thoughts on the NCAA/NBA partnership to "raise awareness rather than offend."

From Chris Rivers, Reebok:

I applaud the fact that [the NCAA-NBA Partnership has] raised $5 million dollars to put together a task force of "later to be named" individuals to work in a "later to be named" location and specifically address "later to be named" issues.

Below are just some thoughts that make you go "hmm."

• When was the last time anyone saw David Stern or Myles Brand at a youth basketball game?
• If the NCAA's primary concern is education, how can teams fly three hours for an NCAA Tournament game – two days before it starts – and then tell parents that their son needs to attend summer school to make up for the time missed while traveling?
• If college coaches and universities can have million-dollar shoe contracts and multimillion-dollar all-school deals, why are the July shoe camps being "redflagged" as something that isn't good for the game?
• If the NCAA seems so concerned with a certain element that surrounds youth basketball, why have such a high percentage of college coaches evolved from this same system?
• Who was the last NCAA head coach who used his own personal credit card to make sure his program had hotel rooms during a recent road trip? What about airline tickets? Meals? Rental cars? Keep thinking.
• If youth basketball is in such need of a developmental overhaul to produce better fundamentally sound players, why do underclassmen annually dominate the NBA draft?
• I agree that our system should have more regulations and better training and coaching, like our national soccer system. I have studied some of their infrastructure, and they are very impressive at the youth level. But let's just hope that our international performance record is better than our soccer brethren, which last won the World Cup in 1950.

Excerpts published with permission from Basketball Times. Subscribe at www.basketballtimes.com.

BTW-- Chris has a significant role in the upcoming basketball documentary Gunnin' for that Number #1 Spot."