by Casey Jacobson

When I was a boy all I wanted to do was play sports with my friends in my suburban neighborhood of Glendora, CA. I was tall but not huge. I wasn't fast, but not slow either. I could jump well, but that was by "white boy" standards. And although I come from a family with a basketball history (my father and two older brothers played college basketball), no one in their right mind would have predicted that I would make it to the NBA when they saw me at age 13. Even after two years of competing at a high level against the country‘s best talent during high school, I don't think a lot of people thought I would make it to the NBA.

That perception was the best thing that could have happened to my basketball career. Let me explain.

I began playing AAU basketball when I was in 5th grade. AAU stands for Amateur Athletic Union, which is a semi-organized summer basketball circuit. By the time I was 13, I was traveling all over California and Las Vegas, Nevada for AAU tournaments. Then I arrived in high school … and that is when things changed.

The first change I noticed was something that happened at the annual basketball tournament I attended every year in Las Vegas. I went to a shopping mall with my team and coaches in Caesar's Palace Hotel on the Vegas trip. I was 14 years old and a member of Southern California All-Stars, a collection of the best high school players in Los Angeles. The coach/owner of the team was a man named Pat Barrett, an employee of Nike and a well-known man in AAU basketball circles. Mr. Barrett took all of us into this giant shoe store in the mall and told each kid that they could have any two pair of Nike basketball shoes we wanted. I was so excited! Although we were already sponsored by Nike and wore their sneakers, I had never had a "shopping spree" before. (Can two pair of shoes be considered a spree?)

Little did I know it was just the beginning of what was to come. The best players on these elite AAU teams are "taken care of." That is, whatever the players wanted - shoes, clothes, access to vehicles and parties - it was there for the taking. It didn't seem right but the more I saw it the easier it became to accept it as the way it is. Southern California All Stars had several of these elite players but one of them stood out from the rest. He was older than me and didn't play on the same team as I did because of the age divisions in AAU basketball.

But Shea Cotton was one of the greatest high school talents anyone had ever seen. He was, without question, the #1 rated high school player in the country and had his pick of any college. At 17 years old, Shea was already 6-5 and weighed 215 pounds. He had the ball handling and shooting skills of a guard and all the athleticism (42 inch vertical leap) and strength one could ask God for. He was unstoppable on the basketball court.

The only problem was, he came to prominence at the worst possible time.

AAU basketball had been gaining popularity for years but in the late 80‘s/early 90‘s it exploded. Basketball players around the country were "nobody" unless they played against the best in the U.S. in these sanctioned AAU tournaments. By themselves these AAU competitions were great for the game. As a kid from California, where else could you test yourself against the best players from regions like basketball-rich Washington D.C.? AAU basketball was the only way to truly evaluate where a player stood in comparison to his peers.

Somewhere along the line, however, a battle ignited between two athletic shoe companies that would change youth basketball as we knew it. Nike and adidas, in an attempt to sell more shoes, began sponsoring AAU teams and their coaches. There were not a lot of rules or regulations regarding summer basketball and these companies took full advantage. A lot of cash and apparel changed hands throughout the coming years in order to ensure that the best basketball players wore a certain brand of shoe.

It was pretty crazy. But it was very real.

Shea Cotton got caught in the middle of it all. Everybody wanted a piece of this kid. He traveled all over the country playing basketball in Nike shoes. He was the one who Nike had pinned their hopes on being "the next Jordan", a player/personality who could be successful at the professional level and earn Nike millions of dollars. So what happened to him? Shea couldn't qualify for college after the NCAA invalidated his SAT score. So he played Junior College in California, later played at Alabama, but never reached the potential that most everyone who watched him play in AAU circuit had expected.

Do you think that maybe AAU basketball hurt Shea more than helped? I certainly do. Maybe instead of shopping in Las Vegas, he could have been going to summer school or working on his game with his high school friends. I believe that if Shea Cotton were born 10 years earlier, he would have had an NBA career. Of course, Shea has to accept part of the blame for his mistakes but I give him some slack because he was just a kid.

But the perception around him from the age of 14 was that he would be a "can‘t miss" NBA superstar. This perception hurt Shea more than anything else. It was too early. The attention was too much. Some kids can handle all the attention and still make it (Kevin Garnett, Baron Davis, Stephon Marbury, etc), but I would argue that most cannot. I'm grateful that I didn't have people around me telling me that I was going to make it to the NBA. My goal in high school was to get a college scholarship, not to make money.

There is a book that just recently finished reading that perfectly describes what went on during this time and arguably still goes on. The book is titled Sole Influence and was written by Dan Wetzel and Don Yaeger. It is a well-written, researched and thought-provoking book about the problems of AAU basketball. What made the book so interesting to me was the fact that I grew up playing at the exact time that this book was being researched. All of the players that are discussed in the book were my peers at the time: Johnathan Bender, DeMar Johnson, Keith Bogans, Marvin Stone, Marcus Taylor, Tyson Chandler, Jaron Rush, etc. Some I knew personally, others I didn't but I played against them and had heard the rumors surrounding them. Sole Influence brought many of my suspicions to light. Were guys getting paid? How much? How can this stuff happen and how do the people involved not get caught?

I haven't been around the AAU basketball world in a long time but my older brother Adam, a division I college basketball coach, is around it every summer in June and July. He tells me that it isn't quite the same as it used to be but a lot of the same people are still there. When I look back on my youth basketball career, I realize I was fortunate to keep most of that stuff at arm‘s length. I enjoyed the free shoes and nice uniforms just like any kid would, but I flew under the radar for a long time and I believe it allowed me to "keep the hunger" to improve every year. That is what AAU basketball should be about: testing your talent and skills against your peers. All the rest should be kept at a minimum. I thank the AAU for allowing me to compete, So Cal All Stars and all the other teams I played for, Nike, and all my coaches for helping me develop. But more importantly I want to thank all the magazine writers and online editors who kept my name off those player ranking "Top 25 prospects" lists until my senior year, when I was ready. I hated you for omitting me from the rankings then, but I love you for it now.