NCAA Willing To Work With NBA, Others On Amateur Basketball

Brand Discusses Possible Partnerships In Improving Amateur Basketball

NCAA President Myles Brand yesterday “left open the possibility” that the organization “for the first time is willing to work with both the NBA and shoe companies to improve amateur basketball,” according to Eric Prisbell of the WASHINGTON POST. Brand, speaking at Hampton Univ., said, “Maybe working together with the NBA and lots of others –-USA Basketball, the [AAU], the National Federation of High Schools — and including key elements such as the shoe companies working all together, is there something we can do to help that pre-collegiate environment?” Brand: “It’s one of the most recalcitrant and difficult problems we now face in all of college sports, in part because the NCAA has no control over what happens before college by definition.” NBA Commissioner David Stern has previously said that the league would “consider becoming involved in helping secondary schools to better prepare their athletes academically.” Brand said that he and Stern “discussed the issue at a summit last year in Chicago and that another meeting is planned next month.” Reebok Senior Dir of Grassroots Basketball Sonny Vaccaro said, “I beg for an opportunity like this, to talk to the people that Mr. Brand is talking to, to get together in a room and eliminate the politics to work this out. ... If everyone can make peace and make this work with the kids involved, then I feel that my cycle would have been completed” (WASHINGTON POST, 8/29).

RECRUITING WARS: In Chicago, Michael O’Brien reports the five colleges Simeon High School basketball player Derrick Rose is looking at attending –- DePaul, Indiana, Kansas, Memphis and UCLA -– have Univ. of Illinois fans “screaming conspiracy,” as all five are sponsored by adidas. Illinois coach Bruce Weber has a deal with Nike. Rose played this summer in “some Reebok events and went to the ABCD camp, sponsored by Reebok,” which was acquired by adidas last year. But Vaccaro said, “There is no connection or obligation from anyone that Derrick is close with anyone at Adidas. I’m a consultant. My contract and my events are under the Reebok banner. ... I have not talked to nor seen anyone from Adidas” (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 8/29).