"In the ongoing hammer-and-tongs battle between Nike and
Adidas known as Show Wars, each company zeroed in on the youth
market by sponsoring its own basketball tournament," writes Curry
Kirkpatrick in the current issue of NEWSWEEK. In Las Vegas, Nike
and Adidas events combined to feature 259 teams and more than
2,000 players from 30 states and four foreign countries.
Watching them were college coaches, amatuer coaches, and "steet
guys" who "want to get their hooks into the kids," as Providence
College coach Pete Gillen puts it. Kirkpatrick writes the NCAA
"has only itself to blame" for this new summer season, as "new
recruiting rules have sharply limitied college coaches' access to
a star prospect." The case of Kevin Garnett, who played in the
Nike camp last summer, is documented, as is that of Schea Cotton,
"the next phenom" out of L.A. who was once flown to Nike HQs to
"consult about shoes" as an 8th grader. Tom (Ziggy) Sicignano,
one-time Adidas salesman who now coaches a Nike team: "There's a
lot of slime out there preying on kids, warehousing them"
(NEWSWEEK, 8/7 issue).
