Play Their Hearts Out

by George Dohrmann

  Franklin’s decision to join forces with Keller made him feel dirty. But over the previous season, Gary had struggled to acclimate to teammates not as skilled as Terran and Justin. They weren’t ready for his no-look passes and couldn’t make offensive adjustments fast enough for the Runnin’ Rebels to defeat the best teams. “I think I play better with better players,” Gary told his father when they discussed joining Keller, “and Team Cal has the best players.”

  Gary and Craig were significant pieces, but their influence paled in comparison to Aaron’s. He was exactly what the team needed, and Keller likened his impact to what Tyson Chandler brought to his team in the 1990s. “Don’t tell D I said this, but I think Aaron is more like Tyson than he is,” Keller said. He couldn’t resist pitting Aaron and Demetrius against each other in practice, but he did not rig these battles like he did when Demetrius squared off with Roberto, and their competition and relationship were healthier as a result. Aaron spent many nights at Keller’s apartment and was included on shopping trips to the Ontario Mills mall and other excursions that would have previously included only Demetrius. A few days before the tournament in St. Louis, Keller took Demetrius and Aaron with him to a spa, and the trio got manicures and pedicures.

  Demetrius’s standing as the team’s most touted player remained secure, at least in his own eyes. “Of course he’s gonna be taller than me, ’cuz he’s a grade older,” Demetrius said. After one practice during which Aaron dominated, Demetrius was unfazed: “If I was almost fourteen, I’d be killing people too.” For Demetrius, Aaron’s age was a soothing excuse. For the team’s parents, it was a touchy subject, as it reminded them of the rules Keller bent to make Aaron eligible to play at Nationals.

  The AAU’s cutoff for determining a player’s age group was September 1. A player born before that date was considered a division older than a player born on or after it. The AAU permitted each team three “grade exceptions,” players whose birthdays predated the cutoff but who were in the proper grades. Andrew, born August 13, had been the team’s only grade exception at the previous year’s Nationals, and he was a good case for why the rule existed. He was a slight kid, a late bloomer, and making him play with kids a grade higher simply because of those eighteen days would have been unjust.

  Aaron’s birthday was October 25, 1989; he was born more than ten months before the September 1, 1990, cutoff. He was nearly a full year older than Demetrius and almost eighteen months older than Roberto and Rome, the team’s youngest players. He had also taken classes as an eighth-grader at Brethren Christian. Under the spirit of the rule, Aaron should not have been eligible to compete for Team Cal in what the AAU called the “13: Under/7th Grade” division. But by enrolling him in a homeschooling program as a seventh-grader, Keller instantly made him eligible to compete as a grade exception.

  “I actually agree with Joe on this one,” John said in St. Louis when asked if he viewed the maneuvering as deceitful. “Other teams have grade exceptions. And Aaron and his mom are happy with him on Team Cal, it’s good exposure for him, and they are fine with him repeating the seventh grade. No one is getting hurt.”

  Except opponents.

  In the final of the St. Louis tournament against Game Face, Aaron had four dunks in a 96–54 victory. As coaches and parents lined up to congratulate Keller, he again likened Aaron to Chandler and added, “If I had to bet money right now on who would make the NBA, D or Aaron, I would put my money on Aaron.” As he spoke, Aaron and Demetrius were at midcourt, accepting awards for making the all-tournament team. With medals dangling from around their necks, they posed for a picture, each with an arm draped on the other’s shoulders. They looked like the closest of allies, the best of friends.

  In a meeting room at the Rancho Cucamonga Family Sports Center, a handful of Team Cal parents sat at rectangular tables that had been arranged in rows, like desks in a classroom. Spread out in front of them on the blue laminate tabletops were folders or several papers or notebooks, and a few parents hurriedly looked over their documents, recounting figures or practicing their answers. They were like students cramming for a test.

  Keller entered the room, talking on his cell phone, and sat at a table in front, facing the parents. He made them wait a few minutes as he finished talking with Violet, and then he tossed the phone on the table.

  “Okay, where are we at with the hotel rooms?” he said.

  One parent spoke up, saying that 100 rooms at a Holiday Inn had been blocked, including ten for scouts like Clark Francis. The deposit for the rooms was $4,500. Another parent responded to a question about dorm rooms, saying they had been reserved at a cost of $2,500, and that the gym rental cost an additional $2,500.

  “What about programs?”

  About $1,000 had been spent already, a parent said, and the printer needed another $100. This led to a discussion about potential sponsors for the program. Keller mentioned that Anheuser-Busch had offered $20,000 for ads in the program and on signs around the gym. “But I called Adidas and they shot that down.” The good news, he said, was that EA Sports had agreed to put on a video-game tournament one evening at the players’ dorm.

  “We’re twelve thousand short on what it costs for the merchandise, for the T-shirts and stuff, but I’m hoping Adidas will see the kids we are getting and give us the difference,” Keller said. “Let’s hope.”

  That meeting and many others dealt with an innovation of Keller’s that he believed would change the structure of grassroots basketball in America. The biggest week of the AAU season was in early July, when Nike, Adidas, and Reebok simultaneously held all-star camps for the best high school players. The competition to get the top players to those camps was fierce, as it was the best barometer of the success of a grassroots division. If more of the top players attended the Reebok ABCD Camp over the Nike Camp and the Adidas Superstar Camp, Vaccaro could claim victory. If Nike had more of the top-50 kids, The Swoosh was the big winner. Keller’s idea was to hold a similar national all-star camp for the best sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders, which he would call the Adidas Jr. Phenom Camp. It was yet another example of going younger, in the same vein as Vaccaro first sponsoring AAU teams with Adidas or Clark Francis ranking middle school kids. It was hardly revolutionary, yet no one had tried it before, in part because it was difficult to identify the top players. Who really knew who the best sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders were? From his travels around the country with Team Cal, Keller could claim that he did.

  The ABCD, Nike, and Superstar Camps were invitation-only events, and the shoe companies picked up the cost of travel, hotels, and food for the participants. Keller couldn’t fund travel and lodging for 200 kids, and he also viewed the Jr. Phenom Camp as his first big payday. “If it all goes right, I could make a hundred thousand dollars off this event alone,” he said. Money would be made off tickets to the event, from the sale of merchandise like T-shirts, shorts, and other gear bearing the Adidas and Jr. Phenom Camp logos, and from advertising in the program and around the gym. Most of the income, however, would come from the $395 entry fee he intended to charge each camper. Would parents pay to send their kids to a camp billing itself as the young kids’ equivalent of the ABCD, Nike, or Superstar Camps? In a promotional flyer for the event, Keller made his case:

  Jr. Phenom Camp

  THE COUNTRY’S ELITE CAMP AND SHOWCASE FOR

  INCOMING

  6th, 7th, 8th grade boy’s basketball players

  The top 80 Jr. High School Hoopers in each class, more than 200 players in all, will take to the hardwood August 6–8, 2004 at the 1st Annual “adidas” Jr. Phenom Camp. For nearly 20 years, “adidas” has held the Top High School All-Star Camp in the world. The Jr. Phenom Camp will bring this great tradition to the grass roots level, providing a platform for many of the college and NBA players of tomorrow.

  This prestigious camp will be held in sunny San Diego, California at one of SoCal’s premiere hoop’s destinations, Alliant University, home of 6 new wood floors under one
roof.

  The “adidas” Jr. Phenom Camp is an invitation only camp that offers student athletes a variety of mandatory classes on academics and life skills better preparing young men for success in High School, College and Life. Players must attend class to be eligible to play in each afternoon’s session of games.

  Top college coaches and elite skill instructors will be in attendance to pass on their words of wisdom. Players will have the opportunity to test their games against other top players in their age group throughout the weekend. The camp will culminate with championship and All-Star games on the final day under the watchful eye of the country’s top scouting services.

  Joe Keller, Camp Director

  Keller knew firsthand never to underestimate parents’ hopes that their sons would land college scholarships. He was betting that the opportunity to put their kids under the “watchful eye” of men like Clark Francis (whose hotel room Keller promised to comp) would convince parents to pay the fee. Keller also used Demetrius’s standing as the top seventh-grader in the country to sell skeptical parents and coaches: The number-1 player in the land is going to be there, but your son isn’t?

  By mid-May, registrations were pouring in and Keller received more than fifty calls a day from parents hoping to land spots for their children. He hired Violet’s younger sister to help with the volume of calls and the paperwork, and the two women worked side by side at desks packed into the small area next to the kitchen in the Kellers’ apartment. Keller was the salesman reeling in kids, and Violet and her sister handled the logistics, making certain to get the correct shoe and uniform sizes for each camper, who would receive a pair of Adidas shoes and a uniform emblazoned with the Jr. Phenom logo.

  NCAA rules prevented college coaches from attending the Jr. Phenom Camp—none of the participants was old enough to be considered a “recruitable” athlete—but most of the hopeful parents didn’t know that. By early June, the camp was essentially sold out, with Keller holding a few spots for top players he hoped to sign up later. From the registration fees alone, he grossed more than $70,000.

  When word of Keller’s plan reached other coaches and grassroots executives at Nike and Reebok, their reactions varied. Some coaches offered to bring their best kids to the camp if Keller paid them to work the event as counselors. Others worried that the Adidas Jr. Phenom Camp was nothing more than a large tryout, that Keller would use it to poach their best kids for Team Cal. Vaccaro was incredulous. How could Keller and Adidas stoop so low? “It’s an all-star camp but he’s charging the kids? That’s not right. He’s exploiting them,” Vaccaro said. “But, you know, it will probably work. Enough parents and coaches will think it is important to be there. … Still, if there was any doubt Joe is all about money, it is gone now.”

  Keller was either a genius or the exploiter of children’s dreams or both. Daren Kalish at Adidas would render the most important verdict. He summoned Keller to the company’s headquarters in Portland to talk more about Adidas’s role in the Jr. Phenom Camp, and there was speculation that he was having second thoughts about putting the Adidas name on the event. Keller was not worried.

  “No one thought of this before and people are wishing they had, and that is generating a lot of shit talk,” he said. “But when Daren hears about all the kids I’ve got coming to this camp, he is going to do backflips.”

  15

  Joe Keller showing brand loyalty

  Before the Southwest Airlines plane left its gate at the Ontario Airport, Keller announced: “This might be the most important day of my life.”

  Hyperbole was a “Friend of Joe.” The greatest win ever, the most devastating loss in history, the best player in the country, the greatest find since Tyson Chandler—so-called pivotal moments arrived so often, it was hard to know when something seminal was actually afoot. Keller’s trip to Adidas’s headquarters in Portland felt like a potentially transformative moment, like finding Demetrius or landing his shoe deal, but it was hard to know for sure.

  Sitting in a window seat in the third row of the plane, Keller nervously rubbed the top of his jeans with his palm as he laid out the stakes. He needed money—there was the $12,000 he was short for the Jr. Phenom Camp—but he went to Portland with more than his hand out. He carried a strategy for how Adidas could redirect its grassroots efforts, which he would convey to Kalish. It was brazen—a coach who had been on the payroll less than a year pitching his boss on a sweeping initiative—but Keller knew that Kalish took cues from the Pumps and other AAU coaches. What did he have to lose by throwing his ideas into the mix?

  “It’s the master plan. Joe Keller’s Master Plan,” he said, and then he bounced his left leg excitedly as he laid out the details.

  While recruiting kids for the Jr. Phenom Camp, Keller took note of how many of the coaches who controlled the best middle school kids were starving for financing and product. Like him before the Adidas contract, they scraped by, borrowing money or relying on donors like Tom. As he flew to Portland, Keller’s mind was on one team in particular: Texas Select out of Dallas. It included two forwards, Roger Franklin and Shawn Williams, whom he considered among the top-20 kids in the nation. In two or three years, when they were in high school, Nike and Reebok and Adidas would clamor to build a relationship with them, and one of those companies would surely offer Texas Select a sponsorship deal. Keller wanted Adidas to make Texas Select an offer now. It wouldn’t take much, maybe $5,000 to $10,000 a year and some product, but the payoff could be huge. Combined with the presence of Franklin and Williams at the Adidas Jr. Phenom Camp, the sponsoring of their team now would stamp them as Adidas kids before Nike or Reebok even knew their names.

  It was a convincing strategy, all the more pertinent because Adidas had fallen to third among the big-three companies in relevance. Nike remained the powerhouse, sponsoring the most teams, and Reebok’s Vaccaro had successfully gone for quality over quantity, securing many of the elite kids like O. J. Mayo, Bill Walker, and Greg Oden. Adidas seemed to have lost its foothold, and Keller, of all people, offered a fix: Stop wasting money and energy courting the current crop of high schoolers, players already beholden to Nike or Vaccaro at Reebok, and go younger in a more ambitious way than just signing Team Cal.

  Keller would ask Kalish to expand his role, to let him go out and sign other programs like Team Cal, and, more importantly, to shift the overall direction of Adidas’s grassroots initiative. “I don’t see how Daren says no,” Keller said. “It doesn’t cost Adidas much, and he gets all these kids.” Plus, Keller had already done the legwork. All Kalish had to do was say the word and he would lock up six of the best teams in the country, raising Adidas’s profile with the next generation of stars in one swoop.

  Taron Pickett, Keller’s day-to-day contact at Adidas, picked him up at the airport in an SUV. Pickett was an athletic African American who, at twenty-seven, still played guard for a traveling team that competed against colleges in preseason exhibition games. Pickett and Keller had bonded during a tournament in Ohio a few weeks earlier, staying out late and drinking. Keller liked that Pickett trusted him enough to talk about his struggles to make ends meet on his paltry Adidas salary. He also liked that Pickett was naïve about the cutthroat world of AAU basketball. “I don’t want Taron to ever leave Adidas,” Keller said on the flight. “I’ve got him trained right now. If I call him up and say I need forty pairs of shoes, he’ll go, ‘Oh, Joe,’ and then I’ll say, ‘Forget about it,’ and then he’ll go, ‘No, no, no, I’ll take care of it.’ With him, I’m like a little spoiled kid who always gets what he wants.”

  The Adidas Village in Portland consisted of a series of sleek-looking metal-and-glass buildings on a ten-and-a-half-acre former hospital site. The interior of the building housing the grassroots-basketball division was a mix of spiral staircases, sheet-metal walls, and hanging halogen lamps. When Keller arrived, he went upstairs and greeted Kalish, who suggested they talk after lunch.

  Keller went through some Adidas catalogs while sitting
next to Pickett’s cubicle, and then Pickett led him on a tour of the Adidas campus, showing off the basketball court where employees often played heated games during lunch. After eating at a nearby sandwich shop, Keller and Pickett returned to the grassroots offices, where Keller chatted up the soccer rep who had earlier procured the black socks Demetrius wanted. Late in the afternoon, Kalish finally summoned Keller to a conference room on the second floor.

  Kalish was the picture of urban sophistication, dressed in worn-looking jeans but a pressed dress shirt, stylishly untucked, and spotless brown dress shoes. Keller was wearing old Levi’s, a blue T-shirt, and running shoes. In front of Keller on the table was a manila folder containing logo designs for the Jr. Phenom Camp, a copy of the flyer he gave to potential sponsors, and other materials. He passed the folder to Kalish, who slowly reviewed the pages, taking his time with each. He came to the schedule of events for the camp and read some of it aloud, stopping occasionally to make sure he understood each activity.

  “This looks good, Joe,” Kalish said. “How else can I help?”

  “There are a bunch of kids who can’t afford plane tickets and the entry fees and all that,” he said. “These are top kids who should be at the camp.”

  This was a half-truth. Keller intended to pay the $395 entry for a few kids, but only a few. But telling Kalish he needed money to get good kids to the camp was better than telling him he needed $12,000 to manufacture Jr. Phenom Camp merchandise (T-shirts, shorts, balls, etc.) that he would resell at a huge markup.