Boys Among Men: How the Prep-to-Pro Generation Redefined the NBA and Sparked a Basketball Revolution
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The evening inched on. Other players celebrated. The high schoolers with a toe gingerly stepping into adulthood waited.
•••
That the three had entered that year’s draft was no coincidence. All year, they had used the others as a measuring stick, playing against one another in the summer at AAU tournaments and during their high school seasons. The shoe companies regularly arranged the anticipated matchups, a sign of their growing interest and power in the amateur game. Nike sponsored a meeting between Al Harrington and Korleone Young in January 1998, a showcase named the Nike Super Six that highlighted three matchups and six high schools.
Harrington, in particular, looked forward to the game. The two had traded off as the number-one-ranked player all year. Harrington figured that if he played well and proved himself against Young, he could jump straight to the NBA. About 5,000 people attended the game, with college coaches and representatives from the Clippers, Kings, Trail Blazers, Knicks, and Spurs mixed among them. The total paled when compared with Madison Square Garden’s capacity of nearly 20,000. But the setting provided an intimate view and a classic backdrop at an arena where an aging Michael Jordan would square off against a youthful Kobe Bryant in less than a month. Harrington felt good during the warm-ups, confident that his jumper would not betray him once the game began. He started strong, scoring 18 points in the first half. In the second quarter, Harrington sank a three-pointer. He smiled at Young. “Why don’t you get one of those?” he teased. Young answered by draining his own long shot. “I love it when you talk to me,” Young said as the two made their way back up court. Harrington responded by dunking home an offensive rebound. The two rarely guarded each other, but the offensive square off everyone wanted to see appeared to be materializing.
For Harrington, just playing in Madison Square Garden was a huge deal. He had grown up in the area, across the Hudson River in northern New Jersey. Unlike most NBA prospects, Harrington arrived to the spotlight late. He was anything but a spoiled athlete, having performed as Frank Butler in his high school’s performance of Annie Get Your Gun, serving as a church usher, and maintaining a 3.4 grade point average.
Harrington’s ascension in high school basketball was meteoric. His father, Albert Harrington Sr., was once an amateur boxer who had died suddenly a decade earlier. The tragedy drew the family closer and Mona Lawton, a toll collector at the Lincoln Tunnel, worked diligently to provide for Al and his three siblings. Al Harrington did not even start for his freshman basketball team, but was tutored that summer by Sandy Pyonin, an AAU coach in Union, New Jersey. Pyonin had once guided the career of Edgar Jones, one of the state’s dominant players in the mid-1970s. The Milwaukee Bucks drafted Jones out of the University of Nevada at Reno and Pyonin continued coaching AAU in New Jersey, racking up mileage on his Dodge Charger, and acquiring the state’s best amateur talent for his team. He saw talent in Harrington when few others did. “He could hardly make a layup,” Pyonin remembered. But Harrington’s growth spurt soon hit and he traveled up and down the coast with Pyonin, starring for the team. Harrington played well at Sonny Vaccaro’s ABCD camp in 1996, but everyone and everything had been overshadowed by Tracy McGrady’s performance that year. The following summer, Kevin Boyle, Harrington’s high school coach, switched shoe allegiances and Harrington skipped Adidas’s camp in favor of Nike’s in Indianapolis. The colleges came calling shortly afterward. Tommy Amaker of Seton Hall phoned at 12:01 a.m. on the first day coaches could make contact with prospects. The family kept the thousands of recruiting letters he received stacked in a few shoeboxes. But Pyonin had told him that he could jump straight to the NBA if he trained hard enough and obtained the country’s number one ranking. Harrington believed it. He trained. He worked. He regarded the decision in business terms and believed that this route would surely and quickly secure his best future. He was close to being considered the number one player in his class, as determined by the country’s prep basketball analysts. All he had to do was prove himself against Young.
He was now doing so. While Harrington starred in the first half, Young seemed overtaken by the moment. He had walked the bowels of Madison Square Garden before the game, amazed at the framed photographs of all the athletes and performers who had held the same stage before him. He turned the ball over several times in the first half as St. Patrick’s assumed a 31–26 edge at halftime. Myron Piggie Sr., a mentor of Young’s who had no official capacity with the team yet moved in and out as he pleased, came into the locker room at halftime, imploring the team to play better and stave off embarrassment. Over the next few years, the relationship between Young and Piggie would be heavily scrutinized and criticized as an example of amateur basketball’s burgeoning problems.
•••
Korleone Young was raised in a modest house in Wichita at 24th Street and Lorraine Avenue in a neighborhood with piercing sirens that warned of impending tornadoes. Young’s mother, Kim Young, had read The Godfather shortly before her only child’s birth and named him Suntino Korleone Young, after the book’s fiery eldest son, Santino Corleone. Young knew his father was a former high school track star named Juan Johnson. He occasionally saw Johnson hanging around Wichita, but his father never acknowledged him. Young was always getting into fights—with his cousin Antoine and neighborhood kids who incessantly teased him about his stuttering. Kim Young did not view her son as a magnet for trouble. Instead, she saw an active young boy and sought ways to harness that energy. She enrolled Korleone in extracurricular activities—“keeping busy,” she would call it. So Young tap-danced. He gave football a shot. But basketball evolved into the sport he truly loved and completely devoured. He fashioned a hoop out of a bike’s wheel by removing the spokes. The more modest the bike, the smaller the wheel, the truer the shot. His grandfather Charles Young, who played a stint with the Harlem Globetrotters in the 1960s, later erected a real hoop for Korleone.
Young shot up fast, towering over other kids. When Young turned 10 years old, he began playing with the talented Wichita Blazers. The program was elite and rigorous; players attended church every Sunday and were expected to earn high marks in school. Young quickly became the team’s star, dunking for the first time in sixth grade. Word of his unique blend of height and athleticism quickly spread to Kansas City’s bigger AAU scene. In 1992, Young joined the Children’s Mercy Hospital 76ers, a Kansas City team coached by John Walker. The team featured several future NBA players, but its best athlete was JaRon Rush, a silky forward who had started receiving attention for his basketball prowess at a young age. Rush found a benefactor in Tom Grant, a local millionaire, chief executive officer of LabOne Inc., and University of Kansas alumnus. Grant paid for Rush’s high school tuition at a private high school and bankrolled the 76ers, a team that soon featured JaRon’s best friend, Myron Piggie Jr.
During one summer practice in 1995, the team convened and Grant introduced a new head coach: Myron Piggie Sr., a former crack dealer and convicted felon who had been sentenced to a year in jail for shooting at a Kansas City police officer in 1989. Grant was familiar with JaRon Rush’s bond with the Piggie family and sought a connection to keep his prized player happy and satisfied. Piggie, a charming conversationalist, had talked his way up the organization’s ladder until he found himself at the top. “We were like, ‘What? Myron ain’t no coach,’ ” Young recalled. “Keep in mind, he didn’t coach us. We had coaches. He just wanted to be in control. All Piggie did was look tough, sit at the end of the bench, and scare all the other AAU coaches.”
Piggie’s rise within the program coincided with Nike’s interest in securing the best high school talent to perform in its shoes and keeping them away from Sonny Vaccaro and Adidas. To counteract the incursion, Nike hired Piggie as one of the company’s consultants. The Children’s Mercy Hospital 76ers quickly became a traveling All-Star team loaded with soon-to-be Division I players. They traveled around the country first class, and stayed in luxury hotels.
“We messed it up for everybody
,” Young said. “Shit, it became the war. We started the Nike-Adidas war. Me, Corey [Maggette], JaRon, Al [Harrington], and Rashard [Lewis].”
Both Grant and Nike eventually upped Piggie’s salary. “We hooked up with Nike and it was lovely,” Young recalled whimsically. “Me and my mom had a ’96 Altima in ’96. I got my ’82 Impala. Never wore nothing but Nikes. Nike care packages every couple of months. Bags full of stuff. The influence of Nike is the ultimate influence. Why do you think all the kids wear Jordans?” Piggie doled out money to his top players—Young; Rush and his younger brother, Kareem; Maggette; and eventually Andre Williams. According to a later federal indictment, Piggie angled for a payoff similar to the one Alvis Smith and Joel Hopkins had received for steering the beginning of Tracy McGrady’s career.
During the summers, Young’s life revolved around AAU. But during the school year, he belonged to Ron Allen, Young’s high school coach at Wichita East. The tough-minded Allen had heard about Young’s talents since Young began dominating sixth graders. He promoted him to varsity as a freshman, with a plan to bring him along slowly. That unraveled the moment the 14-year-old forward left the bench in his first game. Young lit things up, pouring home 27 points in his first varsity appearance. Allen recalled Young as a fledgling Charles Barkley, an athlete who played bigger and longer than his frame. He tried keeping his star grounded. Allen was an old-school coach, having played at the University of Arizona in the early 1970s, and refused to cater to Young when he turned petulant. He regularly kicked Young out of practice to make his point. “Today’s not a good day,” Allen would say. “Try again tomorrow.”
But Allen was naive about the burgeoning power of the AAU circuit. Once the summer began, he relinquished Young to Piggie. While visiting the AAU outfit one day before Young’s junior year, Allen remembered being struck by the scope of the program—the sneakers, the jerseys, the crowd, the sheer magnitude of everything. “That was like a brand-new day for me,” he recalled.
Then, later that summer, Young disappeared from Kansas. A USA Today reporter phoned Allen in August 1997 and asked him to confirm that Young had transferred to Hargrave, a private boarding school in Chatham, Virginia. The news blindsided Allen. He called Young’s mother, Kim. “Coach, Korleone hasn’t talked to you?” she asked.
Allen knew that Young didn’t want to admit that he’d planned to transfer. But Kim forced her son to take the call. “What’s happening?” Allen asked.
“I’m just going to stay up here,” Young replied.
“For what?” Allen asked. “For what reason?”
Young turned silent.
“Look, if this is what you want to do, if this is really your decision, I’ll support you,” Allen said. “But if you are doing this for somebody else or for somebody else’s purpose, I’ve got a problem with that. We’ll leave this conversation here and when you come back to Wichita, when AAU’s over with, I want you to come back and we’ll grab a hamburger and sit and talk about this.”
When he returned to Wichita, Young met with Allen and revealed his commitment to change high schools. He’d outgrown the city, he said. The intense media scrutiny that followed an underage drinking incident had confirmed it in his mind. Earlier that year, Young, a few other players, and some cheerleaders had sneaked alcohol into a hotel room during a trip to Topeka for a tournament. After they were caught, Young lied about his involvement. When it was revealed that he had indeed been there, he felt he had been singled out as the only one to draw a one-game suspension. Local television stations camped outside his mother’s doorstep. He had contemplated transferring then. But then he heard about Hargrave’s loaded roster; that was where Myron Jr. also planned to attend. Allen begged him to reconsider. Young remained steadfast.
“I didn’t lose any love for the kid,” Allen recalled. “I still cared for him as a person. He has a great heart. He’d do anything for you. He was just that way. But he was too young to be off by himself. That ultimately came back to haunt him.”
The transition to Hargrave did not come easily. Young often did as he pleased in Wichita. Back then, recruiters called so often that his mother installed a second phone line in the house. Young tied it up talking to girls. But Hargrave specialized in instilling discipline in teenage boys. Colonel John W. Ripley, a decorated Marine, presided over the school. Young was not allowed to own a phone or a television. He woke up at 6 a.m. every morning and was in bed promptly at 10 p.m. He spent the first few weeks crying to his mother whenever he could get near a phone. Still, the school had its advantages. With its prestige and national profile, Young had his choice of colleges. He nearly went to the University of Kansas. He almost joined JaRon Rush at UCLA. “The crazy thing about it is, Hargrave, as a coaching staff, we never talked about him jumping and going directly to the NBA,” said Kevin Keatts, then an assistant at Hargrave. “Everything was about college and recruitment and where he wanted to go.”
Young had wanted more exposure against better competition. He was receiving it from Harrington. After halftime of their matchup, St. Patrick led by seven points with less than five minutes remaining in the game. Hargrave rallied and Young tied the game, 56–56, with 2:23 remaining. Young fouled out of the game shortly after that, but Lavar Hemphill’s three-pointer for Hargrave broke the deadlock. St. Patrick could have tied the game, but turned the ball over while trying to free up Harrington for an isolation play. Hargrave prevailed in a 63–59 victory.
Harrington had the better game, finishing with 28 points on 9-for-15 shooting and 7 rebounds. Young overcame his slow start to end with 20 points and 8 rebounds. Hargrave escaped with the win, but Harrington left even more confident that he was the nation’s best high school player.
•••
Al Harrington went first. The Indiana Pacers grabbed him 25th overall. Harrington leapt in the air at his name being called and raised his arms toward the ceiling. He walked into a corner of the restaurant and cried.
He looked up to see a giant cake being wheeled out. “The sky’s the limit, Big Al,” it read.
Harrington would be joining one of the league’s better organizations, a veteran team coming off a 58–24 season. They had stretched the Bulls to seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals. Donnie Walsh, the team’s architect, had once figured that high schoolers would not have a profound influence on the league. But he had seen the impact of Kevin Garnett and the potential of Kobe Bryant. Walsh still did not think that teenagers could immediately improve a team; rather, he hoped that Harrington could apprentice for a couple of years under the stable of veterans and assume a larger role as he matured and the older players phased out. Larry Bird, the Celtics legend, had returned to his home state to coach the Pacers. Bird had always figured that if someone could play, he would receive playing time—no matter what his age. As a player, Bird could have joined the NBA early out of Indiana State. Boston had drafted him sixth overall in 1978. Instead, Bird finished out his final college season, deepening his rivalry against Magic Johnson and helping revitalize interest in the college game. “I think these kids should stay in school,” Bird said of Harrington to reporters. “But he made a choice to come out. We’ll let him come along slowly. In two or three years, he probably would have been in the top five of the draft, but he thinks he can play now. We’ll find out.”
The first round of the draft ended. Rashard Lewis slouched. He knew that his high school teammates had gathered at his coach’s ranch back home to watch the draft and was utterly embarrassed to be the last remaining prospect in the greenroom.
Seattle ended Lewis’s grief by taking him seven picks after Harrington with the second round’s third selection. Seattle was another strong team, having gone 61–21 the previous season. Lewis had not even worked out for the organization prior to the draft. He did not care. The weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He turned to his mother. “Well, Mom, I’m going to have to make the team,” Lewis said. “First round is different from the second round, nothing is guaranteed.”
“Yeah, I know I can,” Lewis said.
The party raged on in Wichita. The Detroit Pistons finally took Korleone Young with the 40th overall selection. Rick Sund, Detroit’s general manager, had watched Young participate in Chicago’s predraft camp that summer. He was intrigued by Young’s already developed body. The hardest aspect of trying to draft high school kids, Sund figured, was how their bodies would develop after being drafted and whether they could withstand the game’s physicality. He viewed Young as a cost-free project, someone with a high ceiling and low risk whom the organization could sever ties with if he did not progress as hoped. Such an outcome seemed unlikely for a player who had star potential written all over him only a short time before. “It was a good gamble,” Sund remembered. “You don’t take those type of gambles in the first round.”