On Nike Hoop Summit, transfer portal, Drew Eubanks, Ben Petrick, Pete Ward, Jon Spoelstra and high school hoops
Oregon commit Kel’el Ware knocks down a free throw. The 7-footer from North Little Rock, Ark., had 11 points and five rebounds in 18 minutes for the U.S. Junior National Team.
Touching on a number of subjects as we head into the weekend …
• One of the more underappreciated sporting events in the Portland area is the annual Nike Hoop Summit, showcasing the world’s top high school players.
The 23rd Hoop Summit took place Friday night at Moda Center, the U.S. Junior National Team making waste of the World Selects 102-80 before a crowd of 6,547.
Due to the pandemic, it was the first Hoop Summit held since 2019. I’ve attended several of the games through the years, including the last two.
After bouncing around at different locations throughout the country for its first decade, the Hoop Summit has been held the past 13 years in Portland, Nike’s home base. And it’s not just a 40-minute game. It’s a week of practice sessions attended by scouting representatives of every NBA club — for good reason.
The Hoop Summit is a veritable feeding ground for both the colleges and the pros. Members of the U.S. team through the years have included Kevin Garnett, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Anthony Davis, Karl-Anthony Towns and Zion Williamson. World team stalwarts have included Dirk Nowitzki, Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokic. Five NBA Most Valuable Player winners have played in the game. Eleven of the last 12 No. 1 picks in the draft have participated.
I count more than a dozen future Trail Blazers over the years, including Zach Randolph, Jermaine O’Neal, Nicolas Batum, Gary Trent Jr., Meyers Leonard, Al-Farouq Aminu and Ed Davis. I was there in 2010 when Enes Kanter of Turkey collected 34 points and 13 rebounds in a boffo performance for the World Selects.
When appropriate, organizers have put a local spin on the event, including Kevin Love (Lake Oswego), Payton Pritchard (West Linn), Kyle Wiltjer (Jesuit), Mike Moser (Grant), Terrence Jones (Jefferson) and even Bol Bol, who wound up playing nine games at Oregon.
On Friday, there was a local interest in Kel’el Ware, a 7-foot stringbean from North Little Rock, Ark., who has signed to play for the Ducks next season. Ware had a productive night, with 11 points on 4-of-5 shooting with five rebounds in 18 minutes off the bench.
Ware, one of seven players in the game 6-10 or taller (and every one was gangly), scored on a pair of two-handed dunks. He showed some shooting range, stepping out for a long baseline jumper near the end of the third quarter, then burying a 3 from the top in the final period. Ware couldn’t handle a lob passed that would have resulted in a dunk and couldn’t convert another feed at the hoop. He had no blocks but is a willing defender, providing distractions a couple of times with his long wingspan. He also got called for goaltending while blocking an opponent’s driving layup.
Ware is going to help Dana Altman’s crew right away, but strength and stamina will likely be an issue. Team rosters did not list weights, but I’m guessing Ware is in the 210-pound range. He’s not as skinny as Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren, but he doesn’t have near the skills, either. Most of the players in Friday’s game are one-and-doners at the college level, which may be the case for Ware. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ware makes his contributions for the Ducks off the bench rather than a starter, at least at first.
Duke is getting three players from the 12-man U.S. roster — 7-1 Dereck Lively, 6-11 Kyle Filipowski and 6-6 Dariq Whitehead. (Don’t they know Coach K has retired?) Whitehead was as impressive as any U.S. player Friday, going for 17 points while hitting 5 of 7 from the NBA 3-point line. He also had five rebounds, four assists and three steals in just 21 minutes.
USA’s Dariq Whitehead sinks a rainbow 3 from the corner. The Duke commit from Newark scored 17 points in 21 minutes.
Old friend Eric Musselman, who coached Arkansas to the Elite Eight this season, is getting two U.S. players — guards Anthony Black and Nick Smith Jr. No other college is getting more than one player from the Hoop Summit.
Three participants will play in the Pac-12 next season — Ware at Oregon, point guard Amari Bailey at UCLA and 7-foot Nigerian Vincent Iwuchukwu at Southern Cal.
Other players I liked: 6-6 Villanova-bound wing Cam Whitmore, who made 7 of 8 shots from the field, 2 of 3 from the 3-point line and scored a team-high 19 points in only 15 minutes; 6-3 guard Jean Montero of the Dominican Republic, who scored a game-high 23 points and made 4 of 8 shots from 3-point range (the rest of the World Selects combined for 3 for 19), and 6-8 forward Omaha Billew, an active southpaw from South Sudan who finished with 12 points and six boards. Omaha is uncommitted; shouldn’t he sign with Creighton?
• The NCAA’s transfer portal, for lack of a better description, has run amok.
In men’s basketball, 1,832 players entered the portal last season. Latest report this season has the number about 1,200, but the May 1 deadline is still several weeks away.
It has turned into a flea market grab. Need a three-and-D wing? Plunk your money, er, offer down. Want a defensive specialist “big”? Provide the right inducement and you might get your prize.
Hey “student-athlete!” Not getting enough playing time? Hit the portal. Don’t like the coach? Say “sayonara.” Want to go to a championship-level program? Time to bail. There’s no penalty anymore, no sitting out a year before becoming eligible.
I know the argument that a student-athlete should have the opportunity to transfer if things are not right, that it can be detrimental to mental health and so on. If a coach leaves, I can buy it — sort of. If not, I can’t. The negatives to those involved outweigh the positives.
The chaos it can provide within a program is tremendous. It benefits the more prestigious programs and opens the door for illegal recruiting. It works against parity.
The coach who has recruited a high school or JC athlete and put in the time to help him/her develop is left holding an empty bag. The fans who have supported the player through his time wearing their school’s colors lose the object of their affections.
The rule was instituted with good intentions. Problem is, it’s just too easy, and not always beneficial. Sometimes, it’s a great move for the player. Other times, as they say, the grass isn’t greener.
Too often it creates turmoil in the program losing the player, which has to scramble for replacements that may come from another program, creating more tumult.
• In this, the most woeful of all of the Trail Blazers’ 52 seasons, the end finally arrives Sunday on Bill Schonely Night at Moda Center.
Never has there been a more dismal finish to a season — not even 2005-06, at the end of the “Jail Blazer” era, when Portland dropped 19 of their final 20 games to end with a league-worst 21-61 record.
Over the last six weeks, the Blazers are 2-20 and on a 10-game losing streak. In their last two outings, the Blazers were hogtied 127-94 and 128-78. Since February 24, losses have come by margins of 37, 32, 30, 33, 48, 30, 31, 37, 33 and now 50 as the Blazers have done everything possible to make sure they’ll be in line for the very best draft pick possible in June.
It’s not the spirit of competition for which the NBA should stand. But I’ve covered that in a previous column.
• Among the young Blazers striving to carve a spot for themselves in the league, Drew Eubanks stands out.
The 6-10, 250-pound center from Reynolds High and Oregon State has averaged 14.3 points and 8.5 rebounds and shot .652 from the field in 21 games since signing his first 10-day contract on February 21. Over that span, Eubanks has had six double-doubles, including a 27-point, 14-rebound outburst against Oklahoma City in which he made 12 of 14 shots from the field.
Eubanks, 25, has to be among the league’s most prolific dunkers through his short time with Portland. But his repertoire also includes a nifty, very accurate right-handed jump hook. It’s clear the young man who left OSU undrafted in 2018 has worked very hard on his game. Based on his performance, I find it hard to believe the Blazers won’t bring him back to training camp in October as a strong candidate to back up Jusuf Nurkic at center.
I had hoped to write a piece on Eubanks for the readers of kerryeggers.com — most of them Blazer fans, many of them Beaver fans. I requested an interview through a media relations representative of the club. About a week after the request was made, I was told that Drew “appreciates the opportunity but is going to pass.”
Perhaps this website — and you fans — are not worthy of 10 minutes of Eubanks’ time. I’d like to think that’s not the case. In any event, it’s disappointing.
• Very happy to see that the Hillsboro Hops retired the jersey of Ben Petrick — the former Glencoe High three-sports star whose major league career was cut short with the early onset of Parkinson’s Disease — in a ceremony prior to the Hops’ season opener Friday night at Tonkin Field.
Petrick, 45, was on his way to a productive and perhaps outstanding MLB career, hitting .322 with a .408 on-base percentage in his first 71 games with the Colorado Rockies in 1999 and 2000. Then Parkinson’s began to take its toll; Ben retired after five MLB seasons in 2003 at age 26. Petrick later coached six seasons with his hometown Hops and now helps others living with Parkinson’s through his “Strength Through Weakness” organization.
I watched Petrick — a terrific running back and safety — lead Glencoe to the Oregon 4A championship in 1994, earning the state’s Player of the Year honors. I’ve interviewed Ben a couple of times since Parkinson’s began to take its toll and have been impressed with his courage and fortitude in fighting the disease.
• On March 16, Pete Ward died at age 84. I remember Pete — a long-time Portland resident who played nine major league baseball seasons and was runner-up for AL Rookie of the Year in 1963 — for a couple of reasons.
One, we shared a birthday (July 26).
But more than that, I remember him running the Pete Ward baseball clinic and banquet from 1971-91, an event that raised money for college scholarships to Oregon high school student-athletes and for Portland-area youth baseball leagues. Ward brought major league players in for the clinic and banquet every year, and early in my career, I was occasionally called upon to do feature stories for the Oregon Journal and The Oregonian. I first met my boyhood idol, Hank Aaron, before one of the clinics.
Ward was a friendly, easy-going, unassuming guy who was a pleasure to work with. Sorry to hear of his passing.
• You might have read in this column that Portland native Erik Spoelstra — head coach of the Miami Heat — was recently honored as one of the top 15 coaches in NBA history.
You might not have heard that his father, Jon Spoelstra, has been named by Sports Business Journal as one of 75 people “who grew the NBA’s business.”
The senior Spoelstra, who lives in Portland, fronted the business side of the Trail Blazers from 1979-89, helping develop Blazer Broadcasting and taking the franchise’s marketing to another level.
Among those on Sports Business Journal’s top 75 list: Red Auerbach, Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant, Mark Cuban, Julius Erving, David Falk, Larry Fleisher, Eddie Gottlieb, LeBron James, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Walter Kennedy, Phil Knight, George Mikan, Larry O’Brien, Pat Riley, Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, David Stern, Ted Turner, Jerry West and Yao Ming. And Jon Spoelstra.
“That’s pretty good company,” Spoelstra says. Yes it is.
• With the National Federation of State High School Associations implementing a 35-second shot clock starting in 2022-23, Oregon is finally getting serious in discussions on the matter.
I’ve written about the subject several times over the years recommending a 30-second shot clock. Thirty-five works, too. Anything to take away the opportunity to stall — a move long overdue.
Representatives of some schools worry about finding someone to operate the shot clock for every game. Not sure what to say to that other than, it’s the cost of doing business.
Next item of business: Extending the high school game from 32 to 40 minutes, the latter the length of a college game. High school basketball is as much about participation as anything. Thirty-two minutes doesn’t allow time for enough players to get ample minutes on the court. Games typically average taking an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes. Eight more game minutes extends that perhaps 15 minutes. It would be well worth it.
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