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Nike report Louisville recruit Hurt among standouts as play ends
Posted: Tuesday July 11, 2000 02:53 PM
INDIANAPOLIS -- Wrapping up play at the Nike Camp on Monday, I thought there were a few particularly impressive performances, led by 6-2 Carlos Hurt, a Louisville commitment. He's a lefty point guard who made positive things happen virtually every time up and down the court. He definitely impressed the coaches who were there with his intensity and his consistency. He continued to come after you on every possession, and he's certainly one of the very best point guards in the senior class. Hurt's fellow native Texan and a rising junior who was absolutely a scoring machine Monday was Bracey Wright (6-3, The Colony, Texas). This is a great run-and-jump athlete who also has a good jump shot. In one sequence in one quarter that I watched, he scored five times in a series of six possessions by his team -- and that's against pretty good competition. He's among the better rising juniors in the country.
David Lee (6-9, St. Louis) had not played well Sunday. He played tired, and he probably was exhausted. He's kind of a rangy kid who always runs the court. Monday, though, he looked revitalized, had his engines charged again, and he looked like the real David Lee, who's a national top-10 senior. He was outrunning everybody from end to end and showing off his quick inside moves to score. Another player who impressed me Monday is Larry Turner (6-10, Milledgeville, Ga.), whose stock had already been pretty high, but is continuing to rise. He's a rebounder-rejector type, and is very mobile. The knock had been that he didn't have much of an offensive game, but he showed a lot more aggressiveness with the ball and was getting good results around the basket. If he can score as well as do all the other things, he's going to rise. We already had him in our top 50 seniors, and he's going to move on up. Some other guys we've talked about a lot but continued to excel Monday included Keith Jackson (6-5, Cincinnati), who has emerged at the Nike Camp as a big-time prospect. I think before that, there were some concerns about him. He's a thin kid, and his shot has been streaky, but here his shot has been going in, and he's proven himself to be wiry and tough. He's a tremendous run-and-jump athlete who gets up and down the court and makes a lot happen in transition. He plays with a lot of confidence, and he's rising fast on the list now. Also Monday, Andre Patterson (6-7, Los Angeles) once again put on a show. But these are his kinds of games, too, the up-and-down transition games. When you have to set it up more and people make him shoot jump shots, I think there still is a question mark or two. He's been outstanding at the Nike Camp and certainly is an awfully good small forward prospect. The best junior in the nation, and I can say that unequivocally, is Amare Stoudemire (6-10, Lake Wales, Fla.), and there was no letdown Monday, he continued to score virtually at will. What I love about him is, he shows this intensity that never ceases, he comes after you on every play. He's a hard guy to play against, and you can tell it in the frustrations of his opponents. Another of the very best junior big men was on the same camp team as Stoudemire, and that made them doubly tough. Torin Francis (6-9, Massachusetts) is a terrific athlete for a rising junior, but he runs great, blocks shots, commands the boards, and has some pretty good scoring tools. If it weren't for him being on same team with Stoudemire, he probably would stand out a little more. Going in, we had Francis among the top 30 junior prospects, and he's better than that.
Another guy who should be mentioned from the Nike Camp is Jawad Williams (6-9, Lakewood, Ohio). He's proven that small forward probably really is his better position than power forward. He's a very good athlete with a sweet jump shot, including out to 3-point range. He also is a skilled passer. This is a guy with a whole lot of basketball skills. He handles the ball well enough for a wing forward, and has enough athleticism that he could defend it. He has played consistently well. Not everyone improved his stock at the camp, of course. There are a few players who I thought didn't play up to their usual level, or to the level that their advance hype had implied they would. These are good players, but for whatever reason, they didn't have it here. Combo guard Melvin Scott (6-2, Baltimore), who had been outstanding, hitting shots all over the court at the NBA Players Association camp, was very quiet here. I didn't notice him Monday, and he may not have played, but even before that he simply did not stand out. Wing guard Earnest Shelton (6-3, Memphis) is another guy with a reputation of being a top 25 or 30 player in the country. But he had a truly unexceptional camp. I had heard that before I got here, and I saw that with my own eyes the last two days. He was a scorer who wasn't scoring, and when he didn't score, he didn't do a whole lot of other things. Another player who was a disappointment, relative to what we've come to expect from him, (and I think he's a heck of a good player), is Josh Childress (6-6, Lakewood, Calif.). I had him ranked No. 10 in the country, and I'd loved him in some other places I'd seen him. But he didn't play nearly as well as he's capable of, he wasn't hitting his shot as consistently as he had at other places. He didn't seem to quite be able to get in sync, and that wasn't the Josh Childress that we'd seen previously. Also failing to live up to expectations was the guy with the huge, sudden reputation from being the leading scorer and rebounder at the Youth Development Festival in Colorado Springs, big, burly Ed Nelson (6-7, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.). In one game in Colorado Springs, he had 41 points and 16 rebounds in a matchup with Elton Brown (6-8, Newport News, Va.), who is legitimately a national top 40 player.
Nelson's a very smart, crafty, strong, inside player with good touch, but he's not an exceptional athlete. He had trouble with the bigger top athletes here at the Nike Camp. He did go out and hit some high-post jump shots, though. The other players weren't necessarily suckered by his fakes and tricks inside, and he didn't jump high enough to go over people. He came back to the pack a lot here, he really didn't excel in nearly the same way he'd done Colorado Springs. I also thought Bryan Hopkins (5-11, Dallas), a junior point guard, had some trouble. He's been high on everybody's list since some events early last spring, in 1999, but every time I've seen him play, he's been out of control a great deal and hasn't shot the ball consistently. And even though he's a good leaper, he's had trouble finishing among the trees down low. I thought the same thing was true here, he was out of control, and not making good decisions. As a final wrapup, the two camps clearly split the talent, as they have done every year nationally. Part of our dilemma is that you don't get to see all the best players play against each other head-to-head. I would have loved to have seen Lenny Cooke play against, say, an Andre Patterson, or something like that. Or see what would happen when Eddy Curry had to play against Tyson Chandler or Stoudemire or Ousmane Cisse or DeSagana Diop. All of those would have been wars. This is kind of the challenge in the way it's done, and it's the coaches' challenge to, because they have to decide who they like better when they haven't seen all the best kids play head-to-head.
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