Hoopmania

Yeah I believe that's where we will be as well. Only 16 Adidas teams are invited to Atlanta per age group? Where will the rest of the Adidas teams going?

They aren't having it.

Pippen is the most disrespected player of all time. The second best perimeter player in the league when the Bulls were winning titles and nobody ever talks about him. There was a reason why Jordan won all of those all defensive titles. Pippen guarded Glen Rice, Dominique Wilkins, Barkley in his Sixers days, Penny Hardaway, Larry Nance, etc. He couldn't guard Magic because that would have placed Jordan on Worthy. Same with Drexler and Jerome Kersey. Jordan is great and arguably the best all time, but none of these titles are won without Pippen.

5? Garner Road, Wall, and Loaded. Who am I missing? But that makes sense what Adidas was doing. I am not as familiar with Adidas and wondered if that was going to be their strategy to compete with the other circuits.

The reality is that this is the case with every state. I have moved down to North Carolina and there are 7 shoe company teams. Granted that is a talent rich state when it comes to basketball, but the situation is the same. All of the teams are getting watered down with the addition of the Under Armour circuit and Adidas adding a million teams to their circuit.

Updated standings has them tied for 26th.

That was actually the 15U A team that finished runner up in the 16U tourney.

Did they play m(any) tourneys outside of Nike this year besides AAU state playing up? Like you said, the circuit is brutal.

Basically you get a point for every win. Winning your pool gives you 2 more, winning a first round game gives you 6, semis gives you 10 more and winning it adds like 16. I believe they take your top two tourney results. So not going to all 4 tourneys doesn't hurt you.

Correct. There is a EYBL qualifier and a regular 16U tourney for the non Nike teams. This is the last qualifier for Peach Jam. The top 16 16U teams will go to North Augusta in July.

16U Travelers are in Atlanta I believe for EYBL qualifiers.

Oh I know Under Armour offered the money. I am just saying that Nike didn't match that. They get money from lots of different places, which include former players, but their allotment (certainly not $35k) isn't drastically different than the other programs. The majority of the kids pay to play. Although he does field both boys and girls. Keith's money is a different situation.

Takeover also does a great job with their program financially. They host multiple events throughout the year (with one actually being in Puerto Rico this year), and they don't "buy" kids by giving them tons of free stuff. They might not have the same budget, but its not some astronomical number. Definitely not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Nope he just signed.

Correct. So now I don't know if he will go to an Adidas program. Duncan would have tried to encourage him to go Adidas.