My response to RSB comments
October 4, 2000 you got it all wrong RSB!
For starters, this site is not writing or edited by Nate Blue or John Sanchez. Yes it is true I do talk to John at his games, but he has nothing to do with it! A few weeks ago I started this site, not to diss anyone, but to have some info about basketball.
RSB you say that you've being writing for 8th months, although I thought it was more, I give you lots of respect, but did you know that there was a Newsletter called "Hoops Round Up, a look at today's playas" writing by your friend there? Anyway this newsletter has being out for about 2 and a half years and is only given to a select few.
But getting back at your comments, I guess you didn't understand my point. When I said that "Who's Norman Simmons and Roberto Felipe? I meant that you're the only scout that gave those kids a chance. You found these talents out of the sky and help them get props! It was never a diss. And trust me no one took it that way. As a matter of fact, its a big compliment. Who's Norman Simmons? Did you know that before he played with you at IS8 he was a no knowed player? Now the word is his a mid D1 player, who help him out, was it RSB?
Roberto Felipe was not knowed either until you took the time to help him. That was my whole point, please DO read between the lines.
RSB, I never diss you and in a way I feel sad. Rebel look, I mean no disrespect but you being doing it for how long? Did you know that Nate and John are 23 years old? And instead of leaving the subject along, you carry on, that's my whole point. Am not a stupid person, I know you done good, but in this one you done wrong.
Who said I was dissing riverside? If telling the truth is dissing then so be it.
I never said that Wolfpack and Panthers where bad. As a matter of fact I love the Panthers. Did you know that in a recent newspaper article on the Journal News, Gary Charles is quoted as saying, " This is the business, I would do what it takes.." The man is Honest, he won't hide behind anything, Much Props. And the Wolpack, man, if you don't think that they need help then we won't agree on anything. If you go around to everyone who's honest and not afraid to speak his or her minds they would agree with me, just ask around.
But ask around in a private place, it seem that in a Nation that has freedom of speech, people can't practice it freely. Theirs always an Idiot taking everything to serious and using violence.
Life is short so enjoy it.
Style of writing, umm, lets see am me, sorry if you disagree.
I came to a conclusion, no one likes the truth.
nor they like facts.
Seen everyone is so caught up in Sanchez writing these sites am offering it now. John if you want it is yours.
And to think RSB, I was giving you a compliment for finding great players
Am Out of here,
See ya!
Just another thought
October 3, 2000 Fans and friends that follow HRU know that am about truth, principles and love.
But when I started this site, I never knew that it was going to get so big. I figured that a few people would read it and mostly forget about it. But that never happened. Instead HRU has grown rapidly, if I tell you how many Emails I get a day you'll think am crazy. In the few weeks that HRU being in process over 3,500 people have visited us. And ever since we opened we being getting an average of 10 emails a day.
But I tell you this much, the biggest plus, have being that people have responded in a positive way. I give you an example, the other day is at work and I go into my emails, and I find my first hate mail. Some dude hates the things I say, another wanted me to get writing classes, and the other feels that they should know how I am, and that I should tell them who is the Real HRU.
It seems that these people DO NOT read the whole site. Let me give you this answer. First, if you hate, then that's your business, don't hate cause I do it for me not you!
Second, I am not going back to school for my writing. If you don't like it, they are plenty of sites you can go into, so stop bothering me and last but not least, like I said before, these is my hobby, if it wasn't, then you would be paying for what your reading right now.
So basically, it doesn't bather me. My love for you guys is unconditional. I love the sport, and what matters to me is that am having fun! And that I can help kids through my comments that must of the guys that write on the net and coach, dont tell.
I don't need any enemies, but if you're not doing the right things, then expect me to be, cause I will be writing about it.
I like the fact that Real Scout took its rankings off. I should take minds out too, but who's going to rank Carl Krauser? Plus no disrespect RSB, but who's Norman Simmons? But that's why I think the only TRUE site is RSB, having you notice that his the only one taking chances? And again I ask who's Roberto Felipe? But I do have one thing to ask RSB; didn't you get your start with the help of, Rebel a.k.a FAKE scout? Don't worry the word is out, Fake scout is scare of RSB! Sorry I missed your game Nate but word is that you had low budget Tee-shirts, still the ref's haven't gotten paid and you still haven't paid the rent, but it was the game that everyone was talking about. In a word a Success! Now back to Fake Scout, I don't mean no disrespect Rebel, but don't you think that you where a little wrong with trying to kill Nate's game? Still I hear that you delivery called kids not to go. Reb', out of the things that I have heard about you, this was the worst. So, my low class of the year award goes to, Ta-Ra! Rebel a.k.a Fake Scout for dividing the basketball community and trying to ruin RSB "THE GAME". For your information, College coaches have ask for the game to be run in the open period, and Keith Mason noted that the game will be run at Lehman College next spring. Lets see, if this happens then, RSB not only Fake scout will be jealous but HRU will be TOO! Just Kidding.
Life its funny sometimes, The kids play ball for fun, but then they meet, Riverside, Panthers, Tim Thomas Playaz, Broncos, Wolfpack, Ravens, Gauchos, ect,.. And the love of the game leaves there soul. It seems that once they go to these teams they forget that basketball is fun, they play for the scouts and the hype, instead for the love of the game.
I realize that nothing is, as it seems. I always look at those teams with respect, but then I started to coach, and I founded out that these guys are a joke, in a newspaper a few months back, reported on a certain NYC basketball coach. He was quoted as saying "I hear rumors of player being paid, but I dont know if that's true". Come on, all you got to do is look in the mirror to find the answer.
To the PSAL coaches, ya going to make me lose my mind, ya going to make me write this, how can you be quoted that its a shame that kids are going to prep, HELLO! Have you being to a public High school lately?
Oh by the way, why is it that Julian Thomas has red hair? Word is that his Dennis Rodman wanna be.
Oh its October 3rd, that means that some PSAL coaches are in their 3rd week of illegal practice. Or has they say, open Gym, but only players trying out please! Guys who are you fooling. According to a close source to HRU, the only coach not running' illegal practices is a certain dude in Astoria, but then again this coach is just there for a paycheck.
Back to the prep school situation, let's see Kids, the PSAL offer you a overcrowded school and metal dictators, while prep offer you 17 students per class, first class facilities and 1 extra year to get stronger, umm, hard choice.
You see guys, I love all of the readers of HRU, and I do appreciate you guys logging in, like some dude uptown says: Thank you for coming, cause you could have being somewhere else.
HRU
Lfball you got it but...
September 30, 2000 John Jay's head coaches turn your boy, Bobby Holdford in, not Lehman.
Your boy Bobby is dislike by all the CUNY coaches, to be honest they think his a rat. Speaking with a few of the CUNY coaches they tell me that his perfect example of what's wrong with college basketball.
Nothing against your boy, but HRU is for the TRUTH. And although personally I like Bobby, I still thing that is wrong what his doing. But you write that theirs a double standard when it comes to Coach John Sanchez and theirs none. I feel the same way if I founded out that Coach Sanchez is doing the same as Bobby and my same principles will surface if that became the case.
But, I did enjoy your comments and I can tell you this, Nate Blue and John Sanchez, unlike others, like some team name Riv*^&$%@!, they are doing it for the right reasons.
Final Thoughts on the 8th Annual PSAL Games
September 27, 2000 This year I have attended most of these exposure games. I being to Five-star, Top 100, Eastern Invitational, Adidas ABCD, Nike Showcase, Hudson Valley, Fordham Camp, Bobby Gonzalez camp, Lehman Camp, and I can go on.
All are great for kids, all beneficial to any student-athlete that dreams of moving on to play the next level. But this week the Jim Sullivan PSAL Games really were my favorite. Theirs many reasons why, but the main is because these games give the kids a chance to play in front of college coaches with out the hype that surrounds the other camps.
Kids, has well as coaches, come and have a good time. Yes their waren't any spectacular players, but there where kids playing the game the love.
My hats of to the organizers of the camp for a job well done.
Its funny, but when the AAU is not involve, players have more fun and the games are more fun, heh, who knows maybe because of these so-called AAU coaches are not involve!
What Ever Happened to......?
September 27, 2000 What ever happens to those coaches that put themselves in front of the kids? That is in the business for self-glory? Those that winning is more important than teaching LIFE SKILLS?
It's unfortunate to say that they will always be around. Doing nothing for the kids and caring only about themselves.
Today I was at the PSAL exposure games at Riverbank State Park. I saw lots of old faces, coaches that being there for years. Doing the same thing that they do every year, collect their extra 5 grand for coaching a sport they hardly know about, dealing with kids they hardly know how to deal with.
In my days of being around basketball, I've had the chance to see great coaches at work. To name a PSAL coach that have really done good for the kids, I really have to think hard now days. Don't get me wrong there are lots that are good, but most are bad.
Floid Banks, Larry Dantzle to name a few of the good coaches that have work hard for the best of a child. These coaches should be praised for their great work.
But am tired of seeing these so called coaches trying to be involve (which they do not do anyway) in a kids life with no experience of the game or life in that matter.
DON'T GET ME WRONG THEY ARE GRAT PEOPLE! GOOD GUYS THAT MEAN WELL, BUT DO NOT HAVE, TO MY KNOWLEDGE, THE NECESSARY SKILLS TO TEACH THE GAME.
I bring a suggestion to the table, house cleaning. Like college, the PSAL should fire coaches according to their record on and off the court. Each coach should have regiments they must accomplish each year, and if they don't then, they should Fire them.
Lets face it, I can seat here and name these bad coaches by name, and I can tell you about all the wrongs they do, but that's not the point, the point here is the KIDS.
The kids are the one's that suffer, the one's that in the long run get hurt by our many wrongs.
HRU Apologies to Coach and Players!
September 25, 2000 This past weekend I realized that I had made a Big Mistake, by editing a rumor that a close friend told me about. The news was about two Boys and Girls HS players. It was edited on September 15, 2000.
This goes out to the players which name was mentioned and the coach who, in his trust told me about it.
I never meant to do harm, but I do apologized to HRU Staff and fans about this editor mistake. But most importantly I would like to apologies to the players and coach that where hurt by this editor.
The story or news was never gear to bring confusion.
Wolfpack; What a mess!
September 20, 2000 Yesterday HRU made the trip to IS8 to watch the best player in the city and arguably the best player in the country. Am talking about Lenny Cook. Mr. Cook who plays for the NY Wolfpack coach by Doug Jones formally of Elmcore basketball was facing off against Artie Cox team Riverside "B". Basically this night on paper the talents swan for the Wolfpack, with the best player in the country on its roster.
But, it is to this editor shame that I have to write about the many wrongs of this AAU, or summer basketball teams, instead of writing about how great I though Mr. Cook was.
I can't really say that the game was great 'cause it was far from that. I can't say that Lenny Cook scored 48 and was so dominant that his ready for the league. Lenny did however show me why the basketball community needs to shape up. It must clean up.
The game was won by Riverside, who basically had nobody's, the leading scorer was Dashawn Warren of Bryant high school with 19, but he is no Lenny Cook. Riverside won going away.
But it was not the game this night that stoled the show, but it was the lack of discipline and maturity that the NY Wolfpack showed that made the story for this editor.
The NY Wolfpack is one of the many examples of why the basketball community is the way it is. To many overrated players and hype teams with money and no morality or respect towards each other.
Amateur sports was created to teach kids respect, sportsmanship, loyalty, to teach all the necessities to became a respect person in the community full of pride and success. In this day, the Wolfpack showed us that that goal has hit the back burner to hype and the now of basketball. It seems that even winning as become secondary, now the new trend is having the so-called best players in the city.
It doesn't matter if they win or if the kids learn the values of life or even learn the fundamentals of basketball these teams are all about saying, I got this guy, I got that guy.
The Wolfpack showed all of us that they haven't even being in a gym to practice. I can really say that the Wolfpack are the must disorganize team in the country. Close sources to HRU reported that Curtis Sumpter left the team because the coaching mess they're in. HRU also talk to Norman Simmons who played for them in the Charlie Webber tournament this past weekend, and Norman told HRU that there is no discipline in this program. This program and its coaches have showed that there not about helping the kids, but just going and making a joke of amateur basketball.
To whoever is sponsoring this team, please look into this matter.
Lenny is a league player, but we do have to wonder if these kids are getting the valuable lessons that is team amateur sports!
Top 100 at Seton Hall
September 17, 2000 The Hoop Group Top 100 camp was held this past weekend at Seton Hall University. The Hoop Group has always run a successful camp that figure 52 full days of basketball.
Although this camp didn't figured the Top Player's in the city or for that matter in the East Coast, it did however have great players that many of us have never hear about.
Top 100 was a Division 2 and 3 heaven. Many of the local college scouts where on hand including C.W. Post's Tom Grizzialy who promoted HRU.
The Hoop Group really should rename the event since really the Top 100 player dont participate, am not down playing the event but, Real Scout "the game" had more talent.
That gets me to my point. It is important to realize that because a player participates in camps and tournaments, and plays in their High School, it doesn't make them a Division 1 player. That's why coaches should emphasize Education first, since that is the most important part of being a STUDENT-athlete.
I will be posting the top players of the camp in the next couple of days.
Youth Empowerment League Offers hope
September 15, 2000 Has the fall approaches and the dog days of summer basketball come to an end, Youth Empowerment Fall Drazen Petrovic Classic offer hope to the True Basketball lover. In days like this in which the atmosphere is just getting a bit cool again and the leafs of trees start coming down, I am reminded why I choose to coach basketball. My reason was simple; to reach kids who are in need of a hope. So today I had the opportunity to be in a in a gym where the court is so old that when they designed the court the 3 point line was not yet install And the wood backboards, in which it shows that thousands of shots have being taken, was yet, the same backboards that still stands in the old gym and that figured the hope that I was lokking for. You saw the future of our society within those lines that make the old gym basketball court. Kids that have dreams that no one can imagine, you see in their eyes; joy, in their smile; hope.
I keep on mentioning hope, since its hope that we all desire, and live by. It drives me crazy to think that must coaches forget that hope, they live that behind. Forgetting that it is hope that we must be loyal to. Its hope that we must give these kids. We forget in our fight to run the best AAU teams or High School teams, that these kids play basketball for many reasons, I can tell you one thing, 99.9% of the time is not for winning. A kid will rather play in a losing team and be with a team that cares and looks out for him and must importantly a coach that cares beyond the score sheet. Amateur basketball has gotten so corrupted, that kids now and days have lost their loyalty. They have become hopeless and given up to what true tradition is all about.
I can recall that playing for Youth Service, Top AAU baseball team in the city and in the country, was the highlight of each youngster who made the trip to the Bronx each Saturday morning. There was loyalty, tradition and respect for the program that help so many of us. My brother played High School ball too, and when I was in 7th grade I wouldn't wait to be in high school to play for my big bro.'s coach. To wear my school colors.
Basketball as well as team sports and the coaches that coached them have left moral, and respect for greed that's killing the purity of the sport as well as the kids.
Youth Empowerment remind me today of why am doing what am doing at this point in my life. I thank all that participated today for helping me renew MY HOPE!
Last good days of Basketball Camps?
September 14, 2000
The idea of basketball camp as always being to get better as a player, I remember when I was younger I always wanted to go to camp cause the best teachers, so I thought, where there to teach me these great things to make me the next M.J. or in my case since I never did like M.J., you know the Bulls thing, the next Kenny Anderson. As a youngster I always look up to all the coaches at this camps, some of them where Division 3 coaches must of them AAU guys that really didn't know much, although at that time I though they did.
Attending camp is a tradition, if you don't believe me buy any of the Five-Star books and you will see the tradition going way back to the early days of future hall of fame coaches like Chuck Daly and Bobby Knight, and to recent history with Big Cal, John Calipari and players like Jordan, L.J. Attending these camps, as a player is as important has working on their basketball skills everyday. At these camps coaches from all over the nation show up like it was a Grateful dead concert. You see them walking around, talking to each other and evaluating talent and imagining how a player can change the whole face of there respected program. They evaluate each player like a broker evaluates his stocks.
Basketball camps change a whole lot since my sting in the early '90s. The last I remember everyone that went to camp was there to shine, to become a better all around player, and it still true today. But one thing as changed, M.J. retired! You see as Jordan hung up his kicks, big corp. NIKE had to find a replacement. That meant that there grassroots program and George Garvin had work to do which meant that ADIDAS which has control Grassroots basketball, also known as Summer Ball, for the past decade or so had to start working a bit harder. But how those these issues affect basketball camps? Its simple has these corps look for Jordan's replacement they rely on these camps to pursue the next big player.
Nike and Adidas have there respected camps, and are not critiquing these camps, they do good for the kids, help them get the exposure needed to get better offers. But my problem is the guys that work and manage these camps. At Five-Star I saw so-called coaches working camp. Why are they working camp? They already have destroyed summer basketball and the AAU, an soon they will destroyed the most beautiful tradition there is, basketball camp.
Unless the big guys running these camps make a stand and get the AAU guys out of the camps, these camps will soon be nothing more then an AAU practice. Nothing going.
The coaching at five-star decline so much since i was there that it made me sad that I can see the ending of a great tradition.
My trip to five-star was a sad one, as too the players that I spoke to told me it was a bad experience and more then a few asked me to drive them back home. Lots have change since those golden days of Chuck Daly.
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