The Ploys Of Summer

LAS VEGAS — This is the other side of March Madness.

Midsummer Mayhem.

In the stifling heat of July in Nevada, more than 3,000 high school basketball players and 550 college coaches descended on the desert for the five-day, 310-team Adidas Big Time tournament, the gargantuan event of the NCAA's controversial 24-day summer evaluation period.

The games rolled on, one after another. Three minutes between halves, seven minutes between games, from 9 a.m. until almost 11 p.m. every day in 12 dizzyingly similar high school gyms stretched across the seemingly unending boulevards of Vegas sprawl.

For a coach, this is nirvana: hundreds of prospects on parade.

Vegas has become the home of one-stop shopping, and in the cramped auxiliary gym at Green Valley High one night, an all-star team of coaches rimmed the court. Duke's Mike Krzyzewski was seated in a plastic chair behind one basket, with Kansas Coach Roy Williams at the other end. UCLA's Steve Lavin, Stanford's Mike Montgomery and Arizona's Lute Olson were on the sidelines. And Kentucky's Tubby Smith stood because there was nowhere left to sit.

For the NCAA--which often seems to wish the C in its initials stood for Control--this is the image of Chaos.

The summer scene has long been unseemly, but the sordidness of the almost entirely unregulated world of summer basketball became concrete last season with the federal prosecution of former Kansas City summer coach Myron Piggie--a onetime crack dealer and Nike-affiliated coach who pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection with $35,500 in payments he made to players still in high school.

UCLA's JaRon Rush was suspended for 24 games for his involvement with Piggie, missing most of the season, and UCLA was ordered to repay the NCAA $45,321 in 1999 tournament earnings.

Rush turned pro after his abbreviated sophomore season, went undrafted, and his career is a shambles.

Rush's brother, Kareem, a Missouri player, and Oklahoma State's Andre Williams served shorter suspensions.

And in what might be the most resounding decision yet, Duke is awaiting the final fallout of payments Corey Maggette accepted from Piggie.

Though Maggette turned pro after his freshman season before the Piggie scandal broke, the NCAA could order Duke to vacate its 1999 runner-up finish and return a huge sum of tournament earnings for using an ineligible player.