Big SI recruiting piece: "The Education Of Demetrius Walker"

[SilkyJ]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau...29/1/index.htm

Courtesy of Airowe's twitter (retweeted from Zags). Lengthy piece on the story of Demetrius Walker and the problems with ranking/rating/recruiting players of too young an age.

An excellent read, imo.

(Its from the SI Vault, but looks like the publish date is Sept 27. My apologies if this is old.)

[ACCBBallFan]

Glad I printed it out. Too long to read on line.

Eighth graders at mercy of coaches and recruiting analysts with selfish motives.

Started out as a roast of Clark Francis and ended up with New Mexico coach Steve Alford taking on yet another transfer as he did with Drew Gordon from UCLA and Emmanuel Negedu from TN. He had another guy Nate Garth trasfer out and he may still be over the limit of 13.

Guess you do what you gotta do to get guys to play in New Mexico.

[WiJoe]

Tremendous story. Now, sadly, that's a rarity in SI.

[basket1544]

Really eye-opening on how early the really good basketball players are established and how often they end up playing each other even at ten years old.

[loran16]

This is actually an excerpt from a book: Play Their Hearts Out.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep...yre-20100926/2

[1991 duke law]

Wow, that story is really nauseating. I never really knew that it was that sad and pathetic.