Experts of Nothing

Back in high school, I religiously followed recruiting sites. They provided me 'access' into a world that I would not have known anything about otherwise. Recruiting sites were great because I could find out about incoming freshman that were going to make an impact and sound smart when I was right. I could see which coaches could successfully recruit high-level players and which coaches found diamonds in the rough. I thought that reading the opinions of these so-called experts made me one, too. I thought wrong.

By my senior year, I started to see the light. A guy I used to play pickup games with, current Missouri point guard Mike Dixon, kept dropping in the rankings in favor of guys from the coasts. But no recruiting expert had come to see Mike lately. Then, another guy I played with a couple times, current Colorado guard Alec Burks, was rated as a three-star (out of five stars) prospect. I didn't understand. I had seen other 'four-star' guys and saw a huge difference--Dixon and Burks were better. What was the deal?

(Oh, and by the way, Burks and Dixon are now two of the best freshman in the Big 12. Burks is projected as the third pick in the 2011 NBA Draft by NBADraft.net.)

Then, this past October, I'm sitting on my laptop when I see an article about one of my Heights guys, Perry Ellis (duh), pop up on ESPN. This guy says that, based on one day of watching Perry, that he "has peaked" as a sophomore in high school and will be a "good high-major four man," but not a superstar. What? Based on one day?

In December, after a game in Kansas City, some overweight twenty-something guy, who looks like his frat days weren't too long ago, knocks on our locker room door asking for an interview with Perry. I direct the request to Coach Auer who looks at the guy and says it's cool. He says he knows the guy but asks me to monitor the interview. This guy asks Perry some of the dumbest questions I have ever heard.

For example:

"Where do you think you should be ranked among players in your class?"

"How do you feel about being the best player in Kansas?"

"Do you like playing for Wichita Heights?"

I thought the guy might be an amateur blogger. I look online a few days later and find the story this guy wrote. Turns out, the guy was Eric Bossi, a midwest scouting 'expert' for recruiting giant ScoutHoops.com. I'd read this guy's stuff for years, as he was familiar with the KC area and Big 12 recruiting. But when I finally saw him, I thought he was a joke. Turns out that not only does he not know basketball, but he is not qualified as a journalist, either. His twitter occasionally looks more like a running commentary of girls' posteriors and his beer-filled nights than that of a basketball scout.

My other run-ins with recruiting types have all been similar. The info on Perry and WSU commit Evan Wessel is not only outdated, but often downright inaccurate. I realize now that these recruiting 'experts' are just peddling wrong information to people who, otherwise, have no information at all. In the end, these people I trusted for reliable basketball knowledge for a few years are not experts of anything at all.