From there, they drove about 20 minutes into downtown Seattle, where he practiced for another two hours with his A.A.U.
When the former Atlanta Braves shortstop Rafael Ramirez was asked during the 1986 season about why he had gone some 40 games without drawing a walk, seemingly an impossibility, he famously replied, “A walk won’t get you off the island.”A similar line of thinking prevailed at the Junior Phenom camp.
There was a G-Money, a K-Money, a Cash-Money and one young man who simply called himself Money. “They know the game,” Marcie said, “but I see him shoot 3,000 shots a week, so I think I know his shot better than they do.”Putting up so many shots is a hard workout, especially since Trier releases many of them on the move, after a couple of dribbles and a juke — as if he were trying to elude a defender.
I heard talk that the biggest stars among the high-school players attend these kinds of camps only if they are paid — that is, they demanded cash in addition to free travel and camp tuition. . After about 10 minutes of ballhandling at the gym, he moved on to what makes up the bulk of his daily workout — shooting. He’s a hard worker.
Each time, his mother rubbed an herbal ointment on his knees, which, not surprisingly, were aching.But this was only the beginning of his basketball day.
He was named the 2014 Gatorade State Player of the Year in Maryland as a high school junior.
ball, he competes as a seventh grader, but academically, he’s in sixth grade because he was held back a year.
In A.A.U. But basketball operates at a level beyond other sports, and in recent years, the attention, benefits and temptations that fall on top high-school players have settled on an ever-younger group.Trier has his own line of clothing emblazoned with his signature and personal motto: “When the lights come on, it’s time to perform.” His basketball socks, which also come gratis, are marked with either his nickname, Zo, or his area code, 206. LeBron James’s first high-school game, in ninth grade, was eagerly anticipated by insiders, and the televising of high-school games took off during the four years he was prepping for the N.B.A. It looked like showboating, Harlem Globetrotters kind of stuff, but the drills, which Trier discovered on the Internet, were based on the childhood workouts of Pete Maravich and have helped nurture his exquisite control of the ball in game settings — and, by extension, his burgeoning national reputation.One of the Web sites that tracks young basketball prospects reports that Trier plays with “style and punch” and “handles the pill” — the ball — “like a yo-yo.” He is a darling of the so-called grass-roots basketball scene and a star on the A.A.U.
It’s a relatively small investment for these companies, even if they make bets on hundreds of kids, but to the families it can seem like a lot — not just the material goods but also what the attention and gifts seem to foreshadow.
Then he resumed telling me about his business.
After he made his quota of shots, which took about 90 minutes, Marcie drove Allonzo to another gym nearby, where a local high-school coach who moonlights as a private basketball tutor put him through an hourlong workout that included more ballhandling and shooting, followed by a vigorous session of one-on-one play. “I guess I’ll be at least 6-3,” he told me, “but I’m hoping for maybe 6-5.” (His mother is about 5-foot-4. Go play soccer. To watch this up close was to gain an understanding of the roots of the decline of team play in American basketball.I talked to Billy Clark III after his game. Think of it this way: Youth soccer may seem out of control, and here in the U.S. there’s no big pot of money at the end of the rainbow, and few suburban families believe their kid’s talent is going to get them to a better class of subdivision.Basketball has a different DNA. Parents got upset.”None of this was necessarily against the rules, because these were coaches’ private camps. When he misses two in a row, which rarely happens, she subtracts one from his total. “I think that we all recognize that young people can have great talents, and if those players have dreamed about going to your school, they tend to ask you if they’re being offered a scholarship by your school,” he said. She never has to push him to practice, and he does not have to convince her why basketball should be at the center of their lives.
Trier himself named a New York-area high-school star who is rumored to play that game.
. (Francis includes him in the class of 2014, the age group in which he plays, but he’s really the class of 2015, the year he should graduate from high school.
Francis often likens Trier to Jennings.
“Bottom line is, if you don’t have one of those things, forget it. . “You mark my word.”As I was talking with Keller just inside the gym’s front door, an angry-looking man, the coordinator of referees at the camp, came rushing his way, and they quickly got into a loud, profane argument. The laserlike focus of the young Tiger Woods was a singular gift, and his practice routine with his father may be replicable, if at all, once in a generation.It could be that for Trier, taking 450 shots a day, seven days a week, along with the rest of his arduous schedule, is a terrific undertaking that will pay dividends in basketball success and happiness.
But they can signal their interest by sending “questionnaires,” without personal letters, to players of any age.
As a senior, he was named to USA Today’s second team All-American roster.Currently, Allonzo Trier is 24 years old. “And that’s what makes Allonzo Trier fun to watch.
I don’t see it as exploitative or taking advantage, and the moment I did, I would get out of it.”(Active N.C.A.A.
At the close of the camp, he ranked Trier No. at St. Vincent-St. Mary high school in Akron, Ohio.