Bigger than ever … and better than ever

Adam Candee

Monday, July 28, 2003 | 9:05 a.m.

Keep bringing in the reinforcements -- the Big Time talent just does not stop flowing at a high water mark through the annual summer hoopfest in Las Vegas.

The adidas Big Time Tournament expanded to a record 400 teams and 4,000 players for its 2003 incarnation. The Atlanta Celtics and other dazzling Open division teams showed that a tournament that has quadrupled in size in less than a decade loses little by continually adding ingredients into the pot. "(The talent) was as good as ever before, if not better," Durango coach Al LaRocque said Sunday night. LaRocque owned a catbird's seat for much of the week's best action as the gym director for the Durango site, which hosted most of the top-flight Open play throughout the week along with Green Valley. He had high praise for most of the teams he witnessed last week, but LaRocque reserved a special place for the tournament champion Celtics and their trio of man-children.

"These Celtics may be able to beat the Clippers, don't you think?" LaRocque joked.

Dwight Howard, Josh Smith, and Randolph Morris, three big men with big ceilings, gave the tournament a jolt by leading the Celtics to the crown Saturday night. Tournament co-director Larry McKay knows more about his creation than anyone, and he believes the Celtics are in a special class of prep assemblies.

"They are as good as any team that has ever been here," McKay said.

Beyond the Celtics, the tournament continued to attract a number of the country's best teams, as well as the nation's premier college coaches. The Big Time added 56 teams from its field of 344 in 2002, thanks in part to a new online registration system. With 15 sites this year, the effort to coordinate all of the logistical details -- from running games on time to separating college coaches from the rest of the crowd -- went without a major hitch.

"It ran pretty smoothly," McKay said. "We got everything done pretty much according to plan."

McKay said his only regret from this year's Big Time is that not all teams were eligible to compete for the overall tournament title. The additional 56 teams, added to the schedule late in the process, did not qualify to move into Open play after games in the A division.

"We went away from our philosophy of all teams being able to win the Open division," McKay said, adding that the situation is going to be re-evaluated for the 2004 tournament.

To that end, McKay did not rule out future expansion for the Big Time, but he cautioned that challenges like scheduling the tournament's 996 games over five days must be handled with great care. LaRocque feels not much in talent and achievement is sacrificed by growth.

"The market's there and people know the level of the tournament," LaRocque said. "When they come, they know they better be pretty good."

Local all-star teams, with talent spread across the city to summer hodgepodge assortments of players, will need to consolidate their efforts in future years in order to greatly succeed, LaRocque feels.

"Until we get one all-star team, no one's going to go deep into the tournament," LaRocque said.