Wednesday, July 21, 2004 | 9:36 a.m.
Las Vegas is a city of divergent thinking, so it's really not much of a surprise that the peak of basketball season in Southern Nevada is late July.
Last week's NBA summer league wasn't even a fair prelude to the July Madness set to begin Thursday at area high schools. The Reebok Big Time tournament features 336 teams from across North America, and smaller tournaments sponsored by Nike and adidas will serve as filler for five days of games featuring some of the game's top prospects.
The action actually begins just after midnight tonight at the Doolittle Community Center, as the Pangos Midnight Madness caters to coaches who can't wait until immediately after the NCAA deadline for when they can start watching summer high school hoops, and to Southern California high schoolers who want to be scouted right away.
But the highlight of the week is clearly the Big Time, a tournament that started two decades ago in UNLV's McDermott Center gyms and has grown to 12 high schools scattered across the Las Vegas Valley. It was in the Big Time that this year's top NBA draft pick, Dwight Howard, shined above his Atlanta Celtics teammates in 2003. It was in the Big Time that familiar NBA names such as Kobe Bryant, Lamar Odom, Tracy McGrady, Luke Walton and Carmelo Anthony earned all-tournament honors.
Executive director Sonny Vaccaro, a former Las Vegan who now works for Reebok in Los Angeles, is pleased with the impact his tournaments and others that have turned basketball into a year-round sport have had on the game, criticizing others who say that so much summer basketball is overkill.
"That's the reason we're finding more talented players, whether you go to the NBA or college or just a good Division II school," Vaccaro said. "I think basketball's improved, contrary to what pundits say, that it's tearing down the league. That's (nonsense) because the best players in league are young kids. In college that's (nonsense), because it's leveled out the playing field."
It will be nearly impossible to walk into a high school this week without bumping into a college coach or an NBA scout looking for the next big thing.
This year, that's possibly 7-foot Spice Indy Heat center Greg Oden, a high school junior Vaccaro touted as one of the highlights of the tournament.
"There's no Dwight Howards right now, but USA Today had Greg Oden on the cover of (the) sports (section). He and Derrick Character are the two best big men. O.J. Mayo is going to shake the world some day. He's not going to be LeBron (James), but he has a chance to play against LeBron.
"I told the Maloof brothers the draft would change -- Derek Character and Greg Oden are only juniors, but they're going to go 1 and 1A in the draft when they elect to do it."
But because of the caliber of play, a player's stock can jump or crash in a Las Vegas high school gym.
"That's the other thing summer basketball does. It can create legends but also creates myths," Vaccaro said. "We had the No. 1 draft pick in America playing in this gym last year@this time. I remember seeing the Maloof brothers at that game and it was a very major moment in my life and for those kids -- two guys who obviously love basketball watched a high school summer league game. One of the kids was the first pick, one was the 15th pick."
The tournament gives Las Vegas-area high schoolers who might otherwise go unnoticed a chance to stand out. But it also contributes to the economy, as the players, coaches and their families, as well as scouts and college coaches, file in to hotel rooms across town for the weekend.
The accessibility of Las Vegas' adult attractions is not a concern for Vaccaro, who said that Las Vegas is the perfect place for the tournament because of its affordability to families and players.
"These guys aren't running around in casinos and going into strip joints. The people who own those places have millions of dollars involved," he said. "I was very happy to see upstairs in the Luxor, three or four kids who got in early were playing video games. I do tournaments in New Jersey and Fullerton (Calif.) and kids go stay in the hotel, get a meal, go back home after game. This is Disneyland; this is wonderful."
But besides the options for the athletes, Vaccaro also points to the sheer volume of play that keeps the kids out of trouble.
"You've got 9 o'clock in the morning games, and 9 at night games," he said. "There's not too much time for them to go running around and go to some casino somewhere."
And with 4,000 athletes playing in a total of 835 games, does Vaccaro worry about the tournament getting too big?
"It would be absolutely fine if we got more gyms and could do more teams," he said. "Just to get more kids playing is basically the goal of what everyone in town is doing this week. In my life, I've been dedicated to this particular genre, this particular age group. All the things I've done have been for 14-to-19-year-old kids."
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