<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Once upon a time, Memphis was Nike town. The beloved college basketball team wore Nike. The premier AAU team wore Nike. Penny Hardaway was an NBA All-Star in Nikes. Little Penny pitched Nikes. Nike. Nike. Nike. The shoe company was all over and connected to the city in many ways. If a swoosh would've ended up on the side of The Pyramid, it wouldn't have surprised anybody. But now? Now things have changed. Granted, there is still a Nike distribution center in town. But the University of Memphis now wears adidas, and the top AAU team -- Memphis Pump 'N Run -- is now sponsored by adidas. And then there's this: When the nation's three premier basketball showcases open to the public Wednesday, only one local prospect -- Lausanne's Jonny West -- is expected to attend the Nike All-America Camp in Indianapolis. Everybody else -- Bolivar's Willie Kemp, Ridgeway's Pierre Niles, etc. -- should either be at the adidas ABCD Superstar Camp in Suwanee, Ga., or the Reebok ABCD Camp in Teaneck, N.J. "Nike just doesn't have the presence that it used to have in this city," said Mitchell High basketball coach Jerry Johnson, whose top three players -- Thaddeus Young, Brandon Powell and Andre Thornton -- each turned down invitations to Nike's event and will instead attend either Reebok's or adidas's camps. </div> Source
Wait a minute, Jonny West was invited to the Nike Camp? That's got to be just because his last name is West. I could name you close to 100 players in the city more talented than West. The fact that Niles, Young, Walker, and Kinnard aren't going, yet West is, makes the whole camp a joke in my eyes.
