Words. High School Hoop

We’ve been following Under Armour‘s ‘Are You From Here?’ Tour from the beginning. While Brandon Jennings, Derrick Williams, Kemba Walker and Greivis Vasquez have held it down for Team UA so far, they ran into some tough competition in New York City, specificically Lincoln (you can check out the exclusive photos here). It was there they lost to a team of the school’s alumni that included Lance Stephenson and Sebastian Telfair. Hit the jump for highlights of the team’s stop at Boys & Girls High School as well.

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Words. Aron Phillips

For a summer filled with so much uncertainty, one thing has become undeniably clear: Basketball has never been better. After an epic NBA Finals, pundits around the world saw July 1’s expiration of the collective bargaining agreement as the “End of Days.” Instead, we witnessed NBA superstars Kobe Bryant, Derrick Rose and Chris Paul fly to the Philippines for an exhibition game; Kevin Durant, Brandon Jennings and John Wall hit every top-flight Pro-Am across the country; and two of the most well-known summer leagues – D.C.’s Goodman League and L.A.’s Drew League – battle for bragging rights in our nation’s capital.

But amongst all that, we could not help but find ourselves completely enraptured with an electric 5-7 point guard from Baltimore named Aquille Carr. MORE >

Words. Jason Jordan

When the game is on the line and there’s only time for one more shot, it doesn’t require a coaching genius to surmise that the best chance you’ve got to emerge victorious is to get the ball into the hands of your scorer. Often times, that player is the shooting guard.

Just like when I ranked the Top 10 point guards of the last decade, this ranking of the 10 best two-guards of the decade is solely based on what each player accomplished in high school and AAU ball. I’m not factoring in college stats or NBA Draft position — it’s all about what you did before you got there, with a heavy emphasis on the AAU circuit against the best players in the country. Let the debate begin… MORE >

Words. Casey Mack

New York City hype has led to disaster for a lot of former high school superstars. For much of the last decade, every year there seemed to be an NYC prep product who was destined to be the “Next Big Thing.” And in many of those cases, it never worked out.

But for the most hyped of them all — Sebastian Telfair of the Lincoln H.S. (Brooklyn) class of 2004 — the jury is still out for how the rest of his career will pan out. Even as the 25-year-old enters his sixth year as a pro, his name has dropped drastically from the minds of basketball fans. Telfair was The One; the point guard of the future. MORE >

Words. Casey Mack

New York City high school stars traditionally have a large amount of hype behind them. Looking back over the past 15 years, there are so many names who were once praised as the Next Great One who are now lost in the wind: Lenny Cooke, Omar Cook, Erick Barkley, Sebastian Telfair … the list is long enough to support the theory held in other regions of America that NYC prep stars are too often overrated.

Lately, the New York City hype machine has lost some of its steam — Lance Stephenson notwithstanding — and now it seems players have to truly earn their keep from national recruiting services. MORE >

Words. Andrew Katz

If you said that Lance Stephenson, the first four-time NYC champion (along with classmate Buddha Ellis), was going to commit to Cincinnati a year ago, people would have called you crazy. But that’s exactly what just happened.

After months of hearing that he was headed to St. John’s, Maryland, Memphis, Arizona, or even Florida, Cincinnati popped out of nowhere to snare Lance. MORE >