LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Second in a series.
On River Road, after school, you'll usually find boys and girls, middle school and high school aged, at F.O.C.U.S. Training Academy.
Running footwork, ballhandling, and shooting drills is the academy's founder Tim Barnett.
For nearly 20 years, he's been developing young talent to take their game to the next level.
"I met Precious Sam," Barnett pointed out. "I actually worked Precious out."
Precious Sam, a 7-footer, came to Kentucky from Ghana, Africa on a student visa.
According to his visa, Sam was supposed to go to Wesley Christian School in Allen, Kentucky, but the school confirmed he never showed up.
Instead, he is enrolled as a sophomore at AZ Compass Prep School, near Phoenix, Arizona, sent there by Brandon Bender.
Bender, Sam's guardian, was a basketball star at Ballard High School and then moved on to the University of Louisville where he played significant minutes, but ran into trouble and didn't stay past his freshman year.
Trouble would follow Bender, including a guilty plea to credit card fraud as well as being ordered by a court in California to pay $200,000 to a talent management agency for falsely claiming to represent NBA star Jaylen Brown.
"Bender's playing career certainly, probably didn't go the way he aspired for it to go, and he got into the economy of basketball," Pat Forde, Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated, said.
Over the years, Forde has written several articles about so-called "street agents," as well as Bender's questionable involvement with young athletic talent.
The term "street agent," Forde said, "carries a negative connotation, and in a lot of cases, justifiably, because there are people that are not necessarily looking out for what's best for players, but looking out for themselves as middlemen."
The motivation? Money.
Forde provided this scenario: "Hey, I've got a player, are you interested? Well, maybe. Do you have a thousand dollars and I can send you some highlights or I can give you contact information? Sure, okay, we'd like to come see him in person. Well, we could arrange that, but it's going to cost some money to get involved."
Forde added, "There's a whole underground economy basically involved in getting established rapport with players and then getting them where you want them."
Sam's move to AZ Compass has already gotten him in front of coaches from bigtime college programs, such as John Calipari and Bruce Pearl, as shown on the school's Instagram account.
Forde agreed that with the onset of capitalizing on Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL), there's even more incentive for street agents to seek out the "next big thing."
"Yeah, I think the NIL evolution has probably ramped up the dynamic even more of looking at young athletes, young basketball players, as commodities," Forde said.
Forde says the market includes high school talent as well.
"Athletes have always been getting paid, if you're the elite athlete," Barnett said.
NIL just puts it all on the table, even though Barnett feels getting to the table still includes deals under the table.
"I believe that now you're getting more people that, they just don't have the right intentions, I think that you have guardians, real, true guardians, and then you have the runners, the street guys, or whatever you want to call them, and I think those guys, it can really become trafficking," he said.
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