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Tony Parker
6'9'', 270 lbs. | Class of 2012
Hometown: Lithonia, GA
School: Miller Grove High School
Position: Power Forward
Tony Parker liking UCLA on Twitter earlier in the year. Click on pic below to enlarge (source link)
Some earlier articles on Tony Parker.
Georgia center prospect Tony Parker talks about his unofficial visit to Memphis today
By Jason Smith
commercialappeal.com
August 11, 2011 7:58 PM
Highly sought Lithonia, Ga., 2012 center prospect Tony Parker made his third unofficial visit to Memphis today, touring the campus and meeting with Tigers athletic director R.C. Johnson.
Last month at the Nike Peach Jam in North Augusta, S.C., Parker (6-9, 270), a senior at Lithonia (Ga.) Miller Grove High, said he was considering three schools in Memphis, Ohio State and Duke, but was open to hearing from others. He said tonight North Carolina, UCLA, Connecticut and Kansas have now jumped into the mix to land his services.
Parker, who made unofficial visits to Memphis for the Georgetown game last December and again in June, said he and his parents are traveling to visit his grandmother in Missouri and "just decided to stop through" for a third visit today.
"I just toured the campus with my parents, met the athletic director and the academic director, and I just saw the (Finch Center). I really toured the campus and got a good feel for it," Parker said. "I think (the Finch Center) is really cool. I really liked it. I thought the campus is really nice. And, you know, the basketball facilities are nice."
Parker said he saw Tigers sophomores Tarik Black and Chris Crawford during his visit today. During the Peach Jam, Parker was particularly complimentary of Black's development over his freshman season, crediting Memphis coach Josh Pastner.
Scout.com rates Parker, who has a soft shooting touch when outside the paint and gets up and down the floor fairly quickly for his size, a five-star prospect. As a junior last season, he led Miller Grove to its third straight Class AAAA state title, averaging 16 points and 12 rebounds.
Parker is one of three highly rated big men Pastner has offered for 2012. The others are former Memphis Central forward Jarnell Stokes (who hasn't yet decided where he'll play his senior season) and Decatur, Ga., forward Shaq Goodwin, a senior at Southwest DeKalb High.
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Now that UCLA has hired Atlanta AAU coach, will Georgia’s top recruits follow?
by Michael Carvell
AJC.COM
10:15 am June 9, 2011
Now that the basketball coach of one of Atlanta’s top AAU or summer travel teams has been hired by UCLA, will his top players follow him to California?
Korey McCray, the CEO of the Atlanta Celtics AAU team, was announced as an assistant coach at UCLA on Tuesday. (Go here for the full story)
Two of the Atlanta Celtics top players, power forward Shaq Goodwin of Southwest DeKalb High School and shooting guard Jordan Adams of Oak Hill (Va.) prep school, both hold early basketball scholarships offers from UCLA.
The 6-foot-8, 235-pound Goodwin is considered the state’s No. 1 college basketball prospect for 2012. Goodwin said his leaders are “Georgia, Memphis, UCLA, Florida and Alabama.”
Goodwin claims no favorite, but acknowledges that UCLA has a better chance after hiring the man who coached him in AAU for the past three years.
“It will help a little bit because I will know somebody when I go out there sometime this summer,” Goodwin said.
Meanwhile, the 6-foot-5, 210-pound Adams toured UCLA last week, but claims McCray’s presence won’t affect his college decision. “He’s a great person, but it won’t make a difference with where I go,” said Adams, who previously played at Central Gwinnett High School.
Adams said he will make at least one other recruiting trip this summer, visiting Memphis. He lists his top offers as “Georgia, Georgetown, UCLA, Memphis, Miami and Tennessee.”
What will be the recruiting impact of McCray’s move to UCLA with Georgia prospects? The state has one of its deepest classes in years for 2012, with 14 ranked in the the Rivals Top 150. At least 23 rising seniors across Georgia hold scholarship offers from high-major schools, compared with about a dozen from this past season. We discussed the topic with Dan McDonald, who covers basketball recruiting for the Georgia and Georgia Tech websites at Rivals.com.
1. What do you think about UCLA’s decision to hire an AAU coach in general? I think it’s a great hire for UCLA. A lot of people see this hire as strictly for a recruiting advantage in Atlanta but Korey is a very good young coach. He has some experience in college coaching at FSU and Mercer and what most people don’t know is that he’s also been training some of the top NBA players like Dwight Howard, Josh Smith, and a few others for the last several years. If UCLA didn’t hire him, I have no doubt somebody else would have eventually hired him.
2. How do you think hiring an Atlanta AAU coach will affect UCLA’s recruiting efforts in the Atlanta area? Having Korey on the staff will obviously get UCLA in the door for many of the top kids around Atlanta because he’s very well-respected as a person and coach, but I still think it’s going to be hard for them to pull kids all the way across the country. It’s just really hard to get kids to go over 2,000 miles away from home, but I do think Korey will get some kids from Atlanta to go play for him. In the 2012 class alone, Jordan Adams and Shaq Goodwin both have UCLA in their top 5 and Tony Parker might give UCLA some consideration as well. [Note: Parker, who is from Miller Grove High School and holds offers from Duke and North Carolina, plays part-time with the Atlanta Celtics]
3. What do you think Korey McCray specifically will bring to the table as a recruiter? As a recruiter, he’s a younger guy that high school kids can relate to. Nobody, even from rival AAU programs, ever has anything negative to say about him, which speaks volumes about him as a person. He’s got contacts all over the NBA so kids will see him as somebody that can help them eventually achieve their dream of playing in the league.
4. Is AAU more important than a high school coach for a recruiting a top prospect? If so why? It really just depends on the kid. Some kids are really close with their AAU coach and prefer for them to handle their recruitment. Some kids are closer with their high school coach and want them to be a big part of the process. You also sometimes have parents that don’t want anybody else but their immediate family to be a major influence. AAU coaches are always going to be involved in a kid’s recruitment just because that’s where most kids get seen by college coaches and that’s who the college coaches usually contact first to get in with a kid. After that, it’s really just up to the kid and his family.
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