Recker Keeps On Keeping On

Lying on my desk is Luke Recker's itinerary for July.

Not his personal itnerary, but the one he and his teammates are following on the Team Indiana Basketball Tour.

Here's what last weekend looked like:

July 19 - Wendy's Classic in Fort Wayne

July 20 - Wendy's Classic, game at 1 p.m.

July 20 - After Wendy's Classic, travel to Oak Hill High School in Converse for game against Indiana University recruits at 8 that same night.

There are 31 days in July. The Team Indiana Tour - which features the Indiana University recruits taking on the Indiana high school all-stars - will play games on 19 of those days.

Recker and the other Indiana high school all-stars play games in southern Indiana. They play in northern Indiana. They play in places called Linden, Tenn. On July 26, they will play a game at Floyd Central High School in Galena, Ind. On July 27, they will have a practice in Columbia, S.C.

They even worked Warsaw into their schedule. The Team Indiana Tour will stop at the Tiger Den this week for an 8 p.m. Friday game.

That's a lot of basketball, even for 1997's Mr. Basketball.

"It seems like the last couple of weeks I've been living out of my car," Recker said, "going place to place and never knowing exactly where we'll be spending the night this time."

Recker got his first real breather last week. With the Wendy's Classic in Fort Wayne, coaches Tim Knight and Eric Bowlen sent Recker home to nearby Auburn with instructions to relax for a few days.

Auburn is the place where, two years ago, a sophomore named Luke Recker declared his love for Indiana University's basketball program and verbally committed to playing there for head coach Bob Knight.

And since that time - although now we know they weren't true - we heard things. We all heard them. We heard how well, maybe, he wouldn't end up going to IU.

He was going to school somewhere else. He was going to make millions by playing basketball in Europe right after high school.

Somebody was cranking the Auburn rumor mill.

I asked Recker how all the rumors that he wouldn't end up at IU got started.

He laughed.

"Those were just crazy," he said. "I don't know how that stuff gets started. People start talking, then the word travels around pretty fast. Things like that, I'm not going to say they don't bother me, because they do. It's harder on my family than on me to hear stuff like that.

"At the same time, you have to understand people are going to say what they want to say. I'm sure guys like (Chicago's Scottie) Pippen and (Michael) Jordan have experienced it, too. I mean I haven't experienced it at the same level, but locally, you'll hear stuff."

No, they were never true. Yes, he will be playing basketball at Indiana under Knight.

In high school, the 6-foot-5 Recker took his man to the hole. He played above the rim. If you saw a Recker game, odds are you saw a Recker dunk. As a point guard, he was bigger and better than any point guard a team could throw in there against him.

But in college, Recker will be the one up against bigger players. He will also go up against some who are better than he is, for now.

"From talking to the coaches down there, I'm 99.9 percent sure I'll be out on the perimeter," he said. "Maybe one day, if I get bigger and stronger, they'll use me to post a smaller guard up."

Two to three years ago, when WMVP in Chicago was still an all-sports radio station, Jim Kozimor and Dave Kaplan hosted a late-night sports talk show.

They were talking IU basketball one night. Kaplan loved Bob Knight. Kozimor didn't. Kozimor asked Kaplan why Knight didn't produce more NBA players than he had. Isaiah Thomas has been a superstar, but who else? I'll tell you why, Kozimor said. It's because Knight's motion offense turns players into robots and strips away their individuality and takes away their freedom on the court.

Since Recker was a great one-on-one player in high school, I asked him about this argument, one that's common from the anti-Knight faction.

"When I play in college, the only thing I'm worried about is winning games," Recker said. "At the college level, you can't win games going one on one all the time. That's not going to bother me at all. I just want to fit in.

"We ran a motion offense at DeKalb. At the same time, they also let me open it up a little bit for myself and ran isolation plays for me. I think you could see a little bit of that at IU, too, on fastbreaks.

"But I'm not worried about that. The motion offense and what he does down there must be working. Otherwise, he wouldn't have won three national championships. (Knight's) forgotten more about the game than I've never known about it."

He's warded off the rumors.

Now he plays 19 exhibition games - not counting practices or pickup games - in July.

He's the 1997 Mr. Basketball. IU is next, and then, who knows? The NBA? Could happen. Guys in the know around the NBA see the "next Rex Chapman," albeit a healthy Rex Chapman.

"I love playing basketball," Recker said. "Every day I'm out there playing, whether it's a pickup game in Auburn or a Tim Knight exhibition game. I don't regret anything I'm doing.

"Having the opportunity to do the things I've done, like travel around the country and go places with the top players in the world ... it's quite an experience."