April Fools joke or for real?

*Gasp* a shoe company event that stresses fundamentals? How is that going to sell shoes???

Justin Young of Rivals.com has a story at Yahoo Sports (free) on the class of 2008 and 2009 and the Adidas Nations event that took place during the Final Four where 23 top players in the class of 2008 and 2009 took part in skill development workouts (!?!?!?!?). What? No dunkfests? No half a dozen meaningless games per day? This sounds too good to be true... Surely this must be an April Fools Day joke??? The article was posted late on March 31 after all...

Fortunately, it's no joke. There has been movement within USA Basketball, and the NBA and pressure on the shoe companies (from everyone) to stress basketball fundamentals, and decrease the emphasis on non-stop totally unstructured playground action with some coaches of questionable credentials. As you may recall even the Godfather (insert Sopranos reference instead if you prefer) Sonny Vaccaro decided to get out of the way...

The article also has a short breakdown on some of the top players of the 2008 and 2009 classes, so be sure to bookmark it!