To wit, "summer" used to mean July. Now you have to take into account June, the month of USA Basketball and the Nike Skills Academy.

This year, our own summer sojourn began in May, with USA Basketball U19 tryouts, then the Nike Midwest Showdown, a unique, out-of-evaluation tournament that attracted quality programs across sneaker lines.

Longer doesn't always mean more, but in this case it does. We got quite an eyeful. As such, our little tradition called "Best of Summer" stretches from a couple days to an entire week.

THE ENTERTAINERS

1. Samantha Prahalis
2. Brittney Griner (09)
3. Brooklyn Pope
4. Odyssey Sims (10)
5. Tyler Ash

The fact that we even have this category speaks volumes about the growth of the girl's game. Until now, it was a place to go to appreciate "the way basketball used to be" - on the floor, Xs and Os, emotion, the whole she -bang. Players now are starting to emerge that you might actually pay to see express their basketball individuality.

No question, the list begins with Samantha Prahalis of Long Island, N.Y. True story: Some of the other players at Nike Skills Academy referred to her as "Paralysis." Great nickname, I told them. Actually, they couldn't pronounce her name properly. Even so, paralysis might describe a defender after an enslaught of Prahalis manuevers. The girl's game has probably never seen a player like her; she's Pistol Pete in a ponytail. You are virtually guaranteed at least four moments a game when she jerks you out of your seat.

Tyler Ash provided us the thrill of watching the evolution of the girl's game. She is 6 feet 2 and plays the point-guard position - legitimately. She almost never tips off a pass and, of course, at that height has a very unique view of possible passing lanes.

Players 2-4 are the reason DFW Gold's games in Birmingham, Ala., resembled a travelling circus (because the audience travelled from gym to gym with them). Yes, for one tournament, Brittney Griner, Brooklyn Pope and Odyssey Sims played on the same team. They were like the modern-day, female version of the 1976-77 Philadelphia 76ers with Dr. J, George McGinnis, Chocolate Thunder and World B. Free.

Just a rising junior, Griner is due to change the girl's and women's game. She is anticipation personified because of her ability to dunk the ball with relative ease. Even players and coaches from other teams will approach her before or after games for an aerial demonstration, and she is happy to comply. Joining her at Baylor in 2010 will be Sims, a rising sophomore who is a lightning bolt with absolutely thrilling change-of-pace moves that result in her almost walking into empty lanes for layups. For degree of difficulty, she'll also simply slalom through defenses or just head into the fray and let her ungodly body control take her home.

We've save Pope for last because she's the kid we wished could dunk the ball with a lot more ease because she'd do it with flair. We saw her two-handed slam one in warmups, then pull herself up by the rim during the summer of 2006. This past summer, with tired legs, she actually cocked on a defender, but lost control of the ball and simply pulled the rim down.

Kelsey Bone
Ashley Corral
Ayana Dunning
Shawna-Lei Kuehu
Brooke Thomas

The summer was not without the unfortunate injury; some stemmed back to the high school season or earlier while others could not avoid the injury bug for most of the summer. One of the most heart-breaking injuries of last season was the fall viewing period loss of Brooke Thomas, one of the most explosive underclass point guards. In the spring we caught our first glimpse of her return to her club team, the Orlando Comets, but outside of a few minutes here and a warm-up session there, we didn’t get a chance to see her unleash her explosiveness on the opposition. She returned this summer and appeared to be regaining the strength she lost to atrophy, which is common with the seriousness of her knee injury. It was just uplifting to see her out with her teammates doing battle.

Shawna-Lei Kuehu was one of the brightest underclass stars of last summer with her powerful interior play and, moxy on the perimeter. She suffered a knee injury in the winter that would have her miss the both the spring and summer viewing period sans two seemingly meaningless free throws. Kuehu joined her club team, the Cal Storm, for much of the summer but did not risk re-injury by playing. At Nike Nationals she would warm up with her teammates and bring smiles to the college coaches relieved to see her getting out there with a ball in her hands. She showed off her pivots and turn around jumpers before every game. Her release, just as smooth before, was on display. In a game against DFW she actually got into a game, thanks to a technical foul on the DFW coach. This allowed the Cal Storm to insert Kuehu into the game to shoot the free throws. She made them both bringing her point total for the summer to two points.

Ashley Corral has played nearly her entire career with damaged ankles. She finally had surgery to repair some of the ligaments, healed and showed up in Colorado to play in the USA Basketball Youth Developmental Festival, an opportunity not afforded to many players, let alone a kid from Vancouver, Wash. Those who knew Corral’s story had their hearts skip a beat when she went down during a game in Colorado. Everyone assumed the worst, that she had re-injured her surgically repaired ankle but she had just sprained the opposite ankle. She played two weeks later in the Nike Skills Academy as the only player actually from the West Coast and showed she belonged despite the sore ankle. Her ambition to prove herself against the best ultimately led to a limited summer on the evaluation tourney circuit where her explosiveness was not showcased. What was showcased was her outstanding knowledge of the game and court awareness and the ability to be a point guard, one of the best in the country despite the injuries.

Kelsey Bone's and Ayana Dunning’s paths seemed almost mirrored this summer until the two collided, literally. Both already were slowed by different things leading into USA Basketball and the Nike Skills Academy and, to make matters worse, they collided under the basket, which put Dunning out for an even longer amount of time. Dunning had suffered through mononucleosis for much of the spring, returned at Boo Williams Spring Invitational, then hurt her knee at Nike Skills in the collision with Bone and never really had a chance to get herself back in 100 percent ready shape. Bone was hampered by knee soreness and a severely sprained ankle that slowed her early in the summer. She would get some rest in the middle of the evaluation period and over the break and finished without her ankle swelling up to the size of a softball and with she and her team playing as well as they had all summer at Nike Nationals

The M.A.S.H. unit reaches all teams and corners of the country, especially over the summer and the top players are not exempt from the injury bug. Hopefully lessons are learned going forward that taking care of yourself should come first.

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