Bulls guard Carter recalls the summer morning when his life changed

One of the best recruiting stories in college basketball lore has roots in the Chicago suburbs.

It involves Bulls guard Jevon Carter, a Maywood native who played at Proviso East High School. In the summer of 2013, he was playing in a national AAU tournament at the Wide World of Sports complex in Disney World, the same building that hosted the NBA's pandemic bubble.

Former West Virginia coach Bob Huggins told his version of the Carter recruitment story during a news conference at the 2018 NCAA Tournament. Huggins said he walked into the gym with a giant cup of coffee for an 8 a.m. game and noticed Carter playing full-court pressure defense.

“I called my assistants and said, 'We've got to sign this guy,'” Huggins said in 2018.

Carter spent four years playing for Huggins at West Virginia, and the rest is history. Now in his sixth NBA season, he returned home last summer, signing with the Bulls as a free agent.

So this is a good time to get Carter's version of the recruiting story. He was playing for NLP, the suburban-based AAU team sponsored by former Bulls forward Dickey Simpkins.

Some of Carter's teammates on that squad were Stevenson's Connor Cashaw, Lake Forest's Evan Boudreaux, Oak Park's Simmie Cobbs, Bolingbrook's Gage Davis, Oswego East's Mike Boatright and North Chicago's Kurt Hall. Cobbs played football at Indiana, while most of the rest played Division I college hoops.

Carter says the basic facts of the story are accurate, especially the 8 a.m. part.

“(Huggins) happened to be in there drinking his coffee, watching the game,” Carter said. “I was picking up full, causing havoc and next thing you know, I had an offer from West Virginia.”

Did he notice Huggins in the bleachers while the game was going on?

“Yes, I did, yes, I did,” Carter said. “He was the only coach my whole team knew who was sitting there.”

Summer AAU basketball typically includes strange start times and long waits between games. But Carter remembered a particular detail from that day's early wakeup call.

“I remember Dickey, he had us doing layup lines at like 7:30 and we couldn't get the balls until 7:45,” Carter said. “I remember that vividly. He had us doing imaginary layup line.”

Simpkins, who now lives in Tennessee, confirmed this as fact.

“That is absolutely true,” Simpkins said. “I hated 8 o'clock games because you basically had to wake the boys up at 6 a.m. so they could have two hours to get their mind right, because those 8 o'clock games, they could go real bad.

“AAU would not bring the balls out until right before the game, which didn't make sense. So we had them do a dynamic warmup, do a layup without a ball so they could get their body activated. And we were the only people in the gym. The other team wasn't there, the referees weren't in the gym. It was always about who was more awake at those 8 o'clock games.”

There's one detail about Huggins' story that doesn't quite add up. He was in the top tier of famous college coaches at the time, so sitting down at a random AAU game at 8 a.m. seems out of character.

Simpkins said the courtship actually began a few days earlier when he ran into West Virginia assistant Ron Everhart and Larry Harrison in a restaurant. Simpkins asked what type of players they were looking for and felt Carter would be a great fit.

“I knew those guys for a long time and they trusted my evaluation,” Simpkins said. “So they came to a game the next day, Jevon played well.”

The next step was for Huggins to take a look and NLP's next game happened to be the breakfast special.

“Anybody that knows Huggs, nine times out of 10, he's probably not going to be at an 8 o'clock game,” Simpkins said. “He's not showing up at an 8 o'clock game unless his assistants tell him, 'This is legit.' He showed up, that says a lot.

“Jevon put on a show and from that point on, Huggs was at every one of our games after that.”

Simpkins says NLP went on to beat Team Thad, former Bull Thad Young's team from Memphis, in the championship game.

The scholarship offer didn't happen on the spot but did arrive a few days later. At the time, Carter said he had some decent mid-major interest from schools like Loyola, Toledo, Valparaiso, Florida Gulf Coast.

“Dickey, he played a huge part in why I chose to go to West Virginia,” Carter said. “I had a great time there, man, nothing but love.”

And a helpful lesson for all athletes: You never know who might be watching.

Twitter: @McGrawDHSports