LAS VEGAS — After almost 10 years away, college coaches have returned to what’s essentially the mecca of the summer recruiting scene.

For over two decades, Las Vegas played a big role in the summer live evaluation period. This city was the biggest pulse of the offseason, the dream destination for independent and shoe-company-sponsored teams alike. Wide-eyed teenagers and eager college coaches would descend upon this glitzy domain in the desert and commingle in a variety of tournaments, providing some all-time recruiting stories along the way. 

Going to Vegas became part of the fabric of the offseason in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. Some kids had their lives changed forever after playing some of the best games of their high school careers in Las Vegas. And the same coaches who handed out those scholarship offers also lost thousands of dollars thanks to regrettable late-night decisions in smoke-scented casinos, just running on fumes for the love of the grind. It was perfect. 

That disappeared in the past eight years because, in 2017, an FBI investigation rocked college basketball that led to a lot of fallout (and even more wasted time and energy). Vegas proved to be one of the settings of some rule-breaking behavior (I know: shocking!) and that empowered the government to successfully convict 10 men, including four college basketball assistants. The case catalyzed the NCAA to form a commission to assess what was ailing the sport.

The live evaluation period in Las Vegas immediately went away and the offseason recruiting calendar went through multiple experimental changes in the ensuing years that barricaded a quick return to the land of milk and honey.

Eventually, NIL rules were put into place — making the decision to strip Vegas from the recruiting calendar altogether seem silly in hindsight. While high school prospects have played in smaller summer events in Sin City in the years since the FBI case broke, there was no evaluation period with a big-tent event.

That all changed, in a huge way, this past week. 

Who’s who of basketball descends on Sin City 

Nike’s EYBL circuit just completed four days worth of competition for hundreds of its boys and girls teams at the sprawling Las Vegas Convention Center. The setup was magnificent. There were 22 courts for the boys competition inside the Convention Center’s West Hall, hosting games for EYBL’s 15s, 16s, and 17s divisions. Nearly every big-name head coach could be seen here, in addition to at least half the NBA‘s high-level general managers and presidents of basketball operations. 

A few weeks ago, John Calipari was dapper as could be, sitting courtside at MSG for the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history. On Friday, he was waiting in line for the same oversized, $12 slice of pizza as me and everyone else, stealing a bite in between games. You were just as likely to bump into Tom Izzo or Dan Hurley as you were Brad Stevens or Danny Ainge. 

Why were so many other high-level NBA executives courtside for some of the biggest Nike games? The NBA’s Las Vegas Summer League is also happening right now, of course. And that’s the magic of it. For the first time ever, a live evaluation period in Sin City is happening concurrently with Summer League. Because of that, it’s brought thousands of people from the high school, college and NBA communities together, in one city, for the first time. 

This needs to be the standard moving forward. 

You’ve got college coaches bouncing over to the NBA’s Las Vegas Summer League at UNLV‘s Thomas & Mack Arena, to see their guys who just got drafted in the lottery get their first taste of NBA life. Others are watching their former players try to break through and hopefully make an NBA roster. 

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It was also a common sight to see familiar NBA faces (Kevin Durant the most famous of them all), in addition to recent draft picks, popping over from to summer league games just to say hello to their old coaches, both college and AAU, at the Convention Center. 

In hotels all up and down the Strip there are lunches and dinners and agency parties happening every day. All hustle and bustle. Vegas always has a buzz, but the basketball takeover here is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s essentially a huge hoops convention.

“This is now going to be the most important week in basketball moving forward,” one high-level agent told CBS Sports. “The whole industry is going to be here. It will be the epicenter of basketball. Coming to Vegas will be even more important than going to the Final Four.”

Meeting with agents more valuable than evaluating players 

In talking to more than two dozen college coaches, all of them raved about recruiting’s return to Vegas. And it’s not because of the access to the blackjack tables. (Though there were a few who predictably found their way to some late-night action there as well.) It’s about having so many people in one place, at one time, just taking in the games and continuing to network. The logistics of the court setups also make this a lot more practical. The game windows don’t start at 8 a.m. and go past 9 at night, either. It’s a little more than six hours in the middle of the day and early evening. 

That allows plenty of time for the biggest reason coaches are out here. No, it’s not to evaluate players. It’s to meet with player agents. This has become the game. Agents now populate the sidelines and alleyways of these AAU games the same way coaches and media do, as they continue to grease their connections as well. One Big East coach told me he talked in casual conversation with at least 20 agents in Las Vegas alone. 

“You almost have to come out here because of all the agents,” another coach said. “You can get so much shit done here now. This was really smart by Nike. It’s an unbelievable setup.”

Another coach told me, “Meeting with the agents here is more productive than anything.”

Twenty years ago, it used to be that Reebok, Adidas and Nike held their events in Vegas in three different parts of the city. Coaches would rent a car and spend half the day driving from one gym to another. The savvy ones would ask the AAU coaches which hotels they were staying in, then book a room there, just so, if by some crazy coincidence, they happened to bump into a player in the lobby, well, funny how that happened!

That’s no longer the calculus. Everything is in the open and the temperature has changed on how business gets done. Some coaches have adapted more quickly than others, but everyone understands how things operate now. 

And then there’s the chance to see NBA scouts and front office executives. It’s a basketball lover’s paradise.

Nike and the NBA working in harmony to make this happen just changed the paradigm of the summer recruiting calendar. While the Peach Jam will continue to be Nike’s championship event in North Augusta, South Carolina (and will be played later this week), the setup in Vegas seems poised to immediately become the primary destination for coaches, media, scouts, agents, everyone invested in all three levels of basketball. 

“Many of our alumni can’t make it to Augusta for Peach Jam during summer League, so we brought the show to them,” a Nike spokesperson told CBS Sports. “Over 100 of our NBA player alumni attended Session 4 in Vegas.”

And the fact that Adidas, Under Armour and the rising Puma circuit weren’t out here feels like a correction that needs to be made by those companies in 2027, or else they’ll be left behind.

“I don’t know why Adidas and Under Armour aren’t here as well,” one coach from the Midwest said. “Vegas is big enough and can handle it.”

Another source speculated that Adidas, at minimum, would be course-correcting and returning to Vegas next summer. (For a couple of years in the 2010s it hosted its premier tournament at the nearby Cashman Center.)

Nike told me it hasn’t yet 100% committed to coming back in 2027, but believe me, it will be back in 2027. I was told the decision would hinge on the feedback from the teams, parents and college coaches. Other than the regrettable decision to hang some banners that reinforced some of the worst stereotypes about grassroots basketball (a baffling call that was roundly mocked by a lot of people), I haven’t heard a single bad thing about the setup this week in Vegas. 

And credit to Nike for making it affordable for parents as well: It cost $10 per session for parents to watch their boys play this week. I spoke to the father of a girls player who told me it was less than $90 for a four-day ticket at the other end of the Convention Center. Nike has put an emphasis on making the game ticket affordable, and that should be commended in an age where youth sports pricing continues to get worse, a reality that’s faced increased scrutiny in the aftermath of the United States’ World Cup flameout. 

On the basketball side, things seem to be improving. Being here in Vegas this week, it felt like the start of a sea change for the offseason. This can be the template for offseason basketball, staging it in a familiar place with irresistible energy. Marrying the recruiting calendar with the Las Vegas Summer League fosters a productive networking environment — and reinforces what everyone knew all along.

The recruiting scene should have never left Vegas to begin with.

Now it’s back, it won’t be going away, and it will almost certainly get even bigger — and better — by the end of the decade.