High School Basketball's Free Agent Market

Montrose Christian's Kevin Durant is set to face the team he played for last year, Oak Hill. (Preston Keres - The Washington Post)

"People leave for all sorts of reasons," said Orlando Wright, whose son, Chris, is an All-Met junior guard at WCAC school St. John's, where he has remained throughout high school. "Most of the time, they're leaving for selfish reasons."

Orlando Wright and Rick Reynolds, whose son, Scottie, is an All-Met guard who played four years at Herndon, said there is plenty of pressure for players to transfer.

"Being in a public school, if you're good enough, you're expected to be in a Catholic school," Rick Reynolds said, noting that when he had asked why one player -- who had left one private school for another -- had transferred, "I was told he wasn't getting the ball enough."

Although Scottie Reynolds stayed at Herndon because of his close relationship with Hornets Coach Gary Hall, his father acknowledged there was regular "informal interest" in Scottie from other programs.

Last summer, John Flowers left Thomas Stone, a public school in Charles County, for St. Mary's Ryken of the WCAC, considered by most observers to be one of the top leagues in the country. Although the junior said the move to the Leonardtown school was partially to play against better competition, he said his major motivation for transferring was the exposure the league would provide, and the efforts to get his name out by Knights Coach Dan Sancomb.

"I have a great coach that is on the phone for me, sending out tapes, working hard every day, and he's helping me," Flowers said. "I'm playing hard, working hard and keeping my grades up. I'm doing everything I can to help him sell me."

Private schools are not the only ones benefiting from the transfers. Potomac (Md.) won its first state title and finished No. 1 in The Washington Post's rankings last year with a starting lineup of five players who had transferred. This season, fourth-ranked Eleanor Roosevelt and fifth-ranked Seneca Valley are among those who have benefited from transfers.

"Each individual case has to be judged," Montrose Christian Coach Stu Vetter said. "Academics should be the first consideration but quite often they're not."

Many coaches believe there are circumstances when transferring is beneficial for a player, though some feel too often it is a case of a futile search for greener pastures.

"The best thing you can do when you choose a school is to stick with it and tough it out, no matter how hard it gets," said DeMatha senior guard Nigel Munson, who has played his entire high school career at the same school. "For some guys [transferring] works out but for other guys, it doesn't."

Eleanor Roosevelt junior forward Sean Hawkins said he transferred last summer from St. John's partly because he had been struggling academically, but mostly because of basketball.

"I had wanted to come [to Roosevelt] since eighth grade, but I wanted to go to the WCAC because I thought that was a tougher league. Everyone made it seem like it was a must-be-in league, but it's not the best. You can get better in the [Prince George's] 4A just as well as you can get better in the WCAC. So I decided to come over here. And I didn't like my situation last year."

That situation? "I wasn't getting the time I deserved," Hawkins explained. "I didn't get the touches I deserved."

The WCAC two years ago attempted to limit transferring and instituted a rule that required most local transfers to sit out a year of competition if they enroll after the beginning of their sophomore year. The rule, though, has not eliminated all transfers .

"It has certainly cut down as far as we're concerned on the number of transfers," said WCAC Commissioner Bob Hardage, who said that the league has given a handful of exceptions to the rule. Flowers received one such waiver, and has since received four scholarship offers since moving to Ryken, including one from West Virginia.

Many observers believe that players as talented as Durant and Beasley would have been candidates to turn professional directly out of high school, but the NBA's new 19-year-old age restriction will force them to delay those ambitions at least one year.

"Today at all levels of sports there is less loyalty -- to the high school, college or professional team," said Vetter. "You don't see many four-year players in college anymore. You see free agency more in the NBA, as well as the NFL. Players used to go with one team and stay their whole careers. You just don't see that anymore. . . .

"Today's players do have a tendency to think more about the name on the back of the jersey than the name on the front. That's unfortunate, but that's the way it is."