The ABCD Basketball Camp was a youth basketball camp founded by Sonny Vaccaro that was held from 1984 to 2006. The camp gathered the highest ranked high school players of the United States, and was considered one of the top events of high school basketball.[1][2][3][4] ABCD stood for Academic Betterment and Career Development.[5]
The ABCD Camp was founded in 1984 by Sonny Vaccaro and was sponsored by Nike.[6] The camp took place every year in the month of July usually lasting 4–5 days, and was held in different locations in the initial years, among which the Bren Events Center at UC Irvine in 1992[7] and at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan in 1993[8] before moving to the Rothman Center, at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Hackensack, New Jersey, where the camp was held from 1994 until its final edition in 2006.[9]
The camp was sponsored by the corporations Vaccaro was signed to: from 1984 to 1992 Nike was the sponsor; in 1993 the camp was under the Converse brand, while from 1994 to 2003 Adidas was the sponsor.[10] After 2003, Vaccaro had a deal with Reebok[6] that lasted until the last edition of the camp in 2006.[11] Several college coaches attended ABCD Camp during their recruitment process of high school players: among them Bob Bender, Jim Boeheim, P. J. Carlesimo, Joe Harrington and Mike Krzyzewski.[9][12][13][14] NBA scouts also participated and in some cases, camp participants were drafted out of high school, for instance Kevin Garnett,[14] Kobe Bryant, Jermaine O'Neal, Tracy McGrady, Kwame Brown, Eddy Curry, Sebastian Telfair and Gerald Green.[15]
The players mentioned have at least 1 All-Star selection in the NBA or were lottery picks in the NBA draft.