On a cold Pacific Northwest December night nearly a decade ago while helping manage crowds and making his rounds around Liberty High School, President of Prime Time Sports, John McCallum, was suddenly greeted with an alarming sight that took him a second to fully process. In front of him stood a group of rather tall people in hoodies, not an uncommon sight at a popular regional basketball tournament, but still odd.
“Who are you?” he asked one of the strangers.
“We’re the Philadelphia 76ers,” was the response, one that sent the entire surrounding staff into a frenzy.
While in town to play the Portland Trail Blazers, a majority of the 76ers' roster decided to show up unannounced, causing surrounding staff to scramble to find the team seats in a sold-out gym.
This is the Les Schwab Invitational, and for 24 years in the days following Christmas it has attracted some of the best high school basketball programs in the country to the metro area, including star players like Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony and Ben Simmons, just to name a few.
While LeBron James’ son Lebron James Jr. and Sierra Canyon will not be participating this year, he too could be participating in the tournament sooner rather than later.
How this tournament grew to be one of the most desirable showcases for elite players has a lot to do with tires, a sports behemoth, viral videos, and a former NFL quarterback.
Establishing a tournament
As the bright sun streamed into his office window in the summer of 1996, high school basketball couldn’t have been further from the 22-year-old intern McCallum’s mind.
Brought in by former PSU Viking and NFL quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals turned local sports guru Neil Lomax out of college, McCallum was currently helping his boss brainstorm a golf tournament when two local basketball coaches came in pitching the need for a preseason basketball tournament.
Nick Robertson and Barry Adams, both well-regarded coaches, wanted to have more competition for in-state teams during the pre-season.
McCallum, whose senior year thesis project coincidentally focused on the economic impacts of a basketball tournament in Oregon, now had a major project on his hands.
He and his partners at ProMax, Lomax’s company, convinced locally-based Les Schwab to be its title sponsor and, after much persuading, landed Nike. After Robertson and Adams received the go-ahead from OSAA, the Les Schwab Oregon Holiday Invitational was born.
The premise was simple. ProMax would run the tournament operations and Les Schwab would become the title sponsor. At the end of every season excess funds would be distributed back to participating schools. However, what sold Gary Wandersheid and George Saddler was McCallum’s college thesis paper. After reading how the tournament would not just bring in talented teams, but also plenty of economic value to the community, they knew that they had the right guy in McCallum and the right company in ProMax.
“We wanted to be more involved than a banner at a football field or basketball court,” Saddler said. “We wanted to be entrenched into this enough to know that we were really making a difference for the high schools, not just donating $200-300 to put a banner up.”
After getting sponsors the hard part came in convincing the OSAA and its board of member schools that a competitive preseason tournament would be beneficial.
The first thing that Robertson and Adams needed to do was convince schools at every class level that a preseason tournament wouldn’t hinder anyone or give any team distinct benefits.
After weeks of brainstorming, Robertson and Adams finally found their selling point. At the time each team was limited to 22 regular-season games, meaning that every competitive game mattered in the rankings by the end of the year. The two coaches pitched the OSAA on the idea that the four-game tournament should only be counted as two games, a concept that swayed a majority of the teams.
After tireless negotiating, Robertson and Adams finally had what they needed: the support of the OSAA.
The inaugural tournament staged games at four different locations, but after 2004 it has solely been at Liberty High School in Hillsboro, which is home to a 4,000 capacity gym, the largest in the state of Oregon.
Having played games at the Portland Memorial Coliseum before, legendary coach of Oak Hill Academy (VA.), Steve Smith, immediately noted the distinct pit-like feel when the gym was filled to the brim.
“John, you got to keep it here because this is tremendous,” Smith told McCallum. These words stuck, and the tournament has been hosted at Liberty ever since.
McCallum doesn’t do all of this alone. In 2008, Reggie Walker, a young college kid at the University of Oregon, blindly emailed McCallum asking for an internship opportunity.
Growing up, he remembers waiting in a spiraling line outside of Lewis and Clark as the snow came down before a game one night. That game involved local Jesuit High School upsetting the top-ranked player in the country, Andre Barrett, and Rice High School.
And while Barrett, and Tyson Chandler years later, were thrills to watch, Walker says that the two most talented players that he’s ever seen at the tournament happened to both hail from the Pacific Northwest.
“If Kevin Love’s the best player that I’ve seen than Michael Porter is 1B for the best high school players I’ve seen, he was special,” Walker said. “We usually have our teams set in April at the latest, and we had to make a spot for Porter’s team once we knew where he was going to go to high school and learned that Brandon Roy was going to be the coach there.”
The talent level continues to grow every year, especially in the age of social media in which clips from tournament games have the potential to go viral. In 1996 East Anchorage High School (AK.) and Laguna Hills (Calif.) became the first two non-regional schools to travel to the tournament. Now national programs such as Oak Hill, Sierra Canyon, and Bishop Gormon are commonplace in northern Oregon in the days after Christmas.
And to think, in an era of stacked national programs and high-flying action it was Robertson and his Beaverton team that won the first tournament when they defeated McNary in what was the first of only four championship games between two local teams in the tournament’s history.
Assembling talent
At the end of every fall what people often see are those screengrabs and flashy graphics occasionally announcing the highly sought-after out-of-state programs such as Oak Hill or Sierra Canyon. But what people often do not realize is how much goes on behind the scenes to draw these top-tier high school programs to the Pacific Northwest.
It all begins at Nike’s Beaverton headquarters in the office of Tony Dorado, the high school basketball national manager that has been in the position for 21 years. Both Dorado and McCallum sit down and discuss Nike-sponsored high schools to pinpoint teams that will eventually be contacted. Dorado is eventually the one in charge of locking in a set of teams from across the country, but before he does so he wants to make sure that no stone is left unturned.
As Nike’s high school basketball national manager, Dorado keeps in contact with high school coaches and helps schedule them in Nike tournaments throughout the country. The Les Schwab Invitational is the closest holiday tournament to Nike’s World Headquarters and Dorado helps assemble talent for an event that gives coaches and fans from all over the west coast the opportunity to watch local and national talent, all in one place.
In Dorado’s first year in his position he brought Oak Hill to the Pacific Northwest. At the time there was no social media and the tournament hadn’t garnered a reputation so Dorado had to rely on initial relationships to entice the Virginian team. These days more programs are asking for spots in the tournament than they have room for.
The most challenging aspect of his job revolves around the timing necessary to lock teams in. The process begins in February, and by March all of the teams have to be committed. Sometimes that cutoff can contribute to difficult situations in which a team is missed out on.
Take for example Sierra Canyon. After winning the entire tournament a season ago led by Scottie Pippen Jr. and Cassius Stanley, the Trailblazers will not be returning this winter. After the teams were confirmed in March, LeBron James’ son LeBron James Jr. and Dwayne Wade’s son Zaire committed to Sierra Canyon.
Hindsight may be 20/20, and missing out on arguably one of the most popular high school basketball teams in the country may sting, but McCallum said that the Trailblazers are committed to return in 2020 and in 2022 for James’ senior season.
“LeBron James and the Lakers are in town during Les Schwab this year, so it would have been pretty cool with how popular [Sierra Canyon] is,” Walker said. “It just wasn’t possible given their schedule. We couldn’t swing it.”
These are the tricky parts of Dorado’s job, but when everything comes together it’s a joy for the thousands of spectators to behold.
So when Tony is approached by coaches every year, asking him where he plans to spend the few days after Christmas, the answer is easy.
“They always ask me after Christmas ‘Hey, Tony, what tournament are you going to be at,’ and I always tell them that I am going to be at the Les Schwab,” Dorado said. “The Les Schwab is so important to our Nike and our Portland community that I’m going to be at home for this one.”
Dealing with the hype
Much like the 76ers in the back hallways of Liberty years ago, NBA players and coaches do show up unannounced from time to time. However, more often than not they will shoot McCallum a text. Players such as the 76ers Ben Simmons and Orlando’s Markelle Fultz have been known to send a quick message, but when Damian Lillard showed up for the first time, he came unannounced.
“They just kinda walk in, like no big deal,” McCallum said.
The challenges of success highlight the growth of the tournament. Travel logistics and venue coordination are farmed out to other companies. Winter weather delays make for white knuckle moments before a single player hits the court.
One year Walker had to be on hold for seven hours with an airline to make sure that a participating team arrived on time.
Powerhouse programs like Oak Hill can also pose issues, since many players don’t even live near the school (Mouth of Wilson, VA). Individual players are often flown in from different regions of the country after they celebrate the holidays with family. A few years ago, P.J Hairston got stuck for a day and a half at an airport because of a snowstorm and made it back for the second game.
Alongside managing logistics, running the tournament has given Walker a chance to rub elbows with basketball legends past, as well as future.
On an unassuming afternoon midway through the 2018 Invitational, he was making the rounds and scrambling to help multiple volunteers when a rather tall man followed him into the V.I.P room. That man was famous Chicago Bull Scottie Pippen who had a son playing for Sierra Canyon.
For the next few minutes the two stood around and talked about the history of the tournament, Pippen’s high school days, and just how far high school basketball has come since Hall of Famer played at Hamburg High (AR.), all over a Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwich.
Creating some of basketballs biggest moments in the Northwest
While nationally-ranked programs tend to dominate, success isn’t guaranteed.
Case in point, when Mater Dei (Calif.) played in the tournament for the first time Gary McKnight and his team went 1-3. McKnight, a coach that has won over 92-percent of his over 1,250 games, had not lost three games in a single season in years.
“If you come in here then you better be well-coached,” Robertson said. “Oregon high school coaches really do a good job, so if you come in here with a big-time school and you think you’re going to run over somebody then you better check. Somebody just might beat you, and that has happened quite a bit.”
While just four Oregon schools have won the tournament in its history, there have been plenty of moments that are etched into Oregon's high school basketball history.
No game may better exemplify the craziness of the tournament than the 2006 championship game between Kyle Singler and his South Medford team against Brandon Jennings and Oak Hill televised nationally on ESPNU.
Down 30 at halftime, Kyle Singler brought the Panthers back to within single-digits, and in the fourth quarter drove baseline and dunked over multiple Oak Hill players, sending an already standing crowd into raptures. While Jennings helped the Warriors close the game out, that dunk is a viral moment that is in the annals of the tournament’s history.
And, sure, the big-named national programs sell tickets and get fans in the door, but sometimes the most exciting and high-energy games take place when it is between two highly-talented Oregon teams.
In 2006, Singler took on Kevin Love--the only freshman to ever win tournament MVP-- and the Lake Oswego Lakers in the semi-final game. Games between the two local powerhouses were few and far between, so when they faced off it was a big deal. McCallum can recall fans lined up at the doors at 10:30 a.m for a 7:30 p.m game in what ended up being one of currently just 20 total sold-out games in the tournament’s history.
Walker remembers that day as well, but he was there as a fan. He recalls the long line of people waiting to get in and talking to people that parked over a mile away from the school. Walker even had a tournament pass that he bought ahead of time, yet was kept outside by the fire marshall.
“There were people watching the game on a live stream in the auditorium,” Walker said. “You couldn’t park. We’ve sold out recently, but just the buzz and the feel in the gym was something I haven’t experienced before.”
“I just remember the fans and how well they got into it,” Saddler added. “Boy, high school sports and Oregon sports, now we’re showing them what talented schools and players we have from Oregon. And I remember comments from parents and people in the stands saying ‘Wow, this is what it’s all about.”
No matter who you ask, everyone seems to have their own LSI story. Whether it be watching Michael Porter Jr. and Marvin Bagley face off in the 2016 championship game or Aaron Gordon putting together spectacular dunks in the dunk contest, it’s a tournament that creates memories that seem to stay with people. It’s what has allowed the tournament to stick around for so long.
Creating a sustainable tournament
As time goes on, the Les Schwab Invitational continues to adapt and grow, with designs on possible expansion to two separate 16-team tournaments.
The tournament started in what Walker calls the “magazine era,” transitioned to the “mixtape era,” and as time has gone on more and more teams throughout the country see viral moments from the tournament on social media and are clamoring for an invite.
“The players and teams that come are national brands,” Walker said. “You have 15-year-olds from Vancouver or Portland, they are a fan of Vernon Carey or Scottie Barnes.”
As the tournament nears the quarter-century mark, the feeling of excitement for what the future holds is palpable. Much like how Walker remembers watching Rice and Jesuit or McCallum recalls watching Oak Hill take the court in his backyard for the first, there is no doubt that the tournament will continue to create memories for the newest generation of tournament goers.
So, if you ever attend one of these sessions at Liberty High School be sure to take your eyes off the action for a second and glance a few inches towards the sideline. Often you will find two older men blended in with the crowd swept up in all the action while taking in the mercurial talent and pomp and circumstance from their reserved sideline seats.
That is Robertson and Adams, two men that had the simple idea to create a competitive basketball tournament hidden away in the Pacific Northwest and, with plenty of help, has seen it grow to even greater heights than they could ever imagine two-and-a-half decades ago.
As Dorado concluded: “No matter where you are at, people know about the Les Schwab.”
