Great American Shootout brings basketball coaches, top prospects to DFW

When Mike Kunstadt got out of coaching basketball in 1988, he was sure of one thing: He wanted his work to continue to revolve around the game he loved.

After spending 26 years as a coach, the last 13 of which came as the head coach at Irving High School, Kunstadt knew he couldn’t quit basketball cold turkey.

What Kunstadt also knew from over a quarter-century spent in the profession was that Texas’ high school basketball players often didn’t receive the same exposure as players on the East or West coasts that would allow them to play collegiately.

Sure, he thought, the top players in the state were getting noticed. But what about the guys who were a rung or two below them? Those guys might have had their local colleges showing interest. They never had the options Kunstadt felt they deserved, though.

So in 1988, Kunstadt hatched an idea for a scouting service and a basketball tournament that would solve both of those problems.

He would coordinate and run both himself, allowing him to keep basketball as a part of his professional life, and in turn, they would allow Texas high school basketball players the chance to get the exposure from college scouts and coaches they deserved.

Kunstadt named his scouting service Texas Basketball Review and his tournament the Great American Shootout, which in its 27th year, has grown from a 41-team competition into an event that features 460 teams and is one of the biggest boys’ summer basketball tournaments in the country.

There are 412 high school teams and 48 junior high teams competing in this year’s Duncanville Great American Shootout, which started Thursday and concludes Sunday.

The event was originally held in the summer of 1989 at Euless Trinity and Hurst L.D. Bell high schools, and is now played at 10 venues. Most sites, including Duncanville High School, Cedar Hill High School and Bob Knight Field House, are in the southwest part of Dallas County.

“I think one of the key factors in our growth is Texas has so much good basketball talent,” Kunstadt said. “When you have talent, college coaches want to come where the talent is. And the players want to come to be seen by the college coaches.

“People have said for years and they still say it’s a football state. I always said Texas is an athletics state. We have great basketball players, great track athletes and great baseball players. We’ve just got great athletes in the state.”

The Great American Shootout puts on a total of eight tournaments per year — three in the spring and five in the summer — in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Houston, San Antonio, Austin and College Station.

The one played this weekend, though, remains the largest of them all. Virtually all of Texas’ top AAU teams are competing. Kunstadt estimated that 80 of 100 of Texas’ top high school recruits for the class of 2016 are playing, as rated by Texas Basketball Review. This year, the tournament also attracted teams from Anchorage, Alaska, The Bahamas and Mexico.

All that makes for an environment in which college coaches can’t stay away. Kunstadt said he was expecting a coach from nearly every Big 12 program.

And big names such as Kentucky’s John Calipari, North Carolina’s Roy Williams, Kansas’ Bill Self and Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, who have all stopped by in recent years, are also likely to be there hunting for future players.

“If you’re a high school player and you want to play some ball, it’s one of the biggest tournaments in the country,” event director Sam Lowe said. “We’ll have 450 college coaches in attendance. That’s kind of the driving force at the showcase events, especially for the junior and senior classes.”

Kunstadt, now 74, admitted he was a little surprised with just how big his tournament has gotten over the course of 27 years.

As a kid growing up in West Texas, Kunstadt remembered how he and a few friends would have to work around the football team to even use the gym. Each time when the football team left the gym for the practice field, Kunstadt would wedge a rock in the door that allowed him and his friends to get inside and shoot baskets. They’d always be sure to leave 30 minutes before the football team returned in order to avoid getting barked at — or worse — by the football coaches.

But one day the school principal called Kunstadt and his friends into his office. The principal asked Kunstadt why he was sneaking into the gym around the football coaches’ backs.

“We told him, ‘We’re just shooting the basketball, playing a little hoops,’” Kunstadt recalled. “He said, ‘Well, don’t let the football coaches catch you.’

“I guess the high school principal was even afraid of the football coach. But things have changed in the years since.”

This story was originally published July 18, 2015 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Great American Shootout brings basketball coaches, top prospects to DFW."