Siva, Smith, Wroten latest in line of Seattle-area high school hoop stars

Three local kids, lifelong friends, have grown up together into basketball prodigies. Their teen years have been spent playing in front of the likes of Roy Williams and Rick Pitino, traveling the country to play in tournaments and having their names tossed around as some of the country's best players.

Franklin senior Peyton Siva has been named a McDonald's All-American, and he has signed to play at Louisville. Kentwood junior Joshua Smith and Garfield sophomore Tony Wroten have each been, at some point, named the top players in their class in the country.

To the college basketball world, Siva, Smith and Wroten are elite prospects. To those who followed Seattle basketball for decades, the three local boys represent just how far the area has come.

To Francis Williams, those boys mean the end of an era. All the years that Seattle remained hidden in the Northwest, with only one travel team and next to no exposure, those days are over.

"Mission accomplished," Williams says.

Fifteen years ago, Williams had $8,000 and the burden of too many lost college dreams. It was 1994, and going back to when he played at Garfield in the 1970s, Williams had watched too many deserving players miss their chances to earn college scholarships. In 1993, for example, not a single Metro League player received a Division I scholarship.

"I got involved because I always felt like there was talent here, but for a variety of reasons, the talent was being overlooked," Williams says.

At that time, the state of Washington had one traveling team in the summer, and it cost as much as $1,200 a year to join. That meant only up to 20 local players a year played each at the summer's big tournaments, where college recruiters made their living.

And rarely did Seattle have a top-rated recruit. In the top 100 rankings by Hoop Scoop, a basketball recruiting publication, from 1983 to 1995, only three Seattle-area players made the list — Quin Snyder of Mercer Island (1985), Eric Brady of Mercer Island (1987) and Donny Marshall of Federal Way (1991).

"It was an underexposed area," says Garfield coach Ed Haskins.

Local stars Michael Dickerson and Jason Terry, eventual NBA players, had been under the recruiting radar until they were noticed by Arizona coach Lute Olson at a summer tournament in 1993 — when Olson was there to scout the other team, from California.

"You had to be in the right place, at the right time," Williams says.

In 1994, Williams decided to split off and form his own team, with the help of $8,000 from a sponsor. A year later, he partnered with Adidas. And the proliferation of summer-league teams had begun.

In 1996, Seattle Rotary Style was started by Daryll Hennings and Dan Finkley, and then, in 1997, Sonics coach George Karl started Friends of Hoop, a foundation aimed at creating more opportunities for local players.

"When it started to expand — and so did the number of opportunities — that really was the difference," says Franklin coach Jason Kerr.

By the end of the 1990s, there were at least 10 summer teams running into each other at tournaments in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

"You had a bunch of coaches willing to give up their time, voluntarily, for no money, and they were coaching these kids," says Jim Marsh, a former NBA player who coaches Friends of Hoop.

And the work was beginning to pay off.

In 1999, Jamal Crawford went from Rainier Beach to Michigan, and then to the NBA the next year. In 2000, Lake Washington's Brian Morrison went to North Carolina (he later transferred to UCLA), and Blaine guard Luke Ridnour became only Washington's third McDonald's All-American.

"And now a coach could say, 'I'm going to go out to a little tournament in Seattle, and there's no telling how many guys I might see,' " Williams says.

And there was quite a bit to see. A glut of future college and NBA stars surfaced between 2000 and 2006: Nate Robinson, Brandon Roy, Rodney Stuckey, Aaron Brooks, Lodrick and Rodrick Stewart, Jon Brockman, Martell Webster, Spencer Hawes, and a trio of Williams (Marvin, Marcus and Terrence).

It was a rare group, one that cemented the notion that a Seattle player would no longer be overlooked.

"Per capita, the Pacific Northwest has produced a lot more than their share of elite players," says Clark Francis, the editor of Hoop Scoop.

And their whole lives, Peyton Siva, Joshua Smith and Tony Wroten have been watching those players, waiting for their turn. All three have played at Seattle Rotary Select since at least sixth grade, growing up together on the same court where Brooks and Marvin Williams once played.

"You want to be as good as they were," Wroten says.

Adds Siva: "Those are the guys you look up to."

In their lifetimes, Seattle has gone from an area with one traveling team to one with more than 50 ("We have too many teams now," Francis Williams says). What was once a struggle to find opportunities is now a struggle to downplay the hype.

Wherever they play around town, Siva, Smith and Wroten hear constant reminders about the decades worth of players who made it possible for them to be the next big things.

"They started off the way for us," Siva says. "Without them, who knows?"

Tom Wyrwich: 206-515-5653 or twyrwich@seattletimes.com