Knicks’ 26-year-old scout, Alex Kline, is a basketball fan

It was all sneakers, backpack and glasses, to diminish its light frame. It was impossible to miss AAU events, a school-aged child who clearly was not a player. A “nice guy, nerd and geek” is the way his close friend Frantz Massenat described him.

But if you focus on Alex Kline, you can quickly say it was someone. Everyone knew him – players, coaches, managers, parents – and he seemed to like everyone. He could not walk a few meters without stopping. A decade later, its appearance has been refined, but little else has changed. Kline remains one of the most popular people in his business, a 26-year success story who is now with his second team, the Knicks, as a scout.

Ten years ago, Kline opened its recruiting website, The Recruit Scoop. He raised nearly $ 200,000 for cancer research in honor of his mother, Mary Kline, who died of 10 years of brain cancer. At the age of 22, just out of college, he had a job in the NBA. He had been named twice on Forbes’ 30-under-30 sports list – before his teens were over.

Boy Wonder just starts to describe it.

“It won’t be surprising when he runs an organization at a young age,” said UConn coach Dan Hurley.

Originally from southern New Jersey, Kline started a trend that grew in popularity. Now, it’s not unusual to see high school or college kids take care of recruiting. But at the time it was an anomaly, a schoolboy trying to enter a company run by adults. He loved basketball and saw it as a way to put his foot in the door, in addition to his duties as manager of the Pennington High School team. He started locally, traveling with the New Jersey ABC program and quickly made a name for himself. The players trusted him because they could relate to him and his information was strong, letting him enter with the coaches. However, not everyone was so fond of him.

“Alex, when he started doing it for the first time, shook some cages, blew up some people because he forced some people to work harder,” recalled Rivals.com national recruiting analyst Eric Bossi.

It did not discourage him. Kline wouldn’t accept no as an answer. He was also good at this, often breaking news. Rivals.com added its site to its network for this reason, giving it an even bigger platform. He was as obsessed with the coaches and children he covered. Hurley remembered talking to Kline most days in the summer of 2011, while he was stubbornly recruiting Eric Fanning’s prospect while he was training at Wagner College.

“It was like a Cal Ripken type streak and Alex loved every second,” said Hurley.

His name kept appearing among college coaches. The players would pull him up without being asked. Villanova coach Jay Jay’s assistants told him that Kline wanted to visit the school. At that point, Wright realized that his staff was relying on a child for information.

“My first thought was: ‘Is he only in high school?'”, Wright recalled with a laugh.

He was so knowledgeable, Wright tried to make him a student manager of Villanova and Jamion Christian tried to do the same in William & Mary. Kline, however, ended up in Syracuse and kept his recruiting website.

It was then that his scouting chops began to take shape. He got to know the players in a deeper way than basketball. He created real bonds. He saw why some programs rated some more than others. He studied different game styles to better understand coaching philosophies, always asking questions, trying to get as much information as he could.

While in college, Kline began working for BB Pro Associates of former NBA executive Leo Papile through a connection he had developed with Papile’s daughter Britney. A start-up company, BB Pro Associates could only pay for its expenses, but its reports were sent to the NBA teams and learned from Papile. When the pelicans made a change to their front office last spring, replacing Dell Demps with David Griffin, Kline – who was hired by the team in 2016 – was kept on board in part due to Griffin’s familiarity with him dating back to BB Pro Associates.

Initially, Kline thought that most players could play in the NBA and would have referred to them as being able to play in “The League”. Papile would have replied in the same way: “Which league?” He stressed the need for Kline to look beyond the biography of a player in the director of sports information. He wanted to know everything about a player, where he comes from “in” in Papile’s words. His family background, the role of basketball in a player’s life, what made him pick up a ball, what motivated him. Inquisitor by nature, Kline, with his broad recruiting background, quickly followed that advice.

“In another business, he could be a head hunter for a Fortune 500 company,” said Papile. “He has that kind of skill where he doesn’t look at the curriculum. “He likes to look between the lines”, it’s a good way to say it. “

An advantage that Kline ironically has is experience. He has seen the players come to the NBA and blossom, and others are not up to par. He saw him from both ends of the spectrum as an NBA scout and an amateur. It has the added benefit of following them closely since high school to break through into the highest level of the sport.

“And he can get an assessment in his mind of why kids make it and why kids don’t,” said Christian, now the head coach of George Washington. “It is truly precious.”

(Kline was not made available to comment by the Knicks, citing organizational policy.)

“You see that guy right there who distributes the statistics, you want to know him. It will become someone. “

Jim Clibanoff was at the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas when a coach suggested he meet Kline. The scouting director of the Nuggets was immediately shot. Kline, a college boy at the time, found the weakness between excessive desire and shyness. He was humble but determined, without showing intimidation. That’s how he met Demps. During the summer championship, he saw that Demps was scheduled to play in a ping-pong tournament and so he settled in at the club entrance and started a conversation. A few months later, he got a job with pelicans, first as a basketball assistant and then as an information explorer. Four years later, the Knicks brought him to work under Assistant General Manager Walt Perrin last month.

“Alex is wise beyond his years and someone I have always respected for both his hardworking mentality and his talent assessment skills,” Knicks’ new president Leon Rose told The Post. “It will be a solid addition to the versatile and innovative front office that we are assembling.”

Kline is on the way to stardom, most agree. People his age are still generally trying to find their call. It is thriving in its. He was not lucky. He took his breaks. The question is how high it can go.

“The nature of his contact base is very good and he has no intention of changing,” said Clibanoff. “Is coming.”

The common term used to describe Kline is authentic. It’s what fascinated players and coaches as a recruiting reporter and how he got a job in the NBA at such a young age. Although Kline is making his way into the NBA, in his second team with more responsibility, those closest to him say he has remained humble, still trying to help others. Massenat still receives calls from Kline about the overseas landscape, trying to help players find future homes that may not be NBA level. He believes his friend “overstretches” himself.

After accepting the job from St. Joseph, Billy Lange relied on Kline for player ratings and credited him with the coaching staff who sent some players who put his schedule in a strong position. Stephen Smith, senior vice president at the institutional advancement office at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, and Kline frequently attends the Temple games and Smith is impressed by how everyone – parents of players, fans, coaches – seems to know him and how he spends time with their. Always start a phone call or a text message conversation by asking someone how they are, how their family is doing, what’s new in their life.

“Every time you call it, it makes you feel better when you hang up the phone.” Christian said.

It can be traced back to the loss of his mother. Kline has often told Smith how grateful he was around his formative years, that even though he had lost her so young, he was grateful for the time they had after she was diagnosed with brain cancer when she was five. .

“She just turned him into an incredibly grateful, humble person right now and I don’t think she ever left him,” said Lange.

He used his growing profile to make a difference. He launched Mary Kline Classic in 2010, a fundraiser to support cancer research. Future professionals such as Karl-Anthony Towns, Donovan Mitchell, Markelle Fultz, Michael Porter Jr. and Jamal Murray attended. When he took up the position with pelicans, he was no longer able to work with amateurs, and so he started the Mary Kline Classic Sports and Business Symposium in 2018, with panelists such as Bulls general manager Marc Eversley, Griffin and announcer Ian. Eagle as an emcee. All in all, he raised $ 196,000 while working primarily with Thomas Jefferson University’s Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center – the same place that cared for his mother – and a series of webinars this spring raised an additional $ 4,000 for COVID-19 research.

“It’s someone,” said Smith, “you want on your team.”