Arizona State guard Harden no longer a secret

JAMES HARDEN showed up unannounced at Artesia High. He would leave as a McDonald's All-American. This does not happen in Los Angeles, which has open enrollment and wide-open recruiting of players who just became teenagers.

Why?

"He wasn't good enough to be ranked or for other programs to be recruiting him," said Scott Pera, Harden's high-school coach and now an assistant at Arizona State, where Harden is a first- team All-America.

How Harden, a sophomore from Southern California, and Pera, from Hershey, ended up in Tempe is a classic basketball story. Pera, a 1989 Penn State Harrisburg grad who coached Elizabethtown College baseball while an undergrad, migrated west to be with his girlfriend-now-wife, Penn grad Alyssa Deaven. Before he went to LA, Pera coached Ann-ville-Cleona High to the 1999 Pennsylvania Class AA basketball championship.

Pera got himself involved in the LA hoop scene. A friend suggested he apply for the job at powerhouse Artesia after the school had been beset by a recruiting scandal. The young man from Hershey, now living with his new wife in Marina Del Rey, applied. And got the job at the perennial power.

A few years later, Harden walked into the gym.

"I had a lot of kids coming to Artesia," Pera said Monday night from Tempe. "His name never came up. He was nobody special. When he came, I said great. Tryouts are in September."

A few months later, Pera realized Harden was somebody special.

"He had instincts and basketball IQ that I had [rarely] seen before," Pera said.

Harden was a late bloomer, far from a finished product. But he grew. And he worked. By his junior year, Artesia, with senior point guard Derek Glasser, now the junior point guard at ASU, was the state champ.

Harden was no longer a secret. New ASU coach Herb Sendek offered Pera the director of basketball operations job. He liked Pera; loved Harden.

"The itch was there [to coach in college]," Pera said. "My problem was I didn't want to leave that team or leave him. I just went to him and said, 'I have an opportunity. If I do it, how would you feel?' He said, 'Coach, if you go to a major school, I'll come with you.' "

Pera was upfront with Sendek.