The World of Five-Star

Five-Star Basketball Camp is among the most exalted institutions in the pantheon of hoops history, boasting more than 250 NBA players and over 10% of all Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame coaches among its staggering list of alumni. Hosted by acclaimed hoops analyst and personality Tate Frazier, "The World of Five-Star" is a six-part narrative podcast series that explores the meteoric rise and fall of Five-Star Basketball, unlocks an archive of untold stories from campers and coaches, and chronicles how its founder, Howard Garfinkel, became one of the most influential figures in the history of the sport. Welcome to The World of Five-Star. The series is a co-production between UNINTERRUPTED and RTG Features, in association with Figures Network.

Episodes

Introducing "The World of Five-Star"

September 3, 2021 • 2 mins

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Episode 1: The World According to Garf

November 29, 2021 • 31 mins

The World of Five-Star tells the story of how Howard Garfinkel helped shape the game of basketball as we know it today through his crowning achievement: Five-Star Basketball Camp. Host Tate Frazier spent the past year uncovering what he would consider “the best basketball story never told” about a chain-smoker from Manhattan, who built a camp that completely changed the recruiting business forever. In this episode, we’ll explore th...

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Episode 2: The Three Discoveries: Moses, MJ and Muggsy

November 29, 2021 • 37 mins

By the dawn of the 1970s, Five-Star was on the rise and ripe with young coaching talent. On this episode, host Tate Frazier dives into the three game-changing player discoveries, including the unparalleled exploits of the camp’s first true phenom Moses Malone, the rare origin story of how Mike really became Air Jordan, and a controversy involving a 5-foot-3 point guard from Baltimore who Garf nicknamed, “The 8th Wonder of the World...

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Episode 3: The Basketball Boom

December 6, 2021 • 37 mins

All eyes in the basketball world were on Howard Garfinkel’s camp, as TV crews began to flock to figure out why Five-Star had so much cache in the college basketball space. With firsthand accounts from the players who lived it, we’ll highlight the many standout players during the camp’s “Basketball Boom” starting in the mid-1980s up to the new millennium with the help of Coach K, God Shammgod, Ben Gordon, Metta Sandiford-Artest, Mav...

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Episode 4: The 300

December 6, 2021 • 32 mins

It’s hard to keep count of all the coaching trees rooted in Garf’s camp, but by the time Garf hung it up, by his own calculation, there were 300 coaches who had gone on from FIve-Star to the collegiate or pro game. This episode is your chance to listen in on basketball trade secrets from the best coaches to ever lead the game as we uncover how Five-Star became the “Harvard of basketball instruction.”

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Episode 6: The Legacy

December 14, 2021 • 30 mins

Now you are able to get a sense of basketball’s rich, connected history through the Five-Star Basketball Camp. At its peak, it’s where the game’s greatest coaches and players went for over 42 years under Garf’s watch. In this episode, with the help of Coach K, Jay Bilas, Bill Raftery, and our many Five-Star fixtures, host Tate Frazier tells the story behind Garf’s final days, shares some never-before-told reflections from Springfie...

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Episode 5: The Step Back

December 14, 2021 • 28 mins

The recruiting world ran through Howard Garfinkel’s Five-Star camp. That didn’t sit well with anyone outside of Garf’s orbit, especially as the money in college basketball continued to pour in from all sorts of different avenues. To help tell the story of how the NCAA and shoe companies took over Garf’s turf in the summertime, we focus on some new voices who lived through the transition: Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery, legendary br...

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The World of Five-Star

Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Introducing "The World of Five-Star"

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Episode 1: The World According to Garf

Episode 2: The Three Discoveries: Moses, MJ and Muggsy

Episode 3: The Basketball Boom

Episode 4: The 300

Episode 6: The Legacy

Episode 5: The Step Back

Popular Podcasts

Introducing "The World of Five-Star"

Episode 1: The World According to Garf