By the 2000s, Nike, which has always maintained a stranglehold on the pros, found itself playing catch-up in the youth market. So in 2010, the company spent millions to create a league modeled on the N.B.A. Within a year, the E.Y.B.L. championship was being broadcast on ESPN, and competing in the emerging copycat leagues — the Adidas Gauntlet, the Under Armour Association — became the equivalent of attending a safety school. A whiff of corruption, however, remained throughout the grass-roots world: Earlier this year, the head coach and co-founder of the D.C. Assault, a top youth team, pleaded guilty to running a drug ring that spanned the East Coast. “They’re known as D.C. Premier now, and nobody really cares,” one Scan coach told me. “The head of your program turns out to be a drug dealer, but you change your name and you still keep your contract.”

Williams had joined the E.Y.B.L. in an attempt to exploit an exploitative system. A former Teach for America member, he recruited his Wesleyan friends not only to help him build his program but also to avoid mission creep. “If that pressure comes,” he said, “someone here is gonna say, ‘Hey, listen, you gotta slow down, that’s not what we’re about.’ ” Scan was preparing to send its first group of high-school seniors to college, and while one committed to Syracuse, another was headed to Sarah Lawrence. Among Williams’s favorite players was Joel Villa, who arrived at Scan from the Dominican Republic five years ago barely able to speak English but recently graduated from Proctor Academy, a boarding school in New Hampshire, and is going on to play at Endicott College in Massachusetts. Williams, whose affinity for junk food earned him the nickname Munch, has expanded his program to 100 players on eight teams, starting them as young as fourth grade. “Munch is basically the ‘hood pope,” said Andre Charles, one of Williams’s Wesleyan friends. “He’s constantly trying to do good deeds.”

When Nike first offered Scan a contract in 2012, Williams and his three friends spent a long night at Applebee’s debating the merits of accepting it. On the plus side, the program needed money: The coaches had full-time jobs but couldn’t afford to pay for dozens of boys to travel to tournaments around the country. Taking the deal, however, would put them in the uncomfortable position of running an educational nonprofit that leaned on some of the seedier elements of youth sports. Contending at the Peach Jam would require recruiting more high-caliber players at the expense of some of the local kids the program was built to serve. And recruiting could be a dirty game: Many people in the grass-roots basketball world told me that some programs were willing to make under-the-table payments in the low five figures for a highly coveted player.

Williams initially entered the recruiting circuit with some misgivings, but he soon developed a natural talent. Scan’s best player, Cheick Diallo, was spotted playing a pickup game in Bamako by Tidiane Dramé, a Malian-American, who had started a venture importing players from Mali. After hearing about Diallo, who was 6-foot-8 and still in middle school, Williams agreed to pay for his plane ticket to New York sight unseen. According to one of the numerous websites that rank teenage athletes, Diallo came into the E.Y.B.L. season as the second-ranked high-school basketball player in the country. When one reporter asked Diallo what he liked about living in the United States, he revealed both his still-maturing English and single-mindedness. “I love here because — N.B.A.!” he said. “My goal is to go to N.B.A. That was the only one thing I’m looking for is N.B.A.”

Williams had also landed Devonte Green, a sophomore guard from Long Island, who is the younger brother of the Spurs’ Danny Green; and Thomas Bryant, a highly ranked forward, who had recently left his home in Rochester to spend his junior year at Huntington Prep, a basketball factory in West Virginia with a student body of 12, the same size as its varsity team (Wiggins is an alumnus). This year, Williams signed Tyus Battle, a 6-6 guard from New Jersey who has been nationally ranked since sixth grade. Battle played the previous season for an E.Y.B.L. team in Philadelphia and was coveted by the New Jersey Playaz, a rival squad. But he agreed to join Team Scan, in part, after Williams promised Battle’s father, Gary, that his son, a natural shooting guard, would start at the point. Putting Battle at the position wasn’t necessarily best for the team, which already had several point guards, but it would make him more desirable in the eyes of college coaches and professional scouts. At every stop on the E.Y.B.L. circuit, Williams seemed to seize the chance to build new relationships. “I heard you’re changing addresses?” he said to an opposing player he heard might be switching teams. “Get out your phone, I’ll give you my number.” A B-team, meanwhile, had to be created for players like Joel Villa.

It didn’t take long before Williams found himself spending less time working with kids in the gym and the classroom and more time on the considerable logistical challenges that faced his team. Players had to be bussed, flown and otherwise transported from their homes and boarding schools for every game or practice — when it was possible to schedule practice at all. Before the season, Williams decided to resign from his day job at Scan, which meant that he lost access to the program’s gym and had to call in favors to get court time at a community center in the Bronx, a high school in Harlem and a gym at the Brearley School on the Upper East Side.

The lack of practice time showed this spring in Dallas, the second weekend on the E.Y.B.L. circuit. Diallo averaged more than 20 points a game, but Battle struggled at his new position, which prevented Bryant from getting his touches. The top 20 teams in the E.Y.B.L. regular season would qualify for the Peach Jam, and Scan’s 4-4 record put them on the bubble. If they didn’t make the tournament, Williams would lose his leverage with Nike. “These dudes can’t handle that pressure,” Williams said, before correcting himself. “I can’t handle that pressure.”