With all the whispers of wonder about freshly-acquired St. John's coach Steve Lavin's ability to alter the perception of the ailing program, the primary concern is how Lavin will surface as a local presence.
How can the West Coaster stamp his imprint on New York's AAU terrain? How will Lavin, who's unfamiliar with the coaches and important figures of the rich grass-roots soil, grow an upper hand on the hothouse city recruiting scene?
The first step is the step to freedom, an essential step that could potentially thwart many of those causes for concern.
Hiring Kimani Young, the director of the New Heights AAU program, would allow Lavin to get acclimated to the New York City's high school and AAU basketball culture almost instantly.
The first essential, rewarding move towards steering St. John's back into the realm of revelancy--in a city where Big East coaches such as Jamie Dixon, Jay Wright, Bobby Huggins and Jim Calhoun win over recruits with ease--would be putting Young on his staff first.
For years, Young has helped mold a wealth of talent in its embryonic stage, working with a slew of the city's most promising young players. He's remained a major figure in the kids' basketball futures and continues to advise young players and work out the cream of the crop.
Young, who worked at St. John's as the video coordinator/Head Team Manager, is a local presence who harbors some magnetic pull throughout the area.
Young has launched New Heights' older group to heights reserved strictly for the city's elite.
If anyone could help that category of elite, top-notch players stay local (which seems like an afterthought in the aftermath of the Jarvis and Roberts era), it is Young. He must be the first choice on Lavin's staff.
He's the man who helped develop Villanova-bound manchild Jayvaughn Pinkston's game.
Young served as Pinkston's advisor during the recruiting period. Pinkston has been playing under Young's tutelage since he was 12 and Young, who played at Texas-El Paso, pushed the Bishop Laughlin senior's evolution as one of the country's top-shelf forwards.
Pinkston will play in the McDonald's All-American game tonight in Ohio.
Young grew up in LeFrak City, a bike-ride from the campus at St. John's and is all over New York like a yellow taxi cab.
Young's developed a rapport and maintains longtime friendship with the AAU coaches, as well as the folks who claim to matter as player "advisors," even if these self-proclaimed talent-molders' basketball pedigree is widely unknown.
These are the same coaches who were outspoken about never developing the right relationship with former coach Norm Roberts.
Granted, Roberts is a first-class coach who restored class to a program that was sorely lacking it following the stormy end to the pitiful Jarvis era.
One of the main knocks on Roberts, however, was his inability to maintain homegrown talent.
His shortfalls with getting local players to stay at home seemed to start with the aforementioned AAU masters, all of whom wished the lines of communication were more open with Roberts.
They wished the lines of communication were open more often with Roberts. They wished that their relationship with Norm was as good as it was with some of the other Big East coaches.
There could be something missing here. Perhaps Norm's pledge to keep the program squeaky-clean following the Jarvis quagmire played a role in the two sides not seeing eye to eye.
Either way, the hiring of Kimani Young could prove profitable. It could make Steve Lavin's transition to the city game seamless.
Hiring Young should be the first step towards reviving and re-establishing relevance to a program that returns a solid core of seniors who could potentially make some waves in the Big East next season.
If Lavin, who's been out of coaching since 2003, wants to make the immediate impact on the grass-roots atmosphere and waste no time in embracing his highly-anticipated arrival, he'll do the right thing.
The right thing is hiring Kimani Young as an assistant.