ATLANTA – It’s noon on a Monday, but Tim Fuller is dressed as though he’s headed to Sunday brunch on a trendy patio with a DJ, neon signage and $13 mimosas.
The VP of Recruiting and Player Personnel for Overtime Elite is known around the league’s 103,000-square foot facility for his fashion sense. Today, he’s rocking a painstakingly ironed, starched-collar button-up under a pristine sweater and a crossbody Gucci bag to go along with pearl white sneakers. His co-workers occasionally crack jokes about his designer wardrobe. In fact, Fuller’s own PR person makes a remark mid-interview without realizing that, like most things about Fuller, his style is formulated with one eye on his career.
“I try to tell these people here all the time that it plays well with recruits,” Fuller says while his coworker laughs in the background. “It all came out in Toronto once. I was recruiting one of the top players up there. We went to dinner after his game. I get out of the Uber and I’m walking up to the restaurant and he’s holding the door. As he’s holding the door for me he’s like, ‘Oh, look at your drip. Look at your swag.’ I had our CFO with us and he was like, ‘That’s what you’ve been telling us.’
“Look, I’m 44-years old, man. I’m not going to play video games with these kids. I can’t be out there on the court with them, so fashion is a bridge that I can use to help build with them.”
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The man that built OTE’s star-studded roster is more than just Dior and Balenciaga, however. Fuller worked under Rick Pitino at Louisville and also served as the associate head coach at Missouri, where he once went 5-0 as an acting head coach while his boss served a suspension. Now, Fuller has disrupted the basketball world by attracting players that would normally land at college programs like Kentucky and Kansas or sports-focused high schools like Florida’s IMG Academy to an upstart basketball league known for its massive social media presence and little else.
And if the job he does sounds difficult, that's because it is.
“We’re almost recruiting against everyone,” Fuller says as he sits inside of OTE’s film-study room. “We recruit against AAU because some of the shoe companies have said that our (pro-contract) players can’t play in their events. We’re recruiting against colleges because some of the colleges say that we are trying to turn every kid that comes here pro and not let them matriculate, which is false. Then, we recruit against elite high schools like Oak Hill and Montverde. It’s everyone.”
If the deck is, indeed, stacked against OTE and the man in charge of building its teams, you wouldn’t know it by the results. In his two years on the job, Fuller has landed multiple players ranked as five-star prospects by Rivals.com. He’s also snagged top-flight international stars. Next year, twins Ausar and Amen Thompson, both of whom Fuller lured to OTE, are likely to be selected in the NBA Draft’s lottery. He recently landed former No. 1 overall prospect Naasir Cunningham, who passed on the opportunity to sign a pro contract with the league in favor of accepting an OTE scholarship to preserve his college eligibility.
Overtime Elite isn't eating recruiting leftovers. It’s snatching the main course off of everyone else’s table, and Fuller is the main culprit.
A massive, pristine facility stuff with state-of-the-art equipment and a massive production booth to rival that of some cable networks helps sell recruits, but convincing parents to let their sons buck traditional high school in favor of a upstart personal branding-focused basketball league – be it with a full slate of teachers and classrooms on site – is a different beast entirely.
“I wasn’t just skeptical, I was against it at first,” said Erik Cunningham, father of five-star prospect Naasir Cunningham, the headliner of OTE’s most recent recruiting class. “But I actually listened to the things I said and took action to ease my concerns. He knew basketball wasn’t my concern with this so we didn’t even really talk about basketball. He knew I wasn’t worried about basketball.
“Tim listened to me, listened to my concerns and got things done. He knew Naas wanted to go to college, so they gave us the scholarship route. They knew we stress academics, so he had his team put together presentations highlighting that and stressing what they do from that standpoint.”
But the Cunninghams weren’t the most difficult nuts to crack by any stretch. Ask Fuller what his hardest task has been to date and he’s quick to discuss what he calls “the first five,” the initial group of high-profile recruits that he convinced to join OTE before there was a facility, a league, or anything concrete at which to point.
Fuller built the foundation of the OTE roster more than a year ago while seated on a wobbly plastic chair at the Ahnvee resort in the Dominican Republic. It sounds like something out of a bad movie about a basketball scout, but OTE’s most important recruiting win took place under a mango tree a few feet from a remote stretch of beach. It was there that Fuller convinced grassroots basketball coach turned resort owner Brionne Gillion, who was part of the group advising Rivals150 prospects Matt and Ryan Bewley, to allow the in-demand twins to forgo traditional high school and college to join a content-driven professional basketball league that didn't yet exist.
“We have a running joke that the first deal got done 'under the mango tree' because the whole time we’re talking and I’m selling him this new idea, these mangoes are falling all over,” Fuller said. “One hits me on the leg, one lands right between us. These things are dropping the whole time. The first two days, he told me no multiple times, but every no is a conditional yes. You just have to figure out the conditions.”
Ultimately, Fuller and his team figured out those conditions. The rest is history. Overtime Elite had its first players, and their lofty national rankings gave the upstart league its first jolt of legitimacy on the recruiting trail. More importantly, it established Fuller's “conditional-yes philosophy” that has served the league incredibly well thus far.
“Each family has something they care about most for their young man,” Fuller explains when asked about his approach to easing the minds of parents. “For some parents, it’s development. For other parents, it’s that exposure and branding we offer. For others, it’s competition. You have to know the hot buttons for each family. That’s the research and the relationships that come in. You have to ask around and you have to listen. OTE offers so much, so you have to know what you need to touch on most going into those talks.”
Fuller was preparing for his mango tree moment well before he even knew what Overtime Elite was. The veteran coach spent his time between college coaching and his current role building relationships in the AAU world and observing NBA veterans Jordan Clarkson and Gary Harris in hopes of improving his approach when his next gig came knocking. In the process, he ended up molding himself into the perfect hire for a role that didn’t yet exist.
OTE’s strength is its versatility. It manages to be everything and nothing all at once. It’s a pro league but also a high school. It’s part reality show that makes money monetizing content and part state-of-the-at basketball academy that prepares players for the next level. It features both pros on contracts and amateurs on scholarship. Because the league’s stated goal is producing NBA talent, not winning trophies, the experience can be tailored on a case-by-case basis.
By refusing to be painted into a corner, it can, in a way, be whatever a prospect needs it to be. The concept is blurry to most, but nobody understands it better than Fuller, who has worked to become a bit of a Swiss Army Knife himself.
“The goal for me [between jobs] was to improve at the areas I was weak in as a coach,” he said. “So I set out to understand the modern AAU coach and the habits of pro players. I thought, ‘If I get these AAU relationships and then I understand what these guys do on the pro level, then I can marry the two if I get back into coaching or into some kind of player development.’ I learned how to take a high-level 16-year-old and teach them the habits of Jordan Clarkson and Gary Harris and then help him grow.”
Ask the prospects Fuller has recruited to OTE in his time at his post, and they’ll tell you his self-help journey paid off. Five-star prospect Bryson Tiller, who recently joined OTE, paints a picture of a modern, do-it-all coach/recruiter capable of understanding the prism of a modern player's needs, from basketball to branding to everything in between.
“He’s like a family member even when you don’t know who he is,” Tiller said “He’s really focused on building a personal connection before he even starts telling you about the great basketball development and everything that goes on at Overtime Elite. He initially connected with my parents first and then he connected with me and he helped us make the decision together.”
Colleges have been knocking. According to Fuller, multiple high-major programs reached out to him this offseason to gauge his interest in jumping ship. Still, he insists he has no plans to look into a new gig. For now he’ll stay in his non-traditional role and continue to build what is turning into a deep talent pool at America’s newest basketball league. But Whether Fuller stays at OTE long-term or lands in another recruiting role down the road, the message to his competition is clear. It’s also one he has a problem saying out loud.
“I know I’m a thorn in your side and I’m gonna stay a thorn in your side,” Fuller said. It’s impossible to argue with him at this point.
