The World of Five-Star

Introducing "The World of Five-Star"

Episode 1: The World According to Garf

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 the motivation behind the man they call “Garf” and detail his unusual journey to becoming a basketball guru. With the help of Five-Star legends like George Raveling, Larry Brown, Rick Pitino, Bobby Cremins, Tom Konchalski, and never-before-heard conversations with Garfinkel himself, we’ll hear how the foundation of Garf’s iconic camp was built. Welcome to The World of Five-Star!

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

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.” With the help of Five-Star legends who witnessed it first-hand like Hubie Brown, Roy Williams, Muggsy Bogues, Dick Vitale, Dave Odom, Grant Hill, Mike Fratello, and Pete Gillen, we’ll show how these three unique players used Garf’s camp as a launching pad for their historic careers.

Episode 3: The Basketball Boom

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, Maverick Carter, and more legendary Five-Star alumni.

Episode 4: The 300

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.”