Tuesday, July 6, 2010, 12:34 PM **They're not coaches, they're not players; they're the people who put life into the city's hoops scene. You may not know their names, but it's a fair bet that you know their work. To introduce some of these unheralded power brokers, the Daily News is launching 'The Shot-callers.' The series begins with Nike I.S. 8 Commissioner Pete Edwards.** Pete Edwards pulls into the driveway of his home in Valley Stream, L.I., on a recent weekday, slams his car door and jogs around the back side of the black sedan. He opens the passenger door; out comes a tiny hand. Edwards grabs the little palm and scoops up his 3-year-old daughter, Laila, while clutching a McDonald's bag in his free hand.

He pushes open his front door and sits Laila down on the living room floor, serves her Happy Meal, flips on a 'Dora the Explorer' cartoon and kisses the child on her forehead. 'Thanks, Daddy,' the youngster says, looking up with a smile. This is down time for Edwards, the longtime commissioner of the legendary Nike I.S. 8 basketball tournament that's played in the junior high school of the same name in South Jamaica, Queens. July is perhaps the one month of the year that Edwards gets to escape the duties of running the hoops showcase, which has attracted the likes of LeBron James, Stephon Marbury, Sebastian Telfair, Ron Artest and Lamar Odom.

John McEnroe. The list of standout athletes from the Big Apple goes on and on. The Daily News has set out to anoint the greatest athlete ever to have emerged from the five boroughs.

Or so he says, quickly adding that he's working with Nike, getting an early start on obtaining uniforms for the fall session. 'I'm also thinking about branching out to Long Island or maybe a high school gym in Queens,' he adds, 'I'm not sure. I'm just wondering how I'm going to do that in September and I'm putting that together now.' Later this month, he'll begin manually loading 60 team rosters onto an Excel spreadsheet in preparation for the I.S. 8 Tip-Off Classic, which runs from September through October. The tournament is open to high school players ages 19 and under, though junior high players are occasionally permitted.

The tournament attracts players from across the country. Edwards also runs a Spring Classic with 60 teams during April and May, and leagues for Biddies (12U), Midgets (14U) and Juniors (16U) that run from January through March.

'I thought I could get away from it right now, but this is really an all-year-round job,' said Edwards, 49. 'People don't know how much work it takes to make it work.' That's on top of his post as a deputy director for the New York City Housing Authority, a job in which he oversees 10-12 developments that include 11,000 housing units in the South Bronx. He's in his 26th year on the job, the same number of years he's been serving as commissioner of I.S. Aprender A Practicar Mindfulness Vicente Simon Pdf Files here. 'People don't even know I have another job,' Edwards says, laughing. 'If I depended on a basketball tournament to pay the bills, those lights (in his home) would be off.' 8 has long been the city's top hoops venue for high school-aged players, and arguably among the best in the country.

In 2003, Telfair invited James to show up. Both were touted as the top draft prospects who were going to attempt the jump from high school into the NBA. 'When a player like Sebastian tells LeBron, 'You gotta show,' you have to come through,' says Anton Marchand, who borrowed Edwards' format for I.S.

8 to create his own girls tourney, the Rose Classic, in Brooklyn. 'I had to pick up LeBron with (Lincoln HS coach Dwayne Morton) from the airport.' Adds Edwards: 'It was a fire hazard in the gym that day; you couldn't get in or get out.

Once you were inside, you were stuck there.' That may have been the all-time highlight of the tournament, but I.S. 8 remains top caliber. Edwards charges $300 for each team during the winter session, and $425 per squad during the fall and spring, plus referee fees.

The success of I.S. 8 marks a far cry from its condition when Edwards took over in 1984. Edwards attended both Edison and Cardozo HS, and when he graduated from N.Y.

Institute of Technology in 1983, he was looking for a way to continue playing basketball after college. Simultaneously, James Ryan, a former CBA coach and talent evaluator from New York, was conducting a series of meetings with then-Councilman Archie Spigner to secure funding to run a tournament out of I.S. 'I was busy at the time coaching in the CBA, so I needed someone to open up the gym,' Ryan says.

'Pete became that guy. Adele. ' Edwards, a year removed from college and living blocks from I.S. 8, first tried his hand at running a tournament for 20- to 22-year-olds. He recalls breaking up a melee between a squad from South Jamaica and one from Brownsville. Shortly after that, he told himself that if he was going to continue running a tourney out of I.S. 8, he was going to do it with younger players. He launched a high school league, in which Artie Cox (now an assistant at Christ the King) and Kenny Pretlow (an assistant at Lincoln) headed Brooklyn/Queens Express, the league's first premier squad.

Once the high school formula clicked, Edwards began adding teams, building it up through the years to the 60 he has now, and added a brand built on the tourney's motto of 'Bring your game, not your name,' an adage Edwards coined and often voices when he grabs the microphone to provide live commentary during games. 'The reason I.S. 8 is special is he puts demands on the kids,' says recruiting analyst Tom Konchalski. 'If you don't play the game the right way, he embarrasses you on the mic.' Konchalski and others who have been around I.S. 8 since its inception aren't surprised that Edwards has been able to keep it going. 'He doesn't have a home team,' Pretlow says.

'He's not coaching in the tournament. He's been the constant. He just wants to see the game played the right way, and it is at I.S.

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