Posted on 06/30/2003 5:42:37 PM PDT by Drew68
By Anthony Cotton, Denver Post Sports Writer
Bounding up to the stage in New York's Madison Square Garden in their custom-made suits, amid hugs and kisses and copious tears from their mothers, the teenagers shook NBA commissioner David Stern's hand. Weeks earlier, they had received high school diplomas; now each could look forward to multimillion-dollar contracts.
Stern welcomed LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and six other teens to the NBA on Thursday night with a smile on his face that hid his concern about what his league has wrought.
Anthony, 19, was drafted by the Nuggets.
"There are certain messages that we don't want to send," Stern said recently. "We don't want 10- or 12-year-old kids thinking that all I have to do is dribble a basketball and I'm going to be the next Kobe Bryant or LeBron James, because we know they won't be - we want to stand for something better than that."
The odds against those young players making it in the league - for every Bryant there's a Taj McDavid, not taken in that same 1996 draft class - aren't dissuading NBA teams who don't want to miss out on the next Bryant, whom 12 teams passed on.
Stern, who advocates an age limit for the NBA, admits it's hard to get his message out when the rush of young talent headlines his league's annual draft. Of equal concern to him and many others inside the NBA and the college game are the long-term ramifications of a "get-it-now" attitude, such as:
* The belief that the NBA isn't what it once was because the young players, while athletically gifted, have little idea about fundamentals or what it takes to succeed in the league.
* The decline in scoring in the NBA, which many believe has led to less interest, lower TV ratings and a lackluster NBA Finals, the sport's showcase.
* What the early exodus of star players, or, in James' case, their non-arrival, will ultimately mean for the college game, in interest and quality of play.
* The player-for-hire mentality in the NCAA, where a star player usually stays at most two seasons.
Tom Izzo, the highly successful Michigan State coach, has a sense of both worlds. He recruits the best young players in America, has seen his young players flee early to the pros, and has turned down NBA head coaching positions. What he sees bothers him at both levels.
"I do think it's a bigger problem than we're making it out to be," Izzo said. "I think everybody's losing in it: us, the pros and maybe most importantly, the kids.
"Yeah, there's a LeBron James out there, but I still look at most of these kids; most of them are not making it, and of the ones who do, how screwed up do you get because you can't handle things? I can't handle my money at age 40 - how do you do it at 20?
"I look at my team the last three years, what they were and what they could have been. I look at Duke, I look at Arizona. ... You tell me those Final Fours wouldn't have been better and more exciting, with better TV ratings, if all the players we lost had stayed."
Potential vs. achievements
The pros aren't exactly thrilled either.
Looking at the sometimes-shoddy level of play and the minuscule ratings - a 36 percent decline for this year's NBA Finals, setting an all-time low with a 6.5 rating - critics argue that something needs to be done.
Without a higher caliber of play, which comes from having older, more proficient players entering the league, the thinking goes, contests like Game 4 of the NBA Finals, in which the halftime score was 33-30, will become more commonplace, causing more fans to change the channel.
"It used to be that we'd just have practices," said former NBA great Adrian Dantley of the impact of declining skills on the league. "Now you have work stations and drills, hoping that you can teach these kids some fundamentals."
Stern has pushed for a 20-year-old age limit to be placed on players turning pro in an effort to stop the flood of teenagers. That age limit is likely to be a point of contention in the negotiations with the players' union for the next collective bargaining agreement. It's unlikely the players' union would lose that argument, particularly when the commissioner, looking at tennis or baseball players turning pro without the benefits of college, admits he can see both sides of the issue.
"I'm going to keep the issue alive because I feel it deserves a full discussion," Stern said. "But I'm not buying the argument that what some perceived to be spotty play in the finals was a function of youth. There were a number of players who were spotty in the finals who are a lot older than 18."
Phoenix's Amare Stoudemire said high school players deserve the right to go into the NBA. Drafted out of high school a year ago, he averaged 13.5 points and 8.8 rebounds and won Rookie of the Year honors.
"You've got baseball players coming out at age 17, age 18," Stoudemire said. "I don't think they should put an age limit on them. If he's good, why not bring him into the NBA?"
Of the first 29 players selected Thursday, the first segment of the two-round draft, only 10 were college seniors. That was actually an improvement from years past. In 2002, for example, there were only seven seniors taken in the opening round.
And, as the professional rite of passage progressed, somewhere in Iowa, or Mississippi, or Denver, a pre-teen boy watched in awe, envisioning himself having his name called.
The fact that the odds are decidedly against it happening doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent to these hoop dreams, at least not since 1995. That year, a skinny Chicago prep star named Kevin Garnett decided to skip college and move into the NBA, the first player to attempt such a move in 20 years. Garnett has since become one of the NBA's elite players.
Since then, 28 high-schoolers have entered their names in the draft, including five this year, and 22 have been drafted. Ten years ago, there were 12 players who decided to forgo the remainder of their college eligibility to try for the pros. Seven of the 12 were picked in the first round; five went undrafted.
In 2002, the number of early-entry candidates had increased to 47; 18 were picked in the first round, which carries the guarantee of a three-year contract. This year there were 46 early-entry candidates, including 21 first-round picks. The rest either went in the second round or weren't picked at all.
"It shocks me when I hear some of the names of people who say they're coming out for the draft," said Syracuse junior forward Hakim Warrick. "I really don't know what's going through some people's heads sometimes."
Perhaps it's being this close to realizing a lifetime dream; perhaps it's a desire to provide for family or loved ones. Perhaps someone - a family member, an unscrupulous agent - has promised a player that tomorrow he's only a day away from making LeBron James-type money.
If NBA teams are going to select them, young players are going to make themselves available. Of course, being a high selection doesn't guarantee success. For example, there's Darius Miles, a third-overall pick in 2000 who left high school in East St. Louis, Ill. Miles came into the league with a white-hot burst of pizzazz with the Los Angeles Clippers, becoming something of an icon - his jersey worn by hip-hop artists and rappers in videos.
That in turn led to massive jersey sales among the public, very few of whom apparently cared that Miles has yet to average 10 points a game in any of his three NBA seasons. Now in Cleveland, Miles will surely be supplanted by James as the next big thing - both on and off the court.
Even so, Miles doesn't serve as much of a cautionary tale to NBA teams, which continue to draft players based more on potential rather than tangible accomplishments. So it was in the 2001 draft when a high school player, Kwame Brown, was selected No. 1 for the first time in league history. The most accomplished college senior that year, Shane Battier of Duke, who led his team to the national championship, wasn't selected until the sixth pick, after two other high-schoolers, Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry, both of whom were selected by the Chicago Bulls.
Consequences for league
On Thursday, the first six players were early-entry picks. A year ago, the first seven college players drafted were underclassmen, a group that doesn't include Stoudemire, selected ninth by Phoenix after attending six high schools during his prep career.
"It's almost as if, if you don't come out before your four years are over, you're a failure," said University of Washington coach Lorenzo Romar. "If you went to school for four years, everybody's like, 'Man, what's wrong with you? You'd better work on your game.' "
That quest to put oneself in position to get to the NBA as soon as possible, say critics, is what has led to a number of ills in the game, such as abuses of the AAU system, where star players have been paid to play, or high school kids' moving from school to school, trying to find the best showcase for their talent.
Ironically, all that movement is usually more of a hindrance to reaching and becoming a force in the league. Nuggets swingman Rodney White, for example, has talked about becoming an all-star, but was that process helped by his attending five high schools, or only playing one year of college basketball?
"How can we expect players to know the fundamentals when they get to the league when they're never really somewhere long enough to be taught them and to work on them?" asks Nuggets coach Jeff Bzdelik.
White said the coach's question is "fair," but adds that Bzdelik as well as the league needs to make something of an attitude adjustment.
"Things are changing, and people aren't used to it," White said. "The game is more athletic than back in the day. Before, there were only one or two great athletes on a team, and guys had to be more fundamentally sound because that was the only way they could make it. Now every team has three, four or five great athletes, and they just play and not worry so much about the fundamentals."
Over the past 10 years, the NBA has seen its scoring and shooting percentages bottom out, a period that, perhaps not coincidentally, roughly corresponds with the flood of young players into the league.
Ten years ago, 25 of the then-27 NBA teams averaged at least 100 points a game. Five years ago, it was four of 29, the same number that managed the feat this past season. And while scoring has decreased, so has the percentage of made baskets. Ten years ago, the average team made a little over 47 percent of its shots. Five years ago, that number had dipped to 45 percent; this season it was a shade under 44 percent.
When the Chicago Bulls beat the Phoenix Suns in the 1992-93 finals, the teams averaged a combined 213 points in their six-game series; earlier this month, the Spurs and Nets averaged just under 170 points in their six-game finals series.
Some NBA officials said the series was so unattractive they couldn't bear to watch much of it, a sentiment that, according to the television ratings, was shared by the general public. White, though, said he watched virtually every minute and attributed the low scoring to improved defense.
"Guys can afford to get by on their athletic ability, but if a team can stop that, then what do they do?" he asked.
In that case, there's trouble - on any number of levels.
"It's a young league, and it's not necessarily as skilled a league as everybody wants," Chicago Bulls general manager John Paxson said.
"It's just not a really good system we have in place right now," said Sam Schuler, the San Antonio Spurs' vice president for basketball operations. "Look at the high-schoolers; for the most part - and there are always a few exceptions - but for the most part, these high school kids are just not ready physically and emotionally for the NBA.
"It's not fair for them to be thrown into that situation; they need time to mature and to grow into people. That's what the colleges do so well, and we're taking that away from them."
As for the NBA, the year Garnett entered the draft, I believe the NBA had their 'Stay in School' campaign. What a bunch of losers.
I think you are right. Furthermore, there are other endeavors besides sports where teens can become rich. Britney Spears was a millionaire at 17.
There does seem to be a "Young black kid from the hood ain't gonna know what to do with all that money!" kind of perception.
Personally, if I had the ability to earn millions right out of high school, I wouldn't think twice about it. College can wait. It would be a shame to suffer a career-ending injury while playing for free in college.
I must admit that I was taken back by the stark, frank reality of that statement. Changed my view of basketball players forever.
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