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Monday, June 25
Updated: June 27, 5:02 PM ET
When NBA high schoolers became the norm
By David Aldridge
Special to ESPN.com
There are six high school players in Wednesday's NBA draft.
This used to drive me crazy.
Not anymore.
|  | | Kobe's successful career sans college has helped make skipping school attractive. |
I know it's harder for the casual fan to have any kind of feel for what
his or her team is getting in the first round now. It's harder on everybody.
It's hard on the scouts and birddogs who have to project these kids out
three, four years. Harder on the coaches who have to coach them. Harder for
the teammates that have to play with them. Harder for the kids themselves.
For those who would say hockey and baseball also draft teenagers, I'd say
there's one huge difference: the vast majority of those teenagers don't
start in the major leagues, and even if they do, and subsequently fail, they
go back to the minors, where they can work on their games again. The NBA is
a one-shot deal -- sink or swim.
But this is where we are, and we need to deal with it. It isn't going
to end pro sports as we know it.
I used to believe that a few high school kids coming out would lead to
a flood of them coming out. And I thought that would be horrible, especially
since all of the kids who have gone straight from high school to the NBA
have been African-American. It throttled my middle-class heart to know that
kids who had a chance to attend college wouldn't. And I didn't want to hear
about tennis players, whose horrifying behavior on and off the court, I
thought, proved my point.
But the results don't lie. The majority of kids who's opted out of high
school have been good to great players, and good to great citizens.
It's hard to remember that this high school exodus is a relatively new
trend.
"I was with Penny Hardaway," Grant Hill recalled recently, "and we were
talking about just when we were going to high school and all the camps and
the summer leagues. And we didn't even think about the NBA. It wasn't
even ... it was about college. 'Where you wanna go to school? I wanna go here,
I wanna go there, we wanna play for the NCAA championship.' And this was
just 10 years ago. And now, if we were college juniors or seniors, it would
be like 'what (pro) team you want to go to?'...
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| Hardaway |
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| Hill |
"It's really changed. And it's amazing that these kids are that good
and have that kind of confidence. I was a little worried about going to
Duke. I called up Coach K about two weeks before school started my freshman
year, and I was like, 'I think I'm going to transfer to George Mason. I
don't know if I'm good enough.'"
The genie is out of the bottle. Once Kevin Garnett jumped into the 1995
draft, and not only survived, but thrived, it was just a matter of time
before others joined him. The next year, Kobe Bryant left Lower Merion High
near Philly, and what happened to him was even more important than Garnett's
success in Minnesota. Not only was Bryant drafted in the first round, but
his agent, Arn Tellem, was able to intimidate the Nets, who salivated over
the prodigy and had the eighth pick overall, into not taking him and
drafting Kerry Kittles instead.
So Bryant didn't cut his teeth playing for the lowly Nets, where he
probably would have averaged more points but won far fewer games. Instead,
Tellem and his good buddy Jerry West were able to concoct a trade between
the Lakers and Hornets, who wound up selecting Bryant for Los Angeles with
the 13th pick overall and dealing him for Vlade Divac.
Every high schooler with some game got the message: I can play in the
NBA, and I don't have to play for a team that sucks. Which may explain in
part why Tellem has gotten just about every one of the high schoolers. That,
and having Sonny Vaccaro's cell phone number.
But I digress. Let's look at the numbers. There are around 100,000 kids
that play high school basketball every year. Since 1995, including this
year's group, 19 high school players have opted not to go to college and
enter the NBA draft. That's 19 out of a possible 700,000 or so players, a
microscopic amount.
|
“ |
It's
really changed. And it's amazing that these kids
are that good and have that kind of confidence. I
was a little worried about going to Duke. I called
up Coach K about two weeks before school
started my freshman year, and I was like, 'I think
I'm going to transfer to George Mason. I don't
know if I'm good enough.' ” |
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— Grant Hill |
Let's look at the 19. Not including this year's six high school
players, 13 were eligible to be drafted between 1995 and 2000. Eleven of the
13 were drafted. Two, Garnett and Bryant, are bona fide superstars, and a
third, Tracy McGrady, is right on their heels. Three others are in the midst
of solid careers: Jermaine O'Neal, Rashard Lewis and Al Harrington. Another
three are just really getting started: Darius Miles, Jonathan Bender and
DeShawn Stevenson. Two were drafted but were gone within a year -- Leon Smith
and Korleone Young -- and two were complete, undrafted flameouts: Taj McDavid
and Ellis Richardson.
Nine out of 13? A pretty healthy percentage.
And of this year's six, five are almost certain to be first-round
picks. Only one is really reaching. That would make 14 out of 19 who will be
in the league for at least a few years.
Granted, those 19 weren't taken at random, but were 19 out of the top
50 or so over that seven-draft period. And that does impact the league,
directly and indirectly. Directly, because even Garnett and Bryant had a
break-in period before their games began to shine at their current wattage.
Indirectly, because those players (and their cousins that leave college ball
after a year or so) never make the mark on college ball that equally
talented players of previous eras did.
And I think it's important for the college game to be healthy. Imagine
the difference, for example, if Larry Bird and Magic Johnson had opted to
leave their respective universities after a year, or hadn't gone to college
at all. Johnson wouldn't have won the national championship the following
season. Bird would have never gotten to the championship game. As it was,
most people knew precious little about Bird after he played three seasons
for Indiana State, and what they knew came from watching him play Johnson's
Michigan State team in the '79 NCAA title game.
But their teams had great runs in March, and met in the championship
game, and that matchup opened to doors for all their matchups that followed.
And that game was the one that ushered in March Madness as we know it,
creating ready-to-wear superstar basketball players. When people watch the
college game, they like to see how those kids turned out, so they watch the
pro game, too.
But the NBA's responsibility to the college game is the subject of
another column, and another writer. (Mr. Packer, please pick up the white
courtesy phone.) This is about Wednesday, when a half-dozen big men will
walk across the stage in Cary Mitchell suits, shake the Commish's hand, do
their TNT stuff and then come talk to Quinn Buckner, Jim Durham and me at
the Theater at Madison Square Garden.
And we'll ask them how the prom went.
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ALDRIDGE ARCHIVE
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Spain's Gasol ready to shine stateside
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