They did make a minor league. The NBDL (NBA Development League) is a real thing already, and the minimum age to play is 18, not 19 as it is in the NBA. The NBA pays everyone in the league.
So the solution to Kerr's problem already exists? What is he even going on about then?
Yea, the NBA could just send rooks down to develop for 1-2 years (with the exception of "instant starters") but they mostly just don't.
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But those games are aired almost nowhere. I'd totally watch a North Dakota vs. Boise D-League game but in most cases if you want to see that you have to live there and buy a ticket for a seat.
The better franchises take advantage of the D-league system and do get prospects out of it. This is why teams like the spurs seem to continuously pull no-names up from the D-league who miraculously wind up performing.
The problem is that no team, having signed a top ten draft pick to big money, wants to send the guy to the d-league for a year or two (or even for less than that.) There's tremendous financial and public pressure on teams to play these guys right away.
I mean, Kerr's argument is essentially "the nba should be able to use it's monopoly status to force college basketball to be a de facto development system, because the league is (frequently, at least) too dumb to invest in and use the development system it created for itself." Which is an argument that makes plenty of sense if you're an NBA GM, but I'm not sure why anybody else would buy it.
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
There's a simple solution for GMs who think like Kerr, and want "developed" players. They can just draft college seniors. No one's forcing them to draft 18 year olds.
And the teams that want to take the risk of drafting an 18 year old can choose to do that, too.
And Kerr will miss out on the next Kobe, Lebron, and Dwight, in favor of the next Battier or Hansbrough.
Well, that philosophy could also get him the next Duncan, Jordan, or Abdul-Jabbar. I'm not sure you're being fair to the group of college-bred athletes.
2 of those 3 are from 30 years ago. It's a different era.
And if Kareem was eligible coming out of HS, he woulda been the #1 pick.
And for every one Tyson Chandler, there are 10 (insert name heres). These are unknown players who gamble their eligibility on the draft, and who we never hear from again. It's a dream deferred.
It can be a vicious system to navigate for the supremely talented and bubble talents alike.
I always hear this argument. I don't believe it for a second.
each one an NBA All-Star. Now name me 90 HS draftees that busted.
Also, there's a solution for players who over-estimate their draft stock: let them return to school. They haven't made a dime in the NBA, yet the NCAA bans them for life. The NBA has done nothing to cost the player their eligibility, it's all on the NCAA's bylaws.
Stern is trying to take the NBA global, why aren't the teams doing that themselves as well? If I happen to find a billion dollars somewhere and buy an NBA team - one of the things I'd do would be buy an interest / form a partnership or outright buy a foreign team(s). That way I get first dibs on any players developed there and get a better look at the rest of whatever league I buy into. Seems a better way than just international scouting.
One good thing that comes out of looking at it this way is that this helps keep the playing field level; always good for the sport in the long run.
What do I mean? Say 10 unmolded/untried freshmen are drafted and given large salaries. One of these ten actually ends up being worth the money he's paid. The rest are overpaid bench players in the end. Ah, you say, but that's the team's decision to draft these players and take the chance. Yes it is, but it's an arms race that doesn't always pay off, and when smaller markets that don't have the resources of the Lakers or Knicks make that plunge, you've screwed the team for the next few years.
The draft is the exact opposite of an "arms race". Rookies make nothing, The #1 overall pick makes barely more than the MLE. Kyrie Irving made $5.1 million this year, the MLE is $5 million flat. The #2 overall pick, Derrick Williams, made $4.6 million this year - ie, a below-average salary.
Rookie salaries are set in stone, according to draft position. Teams cannot out-bid each other for rookies, other than outright buying draft picks from other teams.
How is any of that an "arms race"? Maybe you're thinking of free agency. That's a completely separate issue from the age of draft eligibility. Further, since all 1st-round picks are locked into 3-year contracts, these guys are 20+ years old by the time they hit free agency. And they've had multiple years of competition at the NBA level - a FAR better indicator of future NBA success than any amount of college/Euro play.
Yes, you can still draft well played players who turn out to be busts (poor Odom) but keeping the field level IS in the best interests of the NBA. Sure they'd love every finals to be Lakers vs Celtics, but it's not near as interesting if they don't go through the little guys first.
WTF.
Odom was not a bust. He scored 30 in his first NBA game. He averaged 16/8/4 as a rookie. He made the All-Rookie team. He has 2 rings and has earned over $100 million in his career, which has spanned more than a decade.
What the heck is going on? Stern put in the dress code to force players to look more presentable, and instead they're dressing like color-blind mental patients.
For comparison, let's consider a guy who unequivocally was a bust, perhaps the quintessential high school draft bust: Kwame Brown (kuh-wah-may brown.)
Who knows what might've happened to Kwame Brown had he gone to college. Perhaps he would've developed into a quality NBA center. Maybe he would've sucked in college and been drafted much later than he was. Maybe he'd have gotten hurt or discovered a love of reneissance poetry and never made it to the league at all.
What actually happened is that kwame brown carved out a 10+ year career as an NBA center. Real NBA teams have paid him tens of millions of dollars for his services as a basketball player. Was he worth the first overall pick? Never in hell. But that's not his fault, it's Michael Jordan's. It is impossible to argue that a player like Kwame Brown somehow hurt himself by entering the draft. Even a player drafted much later only need only play out his rookie deal to finance a college education and much more besides.
The issue is that NBA GMs apparently can't stop themselves from drafting the kwame browns of the world with picks far out of proportion to their skills, not that high school players somehow aren't productive in the NBA.
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
@BubbaT You may "always hear that argument," but I don't think you got what was being argued. :P
You rattled off a list of lottery picks, even though that wasn't the situation being contemplated.
I was referring to players who go way low into the second round and are eventually cut, or far more commonly, go undrafted altogether. In many cases (thought there was a contract coming his way --> hired an agent), the player will lose his college eligibility as well. That's what "gambling your eligibility" and "never hear from again" means in that sentence.
Which isn't to say that there haven't been some high school draftees who've flamed out spectacularly, but there are not "10 for every tyson chandler" or whatever. The majority are dudes like kendrick perkins or c.j. miles; not stars in any sense, but productive players.
Stern is trying to take the NBA global, why aren't the teams doing that themselves as well? If I happen to find a billion dollars somewhere and buy an NBA team - one of the things I'd do would be buy an interest / form a partnership or outright buy a foreign team(s). That way I get first dibs on any players developed there and get a better look at the rest of whatever league I buy into. Seems a better way than just international scouting.
There is this idea being floated around by sports pundits about adding European teams to the NBA, and growing the league that way. There are plenty of major European cities that would benefit from a team more than...Charlotte, NC, USA, for instance.
It's doable from a logistical standpoint. A European team that is on a road trip in the U.S. only has to cross the Atlantic once to get there and once to get back and play at home, for example.
It's an idea that seems more or less inevitable at some point. It just takes the money and courage to make it a reality.
We'll know for sure if Stern is sincere about the idea once the NBA starts turning a profit again. This year, the league didn't so much make money as they lost less than they thought they would, thanks to the lockout. They expect to be profitable again by the 2012-2013 season, and they may reassess the idea of European expansion at that point.
Which isn't to say that there haven't been some high school draftees who've flamed out spectacularly, but there are not "10 for every tyson chandler" or whatever. The majority are dudes like kendrick perkins or c.j. miles; not stars in any sense, but productive players.
Yeah, I don't think you get it either. We're talking about players you literally have never heard of, because they never became NBA players in anything but a technical sense (drafted very low, then cut) or aspirational sense (never drafted at all).
I'm not sure what it is you think I'm not getting. It seems like you think there are hundreds of high school players who have declared but gone undrafted, and there just aren't. Perhaps 10 or 12 of the guys on that list of 45 (by my quick count) were total washouts; a handful were stars, and the rest mostly played a few years before being cut, moving to foreign leagues or being derailed by injury.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Also, you CAN go to school even after being drafted. CJ Miles was committed to Texas and could have gone even after he was drafted in the second round (he said he would go if he didn't get picked in the first round), but decided to go pro anyway after the Jazz offered him a two-year contract.
So if these mystery high-schoolers that FoM is talking about didn't get drafted at all, they could still just go to college anyway. It's more akin to baseball, which is a much better model for changing the draft process than the NFL.
What the heck is going on? Stern put in the dress code to force players to look more presentable, and instead they're dressing like color-blind mental patients.
Speaking of the dress code - that reminds me of this article:
One good thing that comes out of looking at it this way is that this helps keep the playing field level; always good for the sport in the long run.
What do I mean? Say 10 unmolded/untried freshmen are drafted and given large salaries. One of these ten actually ends up being worth the money he's paid. The rest are overpaid bench players in the end. Ah, you say, but that's the team's decision to draft these players and take the chance. Yes it is, but it's an arms race that doesn't always pay off, and when smaller markets that don't have the resources of the Lakers or Knicks make that plunge, you've screwed the team for the next few years.
The draft is the exact opposite of an "arms race". Rookies make nothing, The #1 overall pick makes barely more than the MLE. Kyrie Irving made $5.1 million this year, the MLE is $5 million flat. The #2 overall pick, Derrick Williams, made $4.6 million this year - ie, a below-average salary.
Rookie salaries are set in stone, according to draft position. Teams cannot out-bid each other for rookies, other than outright buying draft picks from other teams.
How is any of that an "arms race"? Maybe you're thinking of free agency. That's a completely separate issue from the age of draft eligibility. Further, since all 1st-round picks are locked into 3-year contracts, these guys are 20+ years old by the time they hit free agency. And they've had multiple years of competition at the NBA level - a FAR better indicator of future NBA success than any amount of college/Euro play.
You are right, I was thinking sideways there (more likely confusing NBA's draft with other drafts). So, disregard!
Also, you CAN go to school even after being drafted. CJ Miles was committed to Texas and could have gone even after he was drafted in the second round (he said he would go if he didn't get picked in the first round), but decided to go pro anyway after the Jazz offered him a two-year contract.
So if these mystery high-schoolers that FoM is talking about didn't get drafted at all, they could still just go to college anyway. It's more akin to baseball, which is a much better model for changing the draft process than the NFL.
Not if they get an agent or have declared for a previous draft, no, as many do. Absolutely not.
It is their one and only shot at this. With all due respect, this isn't even debatable. These are the draft eligibility rules that I've referred to about four times now, because nobody seems to know what I'm talking about.
EDIT: Here, there's a wiki entry on this that should further clear up confusion. The rules are the same as the last time I looked into this stuff (would have been sort of embarrassing otherwise!). I didn't know that it's actually the NCAA throwing its weight around with the one draft only rule, so that's an interesting development.
A player who declares for the draft will lose his college eligibility, even if he is not drafted, if any of the following is true:
The player signs with an agent.[16]
The player has declared for and withdrawn from a previous draft. Although the NBA collective bargaining agreement allows a player to withdraw twice,[14] the NCAA only allows a player to enter the draft once without losing eligibility.[15]
@BubbaT You may "always hear that argument," but I don't think you got what was being argued. :P
You rattled off a list of lottery picks, even though that wasn't the situation being contemplated.
You said for every successful Tyson Chandler, there are 10 that don't make it.
I say, "citation needed". Who are these HS declarees who are busting at a 10:1 ratio compared to the successes? You've made a factual claim, I'm asking you to back it up with some evidence.
As for a "dream deferred", I'd argue forcing a player to spend 2 years in college is exactly that - you're forcing them to defer their dream of playing in the NBA for 2 years.
@BubbaT You may "always hear that argument," but I don't think you got what was being argued. :P
You rattled off a list of lottery picks, even though that wasn't the situation being contemplated.
You said for every successful Tyson Chandler, there are 10 that don't make it.
I say, "citation needed". Who are these HS declarees who are busting at a 10:1 ratio compared to the successes? You've made a factual claim, I'm asking you to back it up with some evidence.
As for a "dream deferred", I'd argue forcing a player to spend 2 years in college is exactly that - you're forcing them to defer their dream of playing in the NBA for 2 years.
It sounds like your NBA knowledge is rivaled only by your knowledge of Langston Hughes.
I used to be for a higher entry age into the NBA, but Kerr's comments about "Why should we pay for it, when the NCAA does it for free?" rubs me the wrong way. That and the fact that GM's are simply dumb, when it comes to drafting and evaluating talent and "OHMYGODTHEREISACHANCEILOSEOUTONTHENEXT<insertgreatplayerhere>IFIDONTDRAFTTHISKID".
Seriously, they should change the rules in a way that forces GM's to do a better job, not shifting that responsibility to someone totally unrelated.
okay, but seriously. How many high schoolers is it you think were declaring for the draft every year for the 10 or 11 or whatever drafts after garnett came out?
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
okay, but seriously. How many high schoolers is it you think were declaring for the draft every year for the 10 or 11 or whatever drafts after garnett came out?
Couple of things:
- This has been A Thing ever since Moses Malone did it in 1974, not Kevin Garnett in 1995.
- It's not just high school players we've been discussing, but also collegiate players who play for a year and then declare for the draft, who would have almost certainly benefited from more time in college to refine and showcase their skills. Instead, those players go undrafted, or drafted very low and then inevitably cut. It gets even worse for them since a confluence of CBA and NCAA rules can conspire to take away their ability to play both pro and collegiate ball. If they still want to play basketball at that point, then some end up in the D-League or Euro leagues. Most are not so lucky.
- I'm kind of incredulous that this is The First You've Heard of this. It is the very nature of the draft that more players declare for it than are actually drafted. What do you think happens to those people? Especially the ones who got bad information about their pick range, or got injured or into criminal legal trouble after declaring? Even in cases where nothing happened, they just...go undrafted...they can't just happily return to playing collegiate ball with the expectation that they can then re-declare for a subsequent draft down the road. This is essentially their one and only shot at playing in the NBA.
If you force people to stay in college longer only means that the people inevitably getting cut are slightly more developed as a player. There are only 450 roster spots in the NBA. Raising the age limit won't change that fact.
Which isn't to say that there haven't been some high school draftees who've flamed out spectacularly, but there are not "10 for every tyson chandler" or whatever. The majority are dudes like kendrick perkins or c.j. miles; not stars in any sense, but productive players.
Yeah, I don't think you get it either. We're talking about players you literally have never heard of, because they never became NBA players in anything but a technical sense (drafted very low, then cut) or aspirational sense (never drafted at all).
Actually, we have heard of them. Every early entry into the NBA draft every year is known. They have to file official paperwork with the NBA to be draft-eligible.
- Ellis Richardson
- Tony Key
- Jackie Butler: eventually reached the NBA, playing with the Knicks and Spurs.
- DeAngelo Collins: wrecked his knee in Turkey (an injury which could have just as easily happened in college). Even after the injury there was some NBA interest and he got a try out with the Cavs, but he was never the same player.
- Taj McDavid: wasn't even recruited by any Division I schools to start with.
- Lenny Cooke
So in an entire decade of the NBA drafting HSers, you have a grand total of 6 HS declarees who weren't drafted. Just six. And one of those 6 made the NBA anyways.
There were never hordes of HSers declaring for the draft, only to be left by the wayside because they over-estimated their draft stock. It doesn't take a genius of a HS player to figure out his draft stock - they have access to the same internet with the same mock draft sites as everybody else. They also have access to professional draft-rating services who talk with NBA team execs.
Nor does it make sense for a player's advisers to try and convince a player to declare early by falsely inflating the player's draft stock. Those advisers are all dependent on the player actually making an NBA team, in order to get paid themselves. If an agent gets 10% of the player's contract, but the player goes undrafted and never signs a contract, then the agent has just earned himself 10% of nothing. And risked damaging his rep along the way.
@BubbaT You may "always hear that argument," but I don't think you got what was being argued. :P
You rattled off a list of lottery picks, even though that wasn't the situation being contemplated.
You said for every successful Tyson Chandler, there are 10 that don't make it.
I say, "citation needed". Who are these HS declarees who are busting at a 10:1 ratio compared to the successes? You've made a factual claim, I'm asking you to back it up with some evidence.
As for a "dream deferred", I'd argue forcing a player to spend 2 years in college is exactly that - you're forcing them to defer their dream of playing in the NBA for 2 years.
It sounds like your NBA knowledge is rivaled only by your knowledge of Langston Hughes.
It sounds like you've never heard of Chris Marcus. Following his freshman year, he was a projected NBA lottery pick. But instead of declaring, he returned to school to refine his game. Instead he got hurt, fell into alcoholism, and his NBA dream dried up like a raisin in the sun.
The difference between Marcus and Greg Oden? Oden went to the NBA early, and by the time he got hurt he had already secured millions of dollars in NBA salary. Marcus lives with his parents and works minimum-wage jobs.
BTW - still waiting for you to provide that evidence backing your 10:1 claim. Or are all your claims just poetic license?
@BubbaT - It's like this, dude. You didn't read properly and were certain that we were talking about only high school players, even though the post used words like "college eligibility." It seemed pretty obvious what situations were being contemplated, but alright, we can spend a post or two making sure even the slower ones among us are caught up.
And then after spending what...30 minutes? researching an argument nobody was even having, you've made things even sadder. You are co-opting exactly the sort of sob scenario that I've been talking about this entire time, claiming it for your own.
I'll interpret this as a tacit admission that you finally--fucking finally--understand what we're even talking about. But since that took about 5 posts to happen, you've exhausted all the goodwill I had in wanting to talk to you about this. I frankly feel we'd have to go through another 5 posts just for you to understand what others get in just 1. It's not a good use of my time.
But yeah, your "I DEMAND YOU COMB THE WEB FOR INFO ABOUT THIS THING I BARELY UNDERSTAND" callout is kind of amusing, so it's not a total loss. You keep reaching, buddy. :P
okay, but seriously. How many high schoolers is it you think were declaring for the draft every year for the 10 or 11 or whatever drafts after garnett came out?
Couple of things:
- This has been A Thing ever since Moses Malone did it in 1974, not Kevin Garnett in 1995.
okay, but only like three prep players came out in the years between malone and garnett. The large preponderance of "who we are talking about" are players who declared after 1995.
- It's not just high school players we've been discussing, but also collegiate players who play for a year and then declare for the draft, who would have almost certainly benefited from more time in college to refine and showcase their skills. Instead, those players go undrafted, or drafted very low and then inevitably cut. It gets even worse for them since a confluence of CBA and NCAA rules can conspire to take away their ability to play both pro and collegiate ball. If they still want to play basketball at that point, then some end up in the D-League or Euro leagues. Most are not so lucky.
I had been under the impression that we are talking about players who came straight from high school. Certainly that seems to be what everyone else has been discussing for ~2 pages.
I used to be for a higher entry age into the NBA, but Kerr's comments about "Why should we pay for it, when the NCAA does it for free?" rubs me the wrong way. That and the fact that GM's are simply dumb, when it comes to drafting and evaluating talent and "OHMYGODTHEREISACHANCEILOSEOUTONTHENEXT<insertgreatplayerhere>IFIDONTDRAFTTHISKID".
Seriously, they should change the rules in a way that forces GM's to do a better job, not shifting that responsibility to someone totally unrelated.
Yup. I'm amazed the lesson the NBA took away from Kwame Brown was that HSers shouldn't be allowed in the NBA.
The true lesson of Kwame Brown being drafted #1 is "Don't let Michael Jordan GM your team" - a lesson that remains unlearned to this very day, to the tune of the worst season in NBA history.
@BubbaT - It's like this, dude. You didn't read properly and were certain that we were talking about only high school players, even though the post used words like "college eligibility." It seemed pretty obvious what situations were being contemplated, but alright, we can spend a post or two making sure even the slower ones among us are caught up.
And then after spending what...30 minutes? researching an argument nobody was even having, you've made things even sadder. You are co-opting exactly the sort of sob scenario that I've been talking about this entire time, claiming it for your own.
I'll interpret this as a tacit admission that you finally--fucking finally--understand what we're even talking about. But since that took about 5 posts to happen, you've exhausted all the goodwill I had in wanting to talk to you about this. I frankly feel we'd have to go through another 5 posts just for you to understand what others get in just 1. It's not a good use of my time.
But yeah, your "I DEMAND YOU COMB THE WEB FOR INFO ABOUT THIS THING I BARELY UNDERSTAND" callout is kind of amusing, so it's not a total loss. You keep reaching, buddy. :P
You make what appear to be factual claims.
I ask for evidence of these claims.
You fail to provide evidence, and fail to retract said claims. You instead say the claims were really about 1-and-dones all along.
I ask for evidence of the claim regarding 1-and-dones.
You fail to provide evidence of that claim either.
Maybe other people let your factual inaccuracies and baseless claims slide - I dunno, good for them? Such as HS draftees being a "thing" since Moses in '74, when actually it was Reggie Harding in '62. Such as claiming that nobody knows about all the countless undrafted HS declarees, when in fact there are precise records of every single early entrant into the NBA draft every year.
Even if you add one and done players, your 10:1 construction doesn't come close to holding up. Shit there aren't even 10 "tyson chandlers" for every "moses malone," just because there aren't enough players to support that kind of ratio.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
okay, but seriously. How many high schoolers is it you think were declaring for the draft every year for the 10 or 11 or whatever drafts after garnett came out?
Couple of things:
- This has been A Thing ever since Moses Malone did it in 1974, not Kevin Garnett in 1995.
okay, but only like three prep players came out in the years between malone and garnett. The large preponderance of "who we are talking about" are players who declared after 1995.
- It's not just high school players we've been discussing, but also collegiate players who play for a year and then declare for the draft, who would have almost certainly benefited from more time in college to refine and showcase their skills. Instead, those players go undrafted, or drafted very low and then inevitably cut. It gets even worse for them since a confluence of CBA and NCAA rules can conspire to take away their ability to play both pro and collegiate ball. If they still want to play basketball at that point, then some end up in the D-League or Euro leagues. Most are not so lucky.
I had been under the impression that we are talking about players who came straight from high school. Certainly that seems to be what everyone else has been discussing for ~2 pages.
Here again, the majority are successful NBA players, with lots of the 'failures' having been for injury reasons.
This is a very myopic view, though. A player's interests are almost always better served by staying in college, even if we define their eventual "success" as making multiple millions of dollars before getting bounced out of the league.
I want to use as an example a player you may not have heard of unless you are a hardcore ACC nerd. His name is Julius Hodge.
Hodge went to NC State and distinguished himself there, earning ACC Player of the Year honors and leading his team to the round of 16 the year before he was drafted. This is his sheet on basketball reference:
As you can see, he spent all 4 years playing college ball, and was eventually drafted 20th by the Nuggets.
What is interesting, and is not reflected on that sheet, is that Julius Hodge was essentially a criminal who also played college basketball. In his years at NC State, he was implicated in a litany of break-ins, drug charges, even a shooting or two. There's no other way to put this: He just wasn't a good kid. But because of the nature of college competition, the university tried its hardest to downplay this stuff and sweep it under the rug.
Oh, but NBA scouts were aware of it all. They make bad calls, but it's often not for lack of information. They knew of his demeanor for misdemeanors and felonies, and they were likewise concerned that Hodge was a "tweener" type of player who lacked the ball handling and shooting skills to play in an NBA backcourt, while also lacking the physical presence to play at the 3 or 4. The jury was very much out on Julius Hodge.
But because he had invested the time to showcase his skills for another 3 years in college, teams were willing (some might even say foolish enough) to overlook his issues, and Hodge went from undraftable to a #20 pick that year.
From that point on, his NBA "career"--if we can even call it that--involved playing all of 14 games for the Nuggets, and getting paid $2.3 million for a few years of work so he could ride the pine and fuck around overseas and in the D-League. A somewhat marginal, bubble talent made off like a bandit because he showed enough good things on a collegiate court for a team to want to take a chance on him.
And while Hodge's dream to have a long and successful NBA career never became a reality--what with him sucking at it and all--the millions of dollars he ended up earning only by being patient surely must be some salve.
This is a very myopic view, though. A player's interests are almost always better served by staying in college, even if we define their eventual "success" as making multiple millions of dollars before getting bounced out of the league.
I don't know about you, dude, but if you'd told me as an incoming college sophomore that I could drop out, make a couple million bucks in a few years, then return to finish my degree if I felt like it? I don't want to say I'd have jumped on it immediately, but it would have been pretty tough to justify staying. It amuses me that everybody's always eager to romanticize the value of the college experience when it comes to basketball players, but nobody is ever mad that Mark Zuckerberg left early.
As far as your example goes, I'm glad hodges was able to get to the league and make some money. But he isn't really an argument for anything, except that perhaps a long college career against inferior competition might make a prospect look more NBA-ready than he actually is. Certainly it doesn't seem to have benefited the nuggets, who appear to have blown a first round draft pick.
The reality is that if you were ever good enough to be a potential HS or one-and-done draftee, you're really good at playing basketball. This is borne out by the fact that those players are, by and large, successful in the NBA. A relative few fail for maturity reasons or because they were never good enough in the first place and got bad advice. But there are not these hundreds of players who are tossing away their college lives for an imagined chance in the NBA (and to the extent that there are, the fault lies with the NCAA for having such exploitative eligibility rules anyway.)
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
So what are you even arguing about, then? This whole thing started with you implying that lebron should be as good as jordan (or have won as much, or had as good a head fake in the post, or something), which a page later you seem to have conceded is not the case.
You do realize that this example only proves Bubbas point, right? That forcing players to stay in school insnt the solution.
Not really, no. In the case of Hodge, he would not have been drafted at all if he had made the jump to the NBA after his first year, or had forgone college for a declaration out of High School. He stayed in college and got better, and the final disposition is that it worked out for him financially, but not in terms of a long NBA career. Some players just never make the leap to adjusting to the pro game, and are very fortunate they spent a number of years playing college ball, making the case that they wouldn't be one of those people.
College development is the solution if we care about raising the overall quality of play in the league among players who make the cut and among those who don't--and it is the solution if we care about the long-term financial interests of the players. There is an eventual payday waiting for them down the road, but whether or not there is a long career waiting for them as well can be highly dependent on the player (this guy would rather jump you and take your wallet than learn a proper drop step) and the level of college instruction he gets (NC State's basketball program was "okay" at the most).
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
Like Simmons--who was too busy watching Celtics games to know about Robert Horry and should really know better--you have this mythical, idealized version of him that isn't supported by the truth. I watched this man play as a Rocket and as Spur for years (season tickets). He was a consummate slacker. Even Lakers fans noticed this and would ride him for it.
Simmons attributed the rise of Kia sales and marketing success in America to Blake Griffin. Not Fake-Halo and Hampsters. Think about that.
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Yea, the NBA could just send rooks down to develop for 1-2 years (with the exception of "instant starters") but they mostly just don't.
TylerJ on League of Legends (it's free and fun!)
The problem is that no team, having signed a top ten draft pick to big money, wants to send the guy to the d-league for a year or two (or even for less than that.) There's tremendous financial and public pressure on teams to play these guys right away.
I mean, Kerr's argument is essentially "the nba should be able to use it's monopoly status to force college basketball to be a de facto development system, because the league is (frequently, at least) too dumb to invest in and use the development system it created for itself." Which is an argument that makes plenty of sense if you're an NBA GM, but I'm not sure why anybody else would buy it.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
2 of those 3 are from 30 years ago. It's a different era.
And if Kareem was eligible coming out of HS, he woulda been the #1 pick.
I always hear this argument. I don't believe it for a second.
Kobe
Dwight
Garnett
Lebron
McGrady
Bynum
Rashard Lewis
Amare Stoudemire
Jermaine O'Neal
each one an NBA All-Star. Now name me 90 HS draftees that busted.
Also, there's a solution for players who over-estimate their draft stock: let them return to school. They haven't made a dime in the NBA, yet the NCAA bans them for life. The NBA has done nothing to cost the player their eligibility, it's all on the NCAA's bylaws.
The draft is the exact opposite of an "arms race". Rookies make nothing, The #1 overall pick makes barely more than the MLE. Kyrie Irving made $5.1 million this year, the MLE is $5 million flat. The #2 overall pick, Derrick Williams, made $4.6 million this year - ie, a below-average salary.
Rookie salaries are set in stone, according to draft position. Teams cannot out-bid each other for rookies, other than outright buying draft picks from other teams.
How is any of that an "arms race"? Maybe you're thinking of free agency. That's a completely separate issue from the age of draft eligibility. Further, since all 1st-round picks are locked into 3-year contracts, these guys are 20+ years old by the time they hit free agency. And they've had multiple years of competition at the NBA level - a FAR better indicator of future NBA success than any amount of college/Euro play.
WTF.
Odom was not a bust. He scored 30 in his first NBA game. He averaged 16/8/4 as a rookie. He made the All-Rookie team. He has 2 rings and has earned over $100 million in his career, which has spanned more than a decade.
Who knows what might've happened to Kwame Brown had he gone to college. Perhaps he would've developed into a quality NBA center. Maybe he would've sucked in college and been drafted much later than he was. Maybe he'd have gotten hurt or discovered a love of reneissance poetry and never made it to the league at all.
What actually happened is that kwame brown carved out a 10+ year career as an NBA center. Real NBA teams have paid him tens of millions of dollars for his services as a basketball player. Was he worth the first overall pick? Never in hell. But that's not his fault, it's Michael Jordan's. It is impossible to argue that a player like Kwame Brown somehow hurt himself by entering the draft. Even a player drafted much later only need only play out his rookie deal to finance a college education and much more besides.
The issue is that NBA GMs apparently can't stop themselves from drafting the kwame browns of the world with picks far out of proportion to their skills, not that high school players somehow aren't productive in the NBA.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
You rattled off a list of lottery picks, even though that wasn't the situation being contemplated.
I was referring to players who go way low into the second round and are eventually cut, or far more commonly, go undrafted altogether. In many cases (thought there was a contract coming his way --> hired an agent), the player will lose his college eligibility as well. That's what "gambling your eligibility" and "never hear from again" means in that sentence.
ed: for reference: http://ssbasketball.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=1132&CID=356192
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
There is this idea being floated around by sports pundits about adding European teams to the NBA, and growing the league that way. There are plenty of major European cities that would benefit from a team more than...Charlotte, NC, USA, for instance.
It's doable from a logistical standpoint. A European team that is on a road trip in the U.S. only has to cross the Atlantic once to get there and once to get back and play at home, for example.
It's an idea that seems more or less inevitable at some point. It just takes the money and courage to make it a reality.
We'll know for sure if Stern is sincere about the idea once the NBA starts turning a profit again. This year, the league didn't so much make money as they lost less than they thought they would, thanks to the lockout. They expect to be profitable again by the 2012-2013 season, and they may reassess the idea of European expansion at that point.
Yeah, I don't think you get it either. We're talking about players you literally have never heard of, because they never became NBA players in anything but a technical sense (drafted very low, then cut) or aspirational sense (never drafted at all).
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
So if these mystery high-schoolers that FoM is talking about didn't get drafted at all, they could still just go to college anyway. It's more akin to baseball, which is a much better model for changing the draft process than the NFL.
Speaking of the dress code - that reminds me of this article:
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7346656/the-rise-nba-nerd
Pretty good read.
You are right, I was thinking sideways there (more likely confusing NBA's draft with other drafts). So, disregard!
Not if they get an agent or have declared for a previous draft, no, as many do. Absolutely not.
It is their one and only shot at this. With all due respect, this isn't even debatable. These are the draft eligibility rules that I've referred to about four times now, because nobody seems to know what I'm talking about.
EDIT: Here, there's a wiki entry on this that should further clear up confusion. The rules are the same as the last time I looked into this stuff (would have been sort of embarrassing otherwise!). I didn't know that it's actually the NCAA throwing its weight around with the one draft only rule, so that's an interesting development.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
You said for every successful Tyson Chandler, there are 10 that don't make it.
I say, "citation needed". Who are these HS declarees who are busting at a 10:1 ratio compared to the successes? You've made a factual claim, I'm asking you to back it up with some evidence.
As for a "dream deferred", I'd argue forcing a player to spend 2 years in college is exactly that - you're forcing them to defer their dream of playing in the NBA for 2 years.
It sounds like your NBA knowledge is rivaled only by your knowledge of Langston Hughes.
Seriously, they should change the rules in a way that forces GM's to do a better job, not shifting that responsibility to someone totally unrelated.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Couple of things:
- This has been A Thing ever since Moses Malone did it in 1974, not Kevin Garnett in 1995.
- It's not just high school players we've been discussing, but also collegiate players who play for a year and then declare for the draft, who would have almost certainly benefited from more time in college to refine and showcase their skills. Instead, those players go undrafted, or drafted very low and then inevitably cut. It gets even worse for them since a confluence of CBA and NCAA rules can conspire to take away their ability to play both pro and collegiate ball. If they still want to play basketball at that point, then some end up in the D-League or Euro leagues. Most are not so lucky.
- I'm kind of incredulous that this is The First You've Heard of this. It is the very nature of the draft that more players declare for it than are actually drafted. What do you think happens to those people? Especially the ones who got bad information about their pick range, or got injured or into criminal legal trouble after declaring? Even in cases where nothing happened, they just...go undrafted...they can't just happily return to playing collegiate ball with the expectation that they can then re-declare for a subsequent draft down the road. This is essentially their one and only shot at playing in the NBA.
Actually, we have heard of them. Every early entry into the NBA draft every year is known. They have to file official paperwork with the NBA to be draft-eligible.
There were not hordes of HSers declaring for the draft every year. From 1995-2004, there were only 36 HSers who declared for the draft. Of those, 30 were drafted.
http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/448/the-forgotten-high-schoolers-the-undrafted
The 6 who weren't picked were:
- Ellis Richardson
- Tony Key
- Jackie Butler: eventually reached the NBA, playing with the Knicks and Spurs.
- DeAngelo Collins: wrecked his knee in Turkey (an injury which could have just as easily happened in college). Even after the injury there was some NBA interest and he got a try out with the Cavs, but he was never the same player.
- Taj McDavid: wasn't even recruited by any Division I schools to start with.
- Lenny Cooke
So in an entire decade of the NBA drafting HSers, you have a grand total of 6 HS declarees who weren't drafted. Just six. And one of those 6 made the NBA anyways.
There were never hordes of HSers declaring for the draft, only to be left by the wayside because they over-estimated their draft stock. It doesn't take a genius of a HS player to figure out his draft stock - they have access to the same internet with the same mock draft sites as everybody else. They also have access to professional draft-rating services who talk with NBA team execs.
Nor does it make sense for a player's advisers to try and convince a player to declare early by falsely inflating the player's draft stock. Those advisers are all dependent on the player actually making an NBA team, in order to get paid themselves. If an agent gets 10% of the player's contract, but the player goes undrafted and never signs a contract, then the agent has just earned himself 10% of nothing. And risked damaging his rep along the way.
It sounds like you've never heard of Chris Marcus. Following his freshman year, he was a projected NBA lottery pick. But instead of declaring, he returned to school to refine his game. Instead he got hurt, fell into alcoholism, and his NBA dream dried up like a raisin in the sun.
The difference between Marcus and Greg Oden? Oden went to the NBA early, and by the time he got hurt he had already secured millions of dollars in NBA salary. Marcus lives with his parents and works minimum-wage jobs.
BTW - still waiting for you to provide that evidence backing your 10:1 claim. Or are all your claims just poetic license?
And then after spending what...30 minutes? researching an argument nobody was even having, you've made things even sadder. You are co-opting exactly the sort of sob scenario that I've been talking about this entire time, claiming it for your own.
I'll interpret this as a tacit admission that you finally--fucking finally--understand what we're even talking about. But since that took about 5 posts to happen, you've exhausted all the goodwill I had in wanting to talk to you about this. I frankly feel we'd have to go through another 5 posts just for you to understand what others get in just 1. It's not a good use of my time.
But yeah, your "I DEMAND YOU COMB THE WEB FOR INFO ABOUT THIS THING I BARELY UNDERSTAND" callout is kind of amusing, so it's not a total loss. You keep reaching, buddy. :P
okay, but only like three prep players came out in the years between malone and garnett. The large preponderance of "who we are talking about" are players who declared after 1995.
I had been under the impression that we are talking about players who came straight from high school. Certainly that seems to be what everyone else has been discussing for ~2 pages.
But, if you'd like to evaluate the one-and-done players since 2006 and see how they've fared, you can do it pretty quickly. There are 39 of them. I couldn't find a complete list, but here is a fairly extensive partial one: http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/7207951/ncb-derrick-rose-kyrie-irving-37-other-players-nba-one-year-rule-espn-magazine
Here again, the majority are successful NBA players, with lots of the 'failures' having been for injury reasons.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Yup. I'm amazed the lesson the NBA took away from Kwame Brown was that HSers shouldn't be allowed in the NBA.
The true lesson of Kwame Brown being drafted #1 is "Don't let Michael Jordan GM your team" - a lesson that remains unlearned to this very day, to the tune of the worst season in NBA history.
You make what appear to be factual claims.
I ask for evidence of these claims.
You fail to provide evidence, and fail to retract said claims. You instead say the claims were really about 1-and-dones all along.
I ask for evidence of the claim regarding 1-and-dones.
You fail to provide evidence of that claim either.
Maybe other people let your factual inaccuracies and baseless claims slide - I dunno, good for them? Such as HS draftees being a "thing" since Moses in '74, when actually it was Reggie Harding in '62. Such as claiming that nobody knows about all the countless undrafted HS declarees, when in fact there are precise records of every single early entrant into the NBA draft every year.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
This is a very myopic view, though. A player's interests are almost always better served by staying in college, even if we define their eventual "success" as making multiple millions of dollars before getting bounced out of the league.
I want to use as an example a player you may not have heard of unless you are a hardcore ACC nerd. His name is Julius Hodge.
Hodge went to NC State and distinguished himself there, earning ACC Player of the Year honors and leading his team to the round of 16 the year before he was drafted. This is his sheet on basketball reference:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/h/hodgeju01.html
As you can see, he spent all 4 years playing college ball, and was eventually drafted 20th by the Nuggets.
What is interesting, and is not reflected on that sheet, is that Julius Hodge was essentially a criminal who also played college basketball. In his years at NC State, he was implicated in a litany of break-ins, drug charges, even a shooting or two. There's no other way to put this: He just wasn't a good kid. But because of the nature of college competition, the university tried its hardest to downplay this stuff and sweep it under the rug.
Oh, but NBA scouts were aware of it all. They make bad calls, but it's often not for lack of information. They knew of his demeanor for misdemeanors and felonies, and they were likewise concerned that Hodge was a "tweener" type of player who lacked the ball handling and shooting skills to play in an NBA backcourt, while also lacking the physical presence to play at the 3 or 4. The jury was very much out on Julius Hodge.
But because he had invested the time to showcase his skills for another 3 years in college, teams were willing (some might even say foolish enough) to overlook his issues, and Hodge went from undraftable to a #20 pick that year.
From that point on, his NBA "career"--if we can even call it that--involved playing all of 14 games for the Nuggets, and getting paid $2.3 million for a few years of work so he could ride the pine and fuck around overseas and in the D-League. A somewhat marginal, bubble talent made off like a bandit because he showed enough good things on a collegiate court for a team to want to take a chance on him.
And while Hodge's dream to have a long and successful NBA career never became a reality--what with him sucking at it and all--the millions of dollars he ended up earning only by being patient surely must be some salve.
I don't know about you, dude, but if you'd told me as an incoming college sophomore that I could drop out, make a couple million bucks in a few years, then return to finish my degree if I felt like it? I don't want to say I'd have jumped on it immediately, but it would have been pretty tough to justify staying. It amuses me that everybody's always eager to romanticize the value of the college experience when it comes to basketball players, but nobody is ever mad that Mark Zuckerberg left early.
As far as your example goes, I'm glad hodges was able to get to the league and make some money. But he isn't really an argument for anything, except that perhaps a long college career against inferior competition might make a prospect look more NBA-ready than he actually is. Certainly it doesn't seem to have benefited the nuggets, who appear to have blown a first round draft pick.
The reality is that if you were ever good enough to be a potential HS or one-and-done draftee, you're really good at playing basketball. This is borne out by the fact that those players are, by and large, successful in the NBA. A relative few fail for maturity reasons or because they were never good enough in the first place and got bad advice. But there are not these hundreds of players who are tossing away their college lives for an imagined chance in the NBA (and to the extent that there are, the fault lies with the NCAA for having such exploitative eligibility rules anyway.)
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I never said anything of the sort!
Not really, no. In the case of Hodge, he would not have been drafted at all if he had made the jump to the NBA after his first year, or had forgone college for a declaration out of High School. He stayed in college and got better, and the final disposition is that it worked out for him financially, but not in terms of a long NBA career. Some players just never make the leap to adjusting to the pro game, and are very fortunate they spent a number of years playing college ball, making the case that they wouldn't be one of those people.
College development is the solution if we care about raising the overall quality of play in the league among players who make the cut and among those who don't--and it is the solution if we care about the long-term financial interests of the players. There is an eventual payday waiting for them down the road, but whether or not there is a long career waiting for them as well can be highly dependent on the player (this guy would rather jump you and take your wallet than learn a proper drop step) and the level of college instruction he gets (NC State's basketball program was "okay" at the most).
Simmons attributed the rise of Kia sales and marketing success in America to Blake Griffin. Not Fake-Halo and Hampsters. Think about that.