Celebrate the New Dark Age

The New York Times recently ran an interesting article checking in on Jeremy Tyler, the 6-11 eighteen year old who one upped Brandon Jennings by not only bypassing college, but also his senior year of high school, to play professionally overseas. Tyler landed in Israel, where his experience has made Jennings's time in Italy look like a vacation by comparison. Indeed, the most striking thing about the article is how Jennings, now five games into his NBA career, is already perceived as a success story. Much was made last year about Jennings struggling with the transition and playing sparingly for Lottomatica Roma, but everything’s changed now that he's locked down the starting point guard job for the Bucks, while averaging 18.4 ppg, 4.4 apg, and 4.4 rpg and looking like the early favorite for Rookie of the Year.

The moral of the story seems to be that, if you're willing to suck it up and adhere to European basketball's bizarre notions of team play for a year (or in Tyler's case, two years), then NBA stardom awaits. Sonny Vaccaro, the evil genius behind both players' decisions, stated the matter more bluntly by praising Jennings's willingness to "shut up and learn." Tyler, by contrast, has reportedly demonstrated the kind of immaturity and whiny entitlement that most people seem to expect from today's teenager. If Tyler fails, it may jeopardize Vaccaro's plans and those of his partner in crime Jeffrey H. Rosen. Rosen has great plans for turning his Israeli pro team Maccabi Haifa into "the preferred destination for American prodigies who want to skip college" and ultimately "a global media presence." Shades of Saperstein.



Last week, Latavious Williams added a new wrinkle to the discussion by becoming the first high schooler to be drafted by the NBDL. Williams had already done several other things you do when you're a high school basketball star with bad grades and low test scores: go to prep school for a year, commit to Memphis, and explore the option of playing overseas. It turns out no foreign team was interested in the raw combo forward whom Scout.com rated the 52nd best player in the class of 2008, so the DL and its $19,000/year contract was the only option left. Since it's unlikely Williams will ever play in the NBA, he is more of a sad anomaly than a legit test case.

Current college freshmen John Wall and Renardo Sidney are better examples, since both have the skill, size, and athleticism that the NBA actually wants. Wall was rumored to be exploring the option of going overseas, but ultimately decided to play for Kentucky, which under Calipari is kind of like playing professionally while getting to stay in the country. (Lexington is also the likely destination of Michael Gilchrist, currently a high school junior and widely considered to be the best player in the nation. Oh, and he happens to be a close family friend of Worldwide Wes.) Sidney also selected an SEC school, Mississippi State, after most every other school backed away, out of concern about Sidney's amateur status possibly being compromised. Unsurprisingly, Sidney has still not been cleared to play this season by the NCAA, and Wall's status is similarly muddy.



Wall and Sidney's situation is a reminder that Jennings was also scheduled to play collegiately (at Arizona) before the NCAA flagged his test scores, thus setting into motion Vaccaro’s machinations. It’s worth mentioning here that KG was also planning to attend college (at Michigan or maybe UNC, depending on whom you talk to) before test scores derailed his plans and made him the next gen Moses (Malone), leading a generation of high schoolers into the promised land. Remember, also, that according to the NCAA record books, Derrick Rose never played in the national championship game, because someone else took his SATs for him. To a man, these players were willing (and even wanted) to go to college, but were prevented from doing so by either low test scores or, in the case of Wall and Sidney, unsavory associations. If Garnett or Jennings had been allowed to go to college, it’s not difficult to imagine them extolling the experience and continuing to take classes the way Durant and Oden have. So, when we talk about these issues, we need to reconsider whether players are going overseas to chase the money or because the NCAA forced them out. The answer, in most cases, is probably both.

So whither Wall and Sidney? If they are ultimately cleared by the NCAA, they play a year of college basketball, increase their brand awareness, and enter next year’s NBA Draft as known commodities. But, if they aren’t, then what? Since I assume they’ve been accepted as students by their universities, they could continue to take classes and work out individually, but that seems unlikely. A last minute pro contract overseas, a stint in the NBDL buoyed by sneaker money, or maybe an agent-sponsored residency at somewhere like the IMG Academy is more like it. Maybe the humiliation of being effectively kicked out of school would give them the motivation to succeed where Tyler has thus far failed. And if it works out for them, who could blame the next hoops prodigy for wanting to follow in their footsteps and stay clear of all the NCAA drama?

How We Saved the World, Again

Don't ask me how a post about Rep. Steve Cohen's age limit remarks, and Cohen himself, ended up on The Baseline. Oh, I forgot: Because that's where everything corporate and boring goes to die.

Anyway, this got myself and Joey talking about the rule, with me explaining to him the exemption/cap-and-trade system devised on last week's podcast. For those of you who didn't make it that far, Dan, Ken, special guest Kevin Pelton, and myself discussed the possibility of teams getting a voucher for, say, one preps-to-pro pick per decade. Break glass in case of LeBron James, in other words. They could be traded, too, so in theory one team could horde them in hopes of the next LeBron coming down.

This lead one of us to a very basic, but meaningful, breakthrough: Education is valuable. But you know who it has the most value for? People who don't have the opportunity to make millions right out of high school as professional athletes. What if, whenever a player wanted to go pro out of the 12th grade, they would designate a promising non-athlete to be tutored up and attend a four-year college—all at the expense of the team that drafted them? We're talking about peanuts for an NBA franchise, especially if the number of players making the jump were reduced through the aforementioned system.

It's not just that the "student-athlete" model is hypocritical, dated, and hopelessly flawed. It's that, if you want to talk about teens who could make the most difference in society if exposed to higher ed, basketball players are way at the bottom of the list. That's not to say that all athletes are stupid, or some don't have an appetite for learning. Just that, if you're going to pull that "education can change a life" cant with a one-and-done, you're insulting every potential doctor, lawyer, educator, whatever who isn't currently in a position to attend college.

The only losers here? Someone like Kevin Durant, who wants to both play ball and pursue a degree (over the summer). The question is, would he have the same educational option available to him if he tried to go to college as a preps-to-pro player? That would depend on a lot of things, and might be an actually realistic reason for the one-and-done to exist. Derrick Rose, though? Surely he's got some friend screwed over by city schools, and who might even be useful to him down the road if he gets a business degree.

Hell, if that happened, it might even help the NBA, too.

P.S.We are looking for research assistants for the new book, preferably in Seattle, Chicago, Boston, or New Haven. We will get you college credit and free shit. Holler at the gmail (freedarko at gmail dot com) if interested.

Don't Get Killed

Full disclosure: Part of the reason I love Upside and Motor's newly-unveiled NBA Archetypes so much is that FD has been discussing a similar model. Or maybe we did this, kind of, with the categories in the book. But he did it thorough, and I can't stop thinking about it. So here's the main image, and let's talk about it.

Actually, I really just want to use it to present my once-and-for-all argument for the age limit, something I developed during a shouting match at our Vassar appearance. While I don't exactly agree with Rob's hierarchy—big men of any kind seem to really get short shrift, even by my standards—it does clearly illustrate the rise of the guard that we've often discussed 'round these parts. The dream is of landing a Chris Paul, Deron Williams or Derrick Rose, who as recently history has borne out, are actually easier to build around, and thus truer franchise players, than the likes of the titanic Yao or Dwight Howard. Yes, refined big man is up there with point guard supreme, because the absolute gems of that category are still invaluable. But they've become 1B to the point guard's 1A. And, almost absurdly, you have to look down to the fourth tier to find another archetype that specifically requires size.

Again, I think that's a little batty. Still, it shows how far we've come from the "size conquers all" outlook, at least according to one model of things. While you usually hear about "need" versus "best available" (draft concepts that actually should more often be extended to include free agency and trades), the pro-height bias was almost a philosophy unto itself. In fact, it almost encapsulated, or subsumed, both of the others: Big players were always the best available, and you could always use height, because size wins.



And that, dear readers, is why I support the age limit. Let's not pretend that coming out of high school was about equal rights and opportunity for all. Teams disproportionately favored tall players; in fact, it was a truism that no one drafted high school guards. I can count on one hand the non-big men who ended up with favorable draft position: Kobe, T-Mac, Sean Livingston (length), Telfair (sneaker conspiracy), Webster (huh?), J.R. Smith (blueprint shooting guard, non-lottery), Gerald Green (dropped like crazy). Let's not forget about the 2005 draft, when Monta Ellis, Louis Williams, and C.J. Miles all fell into the second round, when at least one of them was projected to go in the first. Who went first overall last summer? Derrick Rose, who certainly deserved it. Would he have gone that high out of high school? Absolutely not. That just wasn't the culture of high school scouting.

There's a perfect confluence here of the rise of the point guard, which came about as a combination of Nash's MVP's and the success of Paul and Williams, and teams being forced to wait another year before delivering their final verdict on a player. High school big men were drafted on size, athleticism, and some semblance of coordination. Scoring wings or guards didn't just have to have outlandish numbers—who doesn't in high school—but also the size and physical ability that made them sound pro prospects. The likes of Williams, Ellis, and Miles might as well have been playing with counterfeit dollars. And then when you get to point guards, it's just impossible to judge how well they play with others until they're 1) forced to by stronger competition 2) given the opportunity to do so in a complex way, by having a coach 3) have teammates who can really take advantage of their brilliance. Don't believe me? Take a look at Chris Paul's assist numbers in high school (thanks to Kyle for that one) and college.

So if we all agree that guards, especially the pointy type, are gaining in value, but require more scouting, and big men are drafted on crude factors and no longer rule the game, the age limit makes perfect sense. Put simply, it gives the greatest opportunity to the greatest number of players, not just those born with tremendous height. The argument at Vassar hinged on the Williams/Ellis/Miles troika. The other side claimed that their being drafted showed that the age limit worked for guards. My point was, it shows that it didn't. Had Monta spent a year in college, he would've been a no-brainer lottery pick.

Anyway, we can debate Rob's archetypes further, but certainly it's a product of today's game and scouting climate, and makes a case that, in some ways, there have been shifts in this post-Suns era. Though that doesn't mean that Tim Duncan still wouldn't be picked over Rose, or even Paul, with hindsight.



BONUS: By popular demand, the saga continues:



HOLY COW ALERT: How did I not know until just now that D'Antoni had been on the Spirit of St. Louis?