| June 19,2003 Potential with an age: The NBA needs to seriously look at an NBA age draft limit The cold prospect of being left out in the cold has collge seniors worrying and scurrying. The new brand of prospects are young high schoolers and unproven foreigners. Gone are the four year college wonders. No more seniors pave the way for their followers. Because the seniors are like the rest of coporate America: searching for work. Its gotten real ugly for seniors. Four year playes are having a great degree of difficulty outdoing the prospects of high schoolers who have the sky is the limit written by scouts who ignore the fact that they're interviewing kids barely able to do math. These seniors come out of High School with a lack of an education and not much of a chance outside of basketball. If they fail to be picked they sit the streets and just pray for second chances. Once you enter the draft: college aint an option. You can look at Amare Stoudemire for Phoenix last year: all muscle stregnth and power and a Rookie of the Year to his name. But as fast as you can discourage age look at Tyson Chandler and Eddie Curry and oo yeah that kid Kwame Brown. A number 1 pick in 2001, no Lebron James and totally overated. Sorry but if the NBA wants to institute mostly unready youngsters in to the Pro level, add a separate round. Call it the amateur round. Let 2 year, 3 year, 4 year seniors, get the draft status they deserve. Lebron James and Co. can sit and wait till the third round where they are immediatly instituted into the NBDL. Now wait a sec. you're going to ponder and say now thats a promotion for a league that no one gives a hoot whatsoever about. But guess what thats the juice to this rather worthless column(pending that none of this ever comes remotely true). But this is what you do. We're talking NBDL as in NFL Europe. Put James, Darko Milicik, and Kwame Brown in this league and they have to stay a year before being able to be granted permission to play for the pros. You give teams 3 years to hold onto these players and by then thats college. If the team gives up the player: He's recycled right back into the draft and looky here: thats your years of college that you spent in a developmental league? Yupp, thats it you make them think twice about entering into a low (sson to be high profile league) where the salaries barely outdo their current ridiculous monthly paychecks. So high schoolers are poor need money, you give them benefits, you keep them afloat, but for god-sakes you dont hand them 30 million for 3 years to sit and make you look stupid. Afterall this idea is something no one thinks of. Its so simple so brilliant that no one could ever consider it because it makes too much sense! sj is a writer and columnist for Sportinsider and can be reached at [email protected] |
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