Is it really worth it?

Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, Jermaine O’Neal and now Lebron James: all are NBA superstars, who bypassed college and entered the NBA draft after graduating high school.
Moses Malone was the first to break tradition and head straight to the pros. Shawn Kemp followed soon afterward. However, it is this young group of players who have made this a verifiable trend.
From the inception of the NBA to 1995, only three players traded the college experience for an early shot at the pros. Then Kevin Garnett exploded onto the scene in 1995, followed by Bryant in 1996. Soon, perceptions began to change.
High school kids began to think they could go directly to the NBA and not spend three years adjusting to the league. Maybe they could even luck out and get on a good team like Bryant. From 1995 to 2002, 19 more high schoolers made the jump, including six last year. One of those six was Lebron James.
Lebron is the first player ever to make such an immediate impact and has become a legitimate franchise player at the tender age of 18. He has single-handedly lifted a dreadful franchise into a playoff run in his first year, posting All-Star quality numbers in the process. James is a cornerstone superstar for the NBA to market for the next 10 to 15 years. He also has a $90 million shoe deal with Nike and a fat contract. Did I mention he’s only 18?
Not surprisingly, as many as 12 players are expected to follow in James’ footsteps this year and head straight to the league when they get their high school diplomas. Accomplished NBA veterans Grant Hill and Anfernee Hardaway, who both came into the league after outstanding college careers in the early ’90s, have noticed a definite shift in perception of college basketball among high school players.
“I was with Penny [Anfernee] Hardaway,” Hill said on the ESPN website. “We were talking about just when we were going to high school and all the camps and the summer leagues. We didn’t even think about the NBA. Now, if we were college juniors or seniors, it would be like ‘what [pro] team do you want to go to?’”
There are, of course, drawbacks to going pro at such a young age, which these success stories may overshadow. The NBA is a business. If you are not producing, you are out the door. You missed your chance at a college education because once you declare yourself eligible for the draft and hire an agent, that’s it. There is no going back.
The NBA season is a grueling 82 games long, much longer than a high school season’s typical 30 or so games. There are bigger, stronger, tougher, older, more physically mature men who gun for the youngsters. By coming straight to the pros from high school, the prep stars are definitely targeted by the veterans who seek to put them in their place.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Mar 26 2004. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry