A safety net for high schoolers

Sporting News, The, May 6, 2002 by Mike DeCourcy

At last June's NBA draft, Kwame Brown looked sharp strolling across the stage in a fine new suit to shake the hand of commissioner David Stern. Brown, from Glynn Academy in Brunswick, Ga., was the No. 1 overall pick. Bill Walton, Hakeem Olajuwon and Shaquille O'Neal held this same designation, which once seemed a guarantee of instant stardom in the league.

Brown, though, did not resemble a Hall of Famer after putting on a Washington Wizards uniform. He played like a kid who had just left high school. He played like somebody who should have followed what once was the prototypical player development course: high school, college, pros.

What if he'd had that option?

What if the Wizards had taken him with last year's top pick, then suggested that instead of making a leap for which he was not prepared, he spend a year or two playing college basketball for Florida?

This is one of the few potentially positive possibilities that could develop from the NCAA's decision last week to allow high school players--starting with the current crop of seniors--to enter the NBA draft and retain college eligibility even if selected.

"I don't see what would be wrong with that," Boston Celtics general manager Chris Wallace says. "There are so many forces at work on these players, and they're not always forces that have the right answers. So if you get swept away, as sometimes these players do, it's nice that they have more of a safety net than they would have.

"I'm for anything that provides more options to players. If it creates a little bit of inconvenience on the NBA side or the college side, so be it."

The NBA still owns the power because its draft rules cover every possible hazard that could develop. A high school player couldn't be selected at an undesirable position in the draft--the second round, say--then choose to play in college for the purpose of improving his draft position. A player can go through the process only once.

Neither could he expect that spending time in college would more quickly lead to free-agent status. The NBA really has this nailed. According to Section 5 of the collective bargaining agreement with the NBA Players Association, if a drafted player plays college basketball, the team that selected him retains his rights "for the period ending one year from the date of the draft in which the player would, absent renunciation of intercollegiate eligibility, first have been eligible to be selected." So, a current high school senior who went to college after being drafted would have to wait until June 2007 to become a free agent.

It remains possible that misinformed high school players could flood the NBA office with early entry declarations, unaware of the drawbacks. Some college coaches will have to spend the next two weeks making sure their signed recruits understand the process.

There are two clear absurdities to this rule: Current NCAA players can't return to college if they are selected--which gives high schoolers greater rights than the organization's own athletes--and the rule doesn't apply to junior college prospects. Otherwise, the legacy of the new rule could be a greater sense of cooperation between the NBA and college teams.

Florida coach Billy Donovan, however, doubts the rule will be used frequently. "To me, the only way the rule would be good is if a high school kid jumped out and the NBA team told him, `You're not going to play, go to school and get better,'" he says.

"I think every NBA coach, every NBA franchise has a way they want to develop their players, and I can't imagine many NBA teams would tell their guys to go to college for a year."

Though the rule would have helped Brown grow as a player, it is unlikely the Wizards would have sent him to Florida. Coach Doug Collins told the Washington Post he was fooled into believing Brown was ready to help the team "after watching him perform remarkably in predraft workouts.

But there could be circumstances in which teams draft high school players in the later stages of the first round or in the second round and encourage them to attend college rather than languish on NBA benches. No team could force this on a player; he would have to agree to wait for the big money.

But one NBA executive acknowledges there may be an incentive for teams to do this: the coming luxury tax. There seems no merit to paying tax dollars for a draft prospect who can't offer immediate help. By asking a player to develop in college, a team might get welcome relief.

Since he played brilliantly in the adidas Big Time Tournament last July, Syracuse recruit Carmelo Anthony has been confronted by the possibility of entering the draft after his graduation from Virginia's Oak Hill Academy. He isn't physically prepared to play in the NBA, though. If he wound up on the early-entry list, a team might feel more comfortable selecting him if it knew Anthony could develop for a couple years.

"The majority of the players in the league did not come out of high school, did not come out after one year of college," Wallace says. "Everybody does not mature on the same identical path. There's no question that college--if the player and program mesh--is the best vehicle for talented youngsters to prepare themselves to play in the NBA."