Promise vs. proficiency: where's the payoff?
04/24/2002
Codding Home / Sports Channel / Bullz-Eye Home
Despite two days worth of coverage and analysis from Mel Kiper Jr. on ESPN, I'm not a big NFL draft kind of guy. I mean, I enjoy watching the first couple rounds unfold and I'm always anxious to see who the Browns select, but once teams start grabbing punters, blocking tight ends and "special teams wizards" on Sunday afternoon, my interest disappears faster than a college girl's shirt on Bourbon Street.
I guess that kinda makes me the Anti-Kiper.
Still, I usually tune in for most of Saturday's activity, especially during that first round -- although could the NFL please knock the time limit for each pick down to at least 10 minutes? I can think of a dozen better things to do with five hours on a Saturday afternoon than watching Kiper, Chris Berman and Jimmy Johnson relentlessly rip on the Bengals.
Quite honestly, I can handle the Bengal bashing myself.
But while I'm not the biggest draft nut out there, watching teams select players based on their talents and abilities is a refreshing sight, as opposed to the annual NBA draft where the terms "upside" and "potential" have surpassed "talent" and "ability" in importance.
How great was it to see guys of drinking age being chosen in the first round this past weekend? Seems like most of the players taken in last year's NBA lottery were still worried about their upcoming driver's license tests and who they were going to try to hook up with on prom night.
Not in the NFL draft, though -- No Teenagers Allowed. In fact, 20-year-old defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth, taken by the Titans with the 15th overall pick, qualified as the baby of the first round, while in NBA terms 23-year-olds Joey Harrington (drafted third), Javon Walker (20th), Ed Reed (24th) and Charles Grant (25th) would've been the draft's Golden Girls.
Although I wouldn't call Ed Reed a girl to his face, but you get my point.
And, believe it or not, I actually heard Kiper say, "He decided to go back to college for his senior season to work on his weaknesses" a few times throughout the draft. I think 1996 was the last time I heard someone say that about a true NBA future star, when Tim Duncan chose to return to Wake Forest for his senior year.
Too bad that move really didn't work out for the former Deacon... .
The differences between the NBA and NFL drafts really are astounding. Football players actually stay in college for three or four years to improve their draft status. But when Grizzlies forward Shane Battier elected to return to Duke for his final season two years ago, somehow his stock plummeted. He was criticized for his decision, and although he was perhaps the most polished and accomplished player available, Battier fell to Vancouver with the sixth overall pick, behind high schoolers Kwame Brown (first overall by the Wizards), Eddy Curry (second by the Bulls) and Tyson Chandler (fourth by the Bulls).
In fact, a total of five high school players were taken in the two rounds of last year's NBA draft -- Brown, Curry, Chandler, DeSagana Diop (eighth by the Cavs) and Ousmane Cisse (47th by the Nuggets).
Yeah, real powerhouse names there, huh? It gets even better -- check out the stats:
18.7 points, 13 rebounds, 2.2 assists, .95 steals, 3.07 blocks, 3.9 turnovers, .467 FG%
Not bad. Unfortunately, those are the combined per-game averages turned in by all five youngsters in their rookie years. Ouch. Of the five, the two Chicago forwards, Curry and Chandler, had the best seasons, hitting for more than six points a game while pulling down 3.8 and 4.8 rebounds a night, respectively. Brown, the first overall pick, struggled mightily all year, hitting just 38% of his attempts for 4.5 points per game. Diop, who played in just 18 games thanks to various injuries, scored a phenomenal 1.4 points a night while pulling down a grand total of 17 boards in his 18 games of action. I have no idea what happened to Cisse -- he didn't play a minute of NBA basketball this season and is not even listed on Denver's team roster.
So four guys, all top-10 draft choices, averaged just 18.7 points per game. Meanwhile, that "decrepit" Shane Battier only managed to score 14.4 ppg with 5.4 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 1.55 steals and 1.04 blocks per contest.
Chump.
Obviously, the selections of Brown, Curry, Chandler, Diop and Cisse were all made with an eye toward the distant future, but it's not like the Grizzlies took some 30 year old with the sixth pick last June. Battier is just 23, and the last time I looked 23 was still pretty damn young.
But here come those words again: upside, potential, ceiling.
Some say Battier's upside is limited, that his potential doesn't match that of Brown and Curry, that he's already hit his ceiling.
I don't buy that. I'm pretty sure 23 year olds still have room for improvement -- think I read that somewhere.
Of course, these aren't the first five high-school studs who flopped in their initial NBA trial runs. Sure, we all remember the successes, a list that reads like a present and future All Star roster: Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, Jermaine O'Neal, Rashard Lewis. But for every KG, there are two or three Diops. For every T-Mac, a handful of Cisses.
Don't believe me? Do any of these names sound familiar: Korleone Young, Leon Smith, DeShawn Stevenson, Al Harrington, Jonathan Bender, Darius Miles, Taj McDavid and Ellis Richardson.
All eight of these guys decided to jump from high school to the NBA in the past five or six years, and of the eight only Harrington has averaged even 10 ppg in any one season. And while Miles, Bender and Harrington all seem to have relatively successful careers ahead of them, nobody on this list projects to come even close to the numbers Garnett, Kobe and McGrady, this trend's three revered trailblazers, have posted in their young careers. In fact, Young is out of the league, Smith has battled his own personal demons while playing in just 14 NBA games, and McDavid and Richardson went undrafted, as did Tony Key last June, a 7-1 center who didn't even graduate high school.
Add that up -- 19 high schoolers have declared themselves eligible for the draft since 1995. Three are bona fide stars who are currently leading their respective teams through the playoffs: Garnett, Kobe and McGrady. Two others, O'Neal and Lewis, have made some impressive contributions while two more, Harrington and Miles, have posted moderately successful numbers.
Three superstars, two good players, two decent players. Just seven of the previously listed 19 have made even modest impacts in their NBA careers, and of those seven only Garnett averaged double-digit points his first season. Hell, McGrady didn't really break through until his third season and it took O'Neal five years to live up to his draft-day hype. Yet every spring more and more high schoolers think they're the next phenoms.
Unfortunately, this disturbing trend also has moved onto college campuses, where more and more freshmen and sophomores have foolishly decided to take the draft plunge. William Avery, DerMarr Johnson, Jamal Crawford, Rodney White and Corey Maggette are just a few of the guys who would've benefited greatly from another year or two of college ball, but were blinded by their green-colored dreams and the limited success of their predecessors.
And this year is no different -- Caron Butler, Smush Parker, Jamal Sampson, DeJuan Wagner and Adrian Walton are just a handful of the freshmen and sophomores who've already made their draft intentions public. Amare Stoudemire, a high school senior, declared as well.
Then there's Jared Jeffries, the gangly Indiana sophomore who, if he slapped on a red sweater and a black dress and pulled his hair into a bun, would be a dead ringer for Olive Oil. You'd think his rather mundane performance in the NCAA tourney would've sent him a blindingly loud message that he wasn't NBA material, not yet anyway. Nope -- he too left school early.
I just don't get it. Haven't enough guys flamed out in the pros already? Haven't all those failures taken some of the luster off of Kobe's and KG's and McGrady's achievements?
Obviously not. Instead, you've got a high school junior, LeBron James, landing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and reportedly getting a $9 million offer from a team in Italy to forgo his senior year. Unreal.
What all these young guys don't understand is that, when McGrady, Garnett and Bryant came out early, they were the absolute best in the country. They had to be the absolute best because they were setting a precedent. If DaSagana Diop or Korleone Young had come out in 1995 instead of Kevin Garnett, they would've been laughed out of the draft and perhaps the NBA wouldn't look so much like a high school pickup game these days.
But that's just what it's evolved into, a sport that no longer has the firepower to go head-to-head against baseball, football and maybe even hockey. Teams are sacrificing present success for a potential payoff in the future and the game itself is struggling. Fans are bored. Attendance is sagging. Proven college players are getting passed over for teenagers who don't remember life before Nintendo and cell phones.
So give me the NFL draft over the NBA's teenaged version any day of the week. It may take a few hours for the first round to finally come to a close, but it's better than waiting a few years for the NBA's adolescent lottery picks to finally come around. You can have your upside and your high ceilings and your untapped potential.
I'll take talent and ability instead.
In the Bullz-Eye
Buffalo quarterback Drew Bledsoe. It'll take a while to get used to, but Bledsoe will be donning a Bills jersey next year after Buffalo sent the Patriots a first round pick in the 2003 draft for the former All Pro QB. The Bills obviously feel Bledsoe is the guy who can take them back to the Super Bowl, especially with explosive receiver Eric Moulds lining up on the outside. Will Bledsoe, who was never really able to build upon his impressive Super Bowl season of 1996, deliver for his new team?