Shoals Unlimited: The NCAA Tourney Is a Nice Little Event Where Pro Talent Withers

This article was written by someone who knows the cost of everything…and the value of nothing!  You cannot put a value on a college aducation, having a major college coach as a mentor as you grow into manhood, learning the nuances of the game in a major college program, the friends you make in college, the teammates you have and being able to reach maturity with those who are your own age group instead of being surrounded by a bunch of older men who have nothing in common with you other than the fact that you are teammates who are living out of a suitcase for 6 months a year.

It sounds like this article was written either by a wannabe agent or by a parent who is living his life vacariously through his child.

If you want some education while playing ball, do it. You want to play ball without it, go to Europe. Spend a year in school, you might find out you like it and stay to get some more education. Some players have thought they were ready right out of high school and were sadly mistaken. A lot of them ended up as hamburger in the CBA. If they had been forced to go to school for a year and play against competion that was tougher than HS but not as tough as the NBA, they would have had a much better idea of where they really were. At the same time, the NBA game is not played the same as the college game. Some players will not show their true potential in college, because college is much more of a team game, while the NBA game (at least most teams) is more like juiced up playground ball – little defense, no fouls, no traveling calls and gun it from 50ft as often as you like. 

If you don’t care about college ball, why are you writing about it?

You and this waste of an article can piss off.

I remember reading an article how big men are underdeveloped in the NBA because they made the jump directly from high school. The article said a prime example is Tyson Chandler. He had the tools out of high school to be a great center. However, he still the same guy as seven years ago.

So many point out that these kids ‘miss out on an education’ and ’aren’t there for the books’. Yet, can we be realistic here: there are thousands of kids who are in college for the wrong reasons: four years of getting plastered and hooking up with every co-ed in sight while cutting classes and performing the bare minimum so that their parents keep paying tuition. There are thousands of kids who are just coasting by, if even trying at all in college. These kids are wasting just as much opportunities, if not more than the student-athletes that are assailed for not giving a damn. And this comes from someone who not only covers athletes for a weekly paper, but from someone who hustled hard just to make it through college while others around him squanderered their chances.

http://asportsscribe.blogspot.com

Excuse me while I vomit in my mouth.  NOT from the article, which was on point, but from the comments above.
Yes, you can put a value on a college education.  The primary point of higher education is to prepare you for a career – that’s why you’re expected to choose a major.  If you mature as an individual and learn more about the world around you, that’s great – but four years of playing basketball at Duke doesn’t make you a better person any more than four years of studying business administration.  If your goal is to play basketball professionally – and you happen to be one of the very few people physically equipped to do that – then the ideal college experience is one that prepares you to acheive that goal. 
Colleges and college coaches don’t draft top prospects because they want to mentor them – they want to win games.  If college was unquestionably a positive experience for the player then every college grad would be like Tim Duncan and every high school prospect would be Kwame Brown, but that’s not how it works.  College grads can be selfish dicks, and high school students can be mature and well-rounded.

Colleges that want to develop the whole person do so, and colleges that want to win games and make money do that instead.  If you happen to be one of the 10 or 15 high school players who is physically gifted enought o get a job as a pro player, you should have the right to make that choice.

Addendum:  Yes, a lot of high school atheletes who have no chance to make it in the pros would be better off learning their limitations in college and choosing a different career.  Playing a year under a good college coach probably will have some positve net effect, even on a player who knows he isn’t going to graduate.  That still doesn’t give the NBA or anyone else the right to force a player to spend one year in college – a year in which he might very well get injured – when an NBA team is willing to offer him a job right away.
If an NBA team really wants to pay an high-school student to play for them, who are we to say that no, that player would be better off studying hospitality management or communications for a year while he waits for a chance to pursue his dream?

There’s no age limit for college – you can always go back and get an education if the ball playing doesn’t work out.  But the chance to play pro ball will only come once, and to insist that a year of simulated prep school at a major conference college automatically turns you into a better person is a huge, fat lie.

I hate to do this, but:

THESIS "But has the age minimum really created a bridge between the college and
pro ranks? Or is the NCAA just wasting the time of eventual All-Stars?"

Discuss.

Gotcha.  Sorry about that – heat of the moment.

Yes, absolutely.  The age minimum has built a bridge.  You make a great point about future NBA stars who are somehow obscured in the college game, but I don’t think it’s necessarily anyone’s fault.  Analyzing a player one facet at a time isn’t something that would help – the mistake is that we ever try to do anything else.  There’s a false division created between high school and college: In the past, one kind of player (physically complete but probably raw) was sent to the left, while another kind of player (less than complete athlete capable of developing skills) was sent to the right.  The age limit funnels all of these players into the same pen, which allows us to analyze them by the same standards, and in that sense the age minimum is great.

In a bigger sense, though what needs to happen is for scouts and coaches and GMs to stop thinking of guys like Brandon Roy and Anthony Randolph as two entirely different species of player.  There is no ideal, and terms like "raw" and "inconsistent" need to lose some of their cache.  Every player is raw and every player is inconsistent, in one way or another.  As much as I wail and gnash my teeth about the ethics of the age limit, I do love that it puts every kind of player in the same field, at least for a year.  For the joy of watching and analyzing the game, I wish it were two years instead of one.  The closer we can get to seeing each player as an individual, rather than measuring him against an abstract ideal, the better the pro game will become, and I think that seeing everyone play together helps this happen.

And also…

When I was younger I used to hate the notion that the NBA valued physical gifts above skill.  I desperately wanted to believe that someone like Kevin Garnett could only be one in a million, and that what REALLY mattered were fundamentals.  The more I’ve watched, the more I’ve come to appreciate that the NBA needs all different kinds of players.  That sounds trite, but I mean it – there is no ideal player.

The increasing frequency of players going pro straight from high school disrupted this balance.  Too much value was placed on athleticism alone, and it created the impression that any REAL player should fully formed by the time he’s 18.   The NBA was turning into a variation of the high-school game, where potential was simultaneously everything and the only thing.  Maybe this will happen again anyway, but I hope that the age minimum – and the year of college ball that it creates – serves as a reminder that one TYPE or STYLE of player isn’t necessary more valuable than another.

BS,

Your question whether the age limit has bridged the gap between college and the pros is good, but I find it odd that you cite Wade and Roy as counter-examples; neither of these players were really that awesome until they became upperclassmen.  In addition, Roy was incredibly awesome.  I saw some of his games, and it was clear that he would be really good in the NBA although a bit of a ‘tweener.  I never even saw a Marquette game until the tournament, but come on, triple-doubles in college are a really big deal given the shorter playing time.  On FreeDarko, you’ve proposed (re: Anthony Randolph) that certain box scores lines are so good that they are almost certainly indicative of future success, and I feel that this was one such box score.

Anyway, to answer the thesis, I think that it comes down not to a development of talent; clearly, the NBA wins this department completely because of better coaches, more coaches, lack of limits on practice time, and veteran player resources.  To me, the NCAA’s advantage is allowing a player to learn what it is like to truly dominate a game at will.  One example of a possible argument for this is Travis Outlaw vs Carmelo Anthony.  Outlaw is really good and may have as many scoring skills as Carmelo, but because Carmelo learned at Syracuse how to dominate players and shoot just because he can, he is a star while Outlaw is not.  College teaches stars how to be stars.  Dwayne Wade would not be an NBA star today but for his triple-double and high draft position showing him that he was a basketball god.  Brandon Roy could not carry the Blazers if he had not first learned to carry the Huskies (?).  Could T-Mac have been similarly improved by college?  Perhaps playing against the amateur munchkins would have taught him to not settle for jumpers so often.

Of course, certain players don’t need this coddling, most notably Kobe, Lebron, and Garnett.  Would they still be stars if they had gone to college?  I think that the answer is almost certainly yes, although I wonder if such a player’s ball-hogging tendencies would be increased by college.  Kobe and Garnett were drafted onto reasonably good teams, so they had a chance to get humbled and ease into the league while taking advantage of NBA quality coaching.  A top 3 draft pick, however, plays significant minutes from the outset and is often expected to carry the load offensively.  This might, for example, increase KD’s ballhog tendencies.

Ok, sorry, didn’t address your thesis at all.  Anyway, college is a totally different sport than the NBA, in my opinion.  That’s why there are so few overlapping fans. 

I know Roy and Wade were awesome in college, but how is it that Wade is better (relatively speaking) in college than in the pros?

Another point: Neither went first overall, both were thought to be tweener-ish, etc.

Yeah.  I think I can appreciate the bombs that spanish is dropping, but the idea that… witnessing how good he WAS somehow made Dwaye Wade BETTER…  I don’t know, dude.  Wade didn’t "dominate the game" in college – his team lost in the final four.  O. J. Mayo, who might have been the #1 pick out of high school, flickered on and off in his one year at USC.  Why?  I don’t know.  Maybe he was coasting.  Whatever the case, it’s more inetersting to me to have seen Mayo play in both high school and in college.  The year at USC, while it may be an historical anomaly, makes the total package more interesting.Also, I just don’t believe that it can ever be "clear" that a guy will succeed in the NBA before it actually happens.  People said that about Trajan Langdon.  That’s just self-satisfaction after the fact.  The unpredicatbility of this sport is a huge part of what makes it fun to watch, and that’s another reason I think the one-year minimum will ultimately be good for the NBA (bridge-building wise).  Colleges will take "tweeners" and projects that NBA teams would pass over.  And you just never know what one of those guys might turn out to be.

Actually, I need to take that back.  I don’t get what spanish is saying at all.Are you seriously suggesting that playing in college allows good players to see how good they are, and that’s what makes them good?  But that this doesn’t apply to people who already know how good they are?  I don’t understand.

College ball is basically all about the coach who is constantly given all the credit as a genius when his team wins. The beauty and athleticism that we see in the pro game is stifled in college because most of the coaches are stifling the fluidity of the game. I like Roy Williams and John Calipari not just because they are good but because they don’t stifle the strengths of their players. The obsession with that "cheap" 3-point line has not helped the game either. I have seen college games where neither team will score for 5 minutes because the play is so bad and someone just has to shoot a three pointer. The pros don’t get enough credit because they make some of their plays look so easy. The Dick Vitales and Billy Packer shills of the college basketball world will droan on incessantly about the superiority of the college game but those who look objectively know better. Notice how the NBA commentators never get themselves locked into a debate about college VS NBA.

SpoonyBard3000 | Friday, March 20, 2009, 7:12 pm

Whatever
the case, it’s more inetersting to me to have seen Mayo play in both
high school and in college.  The year at USC, while it may be an
historical anomaly, makes the total package more interesting.

That college makes Mayo more interesting is the best point on the page.  I think this question should be seen in the light of what kind of package the fan is getting.

The NCAA is not simply prepatory for the player, it is both prepares the NBA fan and provides a depth of story about the NBA player. I think, generally, having eventual NBA players exposed to the public through the NCAA raises all boats and is good for the NBA.  The fans are the point with the NBA.  (Some fans are even primarily NCAA fans and will watch NBA games to follow a player they watched in NCAA games.)

So I say there is a bridge, and the bridge is for the NBA brand, generally, which is good for the players – especially "stars" who become the poster children for the brand. The NCAA gives depth to the story, and the entertainment value of the NBA is higher for it.

I pretty much stopped reading this article when he started talking about how the NCAA set the age limit.

That was the NBA leading the way on that one, not the NCAA.  The NCAA has no control over it, and I doubt David Stern cares about what the NCAA will think.  Stern did what he thought was best for the NBA. Period.