{"id":78063,"date":"2019-03-19T11:26:50","date_gmt":"2019-03-19T16:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=78063"},"modified":"2019-03-19T11:28:28","modified_gmt":"2019-03-19T16:28:28","slug":"from-preps-to-the-pros-can-the-nba-solve-a-decade-old-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/from-preps-to-the-pros-can-the-nba-solve-a-decade-old-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"From preps to the pros: can the NBA solve a decade-old controversy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Greg Melo and Emma Goodson<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Medill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"dropcap\">Kevin Garnett. Tracy McGrady. Kobe Bryant \u2013 giants from an era of basketball where highly touted prospects had no incentive or legal obligations to play at the college level before going pro.<\/p>\n<p>That era could return in a few years due to a new NBA policy proposal and shift the very landscape of the sport.<\/p>\n<p>The prep to pro generation of the NBA ended in 2005, when the league\u2019s new Collective Bargaining Agreement required draft-eligible players to be 19 years old in the same calendar year of the draft that they planned to enter.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>But the \u201cone-and-done\u201d era may be over soon, as the NBA proposed in February to move the draft age from 19 to 18, starting in 2022. The adjustment would allow high schoolers to throw their names in the hat once again, removing the requirement for prospects to go through the formality of playing at the college level for just a few months.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[The proposal] does some really strange things to high school basketball where NBA agents are even more present than they are now,\u201d said Michael O\u2019Brien, high school basketball reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times. \u201cWhen the money is that much closer to high school basketball, when there\u2019s not that year in between, it brings a lot more people trying to get their hands on that money that the kids are about to get.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is a resolution that the Players\u2019 Association has been seeking for years, as players do not get paid at the college level, while schools can use their likeness in marketing campaigns. The NBA has always provided pushback citing reasons such as lack of physical development at the high school level for some players and the need for more time to evaluate prospects. They have since changed their tune after the promotion of current NBA Commissioner Adam Silver in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel one-and-done is kind of a weird charade where it sort of feels like having a player go to college one year mitigates the risk and increases the maturity for someone entering the NBA, and I just don\u2019t see how that is the case,\u201d said K.C. Johnson, Chicago Bulls beat reporter at the Chicago Tribune.<\/p>\n<p>Though there is concern of underdevelopment in younger players, plenty of high school prospects have succeeded at the pro level. Moses Malone played in the American Basketball Association for a few seasons before it merged with the NBA. He made eight All-NBA teams and won a ring with the Philadelphia 76ers. Lou Williams has made a career as an NBA sixth man and is leading a young Los Angeles Clippers team to a playoff push this season. Arguably the greatest player of all time, LeBron James, never stepped foot in a NCAA arena.<\/p>\n\n<!-- iframe plugin v.6.0 wordpress.org\/plugins\/iframe\/ -->\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/cdn.knightlab.com\/libs\/timeline3\/latest\/embed\/index.html?source=1Ugov2zNVYyrp04syCix9FxRH0Vd0Q4FtxTDWWo6CQFk&#038;font=Default&#038;lang=en&#038;initial_zoom=2&#038;height=650\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\n\n<p>But for every success story, there are countless failures. Darius Miles, of East St. Louis High School, flamed out after an electric first few years in the league. Kwame Brown was selected first overall in the 2001 NBA Draft after a historic career at Glynn Academy that culminated in a McDonald\u2019s All-American selection; but he is considered one of the biggest busts in draft history.<\/p>\n<p>Miles and Brown were physically ready for the NBA &#8212; Miles, a wing player, could jump out of the gym and provide electric high-flying dunks, while Brown was a six-foot-eleven monster in the paint. But injuries derailed their careers.<\/p>\n<p>Some league experts consider the mental game as a rougher transition for preps than it is for NCAA athletes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it&#8217;s a maturity thing,\u201d said Dave Vitel, associate athletic director of sports performance for the University of Loyola-Chicago. \u201cI think it&#8217;s a system. I think there are certain colleges that may teach kids how to defend, teach kids a system. And I think you&#8217;re talking about then: \u2018will they?\u2019 Not the physical, but the tactical, technical &#8212; I think that&#8217;s probably bigger than the physical sometimes with these kids.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Robert \u201cChip\u201d Schaefer, director of performance health for the Chicago Bulls, noted there\u2019s no \u201cenormous difference\u201d between high schoolers and first-year college players from a physical standpoint.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn some ways, when guys are younger, they&#8217;re playing more basketball and getting less medical care,\u201d Schaefer said. \u201cThey&#8217;re playing multiple games on days, playing these [Amateur Athletic Union] tournaments, playing more outdoors and [in] bad high school gyms on hard surfaces. And so we&#8217;ve been seeing an increase at the combine over the recent years of foot and ankle stress related injuries because these guys are playing a lot more high-demanding, high-volume basketball at a younger age.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although players at the lower levels are getting more experience, physical growth is still a little behind for younger NBA prospects. High schools, especially what he sees in Chicago, aren\u2019t providing the strengthening and conditioning that players need, according to O\u2019Brien. Most high school players never lift weights until they get to college, but you can see them gain strength over time, which is a necessity for playing in the NBA, O\u2019Brien added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre these kids ready basketball-wise to play in the NBA? I don\u2019t think so. I think very few are actually ready,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cI think they should be able to do it if they want but 99 out of 100, maybe 999 out of 1000, are not ready.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While physical development can be lacking among high school prospects, the development of skills and the mental game almost certainly are missed when players skip the college level, according to Elan Vinokurov, basketball scout and founder of EV Hoops.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think they\u2019re just playing basketball against better talent than you would if you were simply playing a year of prep school, playing a year in an overseas league where you&#8217;re not really playing at all, or doing the Mitchell Robinson plan where you&#8217;re literally not playing at all,\u201d Vinokurov said on the <a href=\"https:\/\/anchor.fm\/lane-violation\/episodes\/Lane-Violation-Episode-Special--NBA-Draft-age-proposal-discussion-with-Elan-Vinokurov-e3d85e\/a-abd6o2\">Lane Violation podcast<\/a>. \u201cI think there&#8217;s a lot to be said for watching somebody in November, play college basketball, watching them again in January and saying, \u2018they&#8217;re getting better.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n<!-- iframe plugin v.6.0 wordpress.org\/plugins\/iframe\/ -->\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/anchor.fm\/lane-violation\/embed\/episodes\/Lane-Violation-Elan-Vinokurov-Interview-e3g6fr\" height=\"102px\" width=\"400px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" class=\"iframe-class\"><\/iframe>\n\n<p>O\u2019Brien said that some players who struggled on defense in high school are \u201cimmediately exposed\u201d once at the collegiate level when hiding in a zone defense is no longer an option.<\/p>\n<p>These types of flaws are noticed only at the NCAA level and speak to the value of having more time to evaluate highly touted prospects that will become NBA team investments. Vitel, who has years of experience as a strength and conditioning coach for the Minnesota Timberwolves, has seen it play out time and time again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you look at some of those kids that are ready to come out of high school, we&#8217;re not talking about a scrawny little guy who needs development,\u201d Vitel said. \u201cWe&#8217;re talking about a kid like Zion Williamson who&#8217;s as strong as any of the fourth-year guys that I&#8217;ve seen. And can move just as well. So when I think back to a Kevin Garnett, ahead of the game, a Tracy McGrady &#8212; I don&#8217;t know if those guys might be an exception. But I feel that if you&#8217;re being considered, you&#8217;re already kind of an outlier exception in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Raw athleticism, speed and innate ability are traits that O\u2019Brien described as denoting a player who is ready to go straight to the NBA. These players can read the court much better than even older teammates and the game is second nature for them, O\u2019Brien explained.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the majority of kids are better off in college,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cBut, I say that with kind of a sigh because if everything goes right, yeah [it\u2019s better]. But for most of them they show up there, and I\u2019m talking to especially kids from around here, [and] they have an immediate sense of culture shock.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Brien continued saying that the world of college is an extremely new experience for many players and not all handle the adjustment well. Sometimes the coaches who recruited them in high school and made promises to them leave the program, so they\u2019re \u201cabandoned in this place they\u2019re having culture shock [in],\u201d O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n<p>While college can be hit or miss for players, the landscape of college basketball wouldn\u2019t be affected by the proposal to the same degree as high school basketball. The first year of the age restriction change might create some confusion with preps being recruited by colleges and NBA teams at the same time, but the college game may ultimately get better with an assumed lower turnover rate of one-and-dones.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can remember when the NCAA tournament was a much more, in my opinion, dramatic and exciting event decades ago when you had 20 and 21 to 22-year-olds playing it. I made this comment to Lauri [Markkanen] a couple days ago, like imagine the tournament, you know, he should still be at [The University of] Arizona. Markelle Fultz should still be at Washington, Lonzo Ball should still be at UCLA, and on and on. Imagine,\u201d said Schaefer, adding \u201cAnd even for one more year because they\u2019d only be juniors this year. Imagine, one more year, how good those guys would be and how high the level of play would be elevated if guys stayed in college.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If NBA teams can bring blue-chip high school prospects straight into their facilities, living and breathing basketball would be much more familiar.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf [the Bulls] get them under our care, which I think is, all bias included, world-class health care, then we can monitor [injuries] and their training loads and nurse them along through their physical development, as opposed to the one-and-done thing where a guy goes on a college campus for four, five or six months,&#8221; Schaefer said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s kind of a farce, certainly it&#8217;s a farce academically to what the true mission of a university is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The decision to play college ball or take a gap year is solely made by an individual player, but having the option to go straight to the NBA could change the landscape of the entire sport. And the NBA and the Players\u2019 Association are still at a crossroads, with both sides haggling over certain stipulations such as Restricted Free Agency and the NBA Combine.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that the ball is moving is a welcome change. Discussions are being had. And that means that the players will ultimately benefit.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_78067\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-78067\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-78067\" src=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/03\/NBA_Draft_Infographic.jpg\" alt=\"NBA_Draft_Infographic\" width=\"800\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/03\/NBA_Draft_Infographic.jpg 800w, https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/03\/NBA_Draft_Infographic-120x300.jpg 120w, https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/03\/NBA_Draft_Infographic-768x1920.jpg 768w, https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/03\/NBA_Draft_Infographic-410x1024.jpg 410w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-78067\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The NBA draft is an intricate process. Here&#8217;s a look at how it works. (Illustration: Emma Goodson\/Medill Reports)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<div class=\"featurecaption\">Photo at top: 2006 NBA Draft. (Brent Soderberg\/Flickr)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Greg Melo and Emma Goodson Medill Reports Kevin Garnett. Tracy McGrady. Kobe Bryant \u2013 giants from an era of basketball where highly touted prospects had no incentive or legal obligations to play at the college level before going pro. That era could return in a few years due to a new NBA policy proposal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":539,"featured_media":78072,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,31,4559],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-78063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-interest","category-sports","category-winter-2019","tag-promo"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>From preps to the pros: can the NBA solve a decade-old controversy? - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/from-preps-to-the-pros-can-the-nba-solve-a-decade-old-controversy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From preps to the pros: can the NBA solve a decade-old controversy? - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Greg Melo and Emma Goodson Medill Reports Kevin Garnett. 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