Twistity Sports Exclusive: NBA Draft On Tap

 
The NBA draft on Thursday night raises hopes in many places of instant help or, worse, an instant savior for a stumbling franchise.

Sorry. It just isn’t happening.

The gap between the college game and the pro game seems to have grown larger and the experience of the college players is far less than what it once was. The key reason is the one-and-done philosophy. Kids with talent check into college as if it were a hotel and are gone in the morning. They major in basketball and get a one-year degree. They’d be in the NBA sooner, straight from high school or those ridiculous prep factories, if the league allowed it.

When the NFL draft rolls around, people feel familiar with many of the top players, having watched them in college for, most likely, at least three years. The NBA draft? Gee, guys, we hardly knew ye.

NBA.com aggregated a number of mock drafts and came up with a list of the top 14 players. Seven of the top 10 were freshmen. Of that top 10, one was a sophomore and the other two were foreign. In the whole of that 14 there was one senior – Doug McDermott of Creighton. And why did Dougie stay four years? Well, his father being the coach probably had a bit to do with it.

We’ll see the fruits of Kansas’ and Kentucky’s one-and-done classes going early – the Jayhawks apparently gave freshman degrees to Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid, while the Wildcats’ quickie diplomas went to Julius Randle and James Young.

Imagine hanging the hopes of a city (or at least the hopes of its basketball fans) on a 19-year-old kid who has been suddenly handed a pile of money. Imagine the pressures. Sure, these lads played travel basketball and were away at college for a year, but that’s not the grind of the NBA, with its summer league and its 82-game schedule and playoffs that linger like your drunken brother-in-law at Thanksgiving dinner.

The draft is at hand. Young men move on to meet their destiny. They’ll get good jobs without a good education. In a basketball sense, they may know much of what they need to and may just need time to sharpen it. In the real world? Tough adjustment. Good luck.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman .