by Reid Wessels
Daily Lobo
I had a revelation about my age while watching the NBA draft last week - a sort of mid-20s life crisis. For the first time in my 26 years on this planet, I felt just a little bit old.
"With the first pick in the NBA draft, the Orlando Magic select Dwight Howard, Atlanta Southwest Christian High School," NBA Commissioner David Stern said.
High school? Yes, high school. For the second year in a row, the top player drafted is a high school senior. In this case, a 240-pound, 18-year-old man-child forward. Howard, a basketball phenom from Georgia, has a muscular physique, a mouth full of braces and a face that would get him carded at any nightclub. Howard was drafted ahead of Emeka Okafor, a 21-year-old graduate from UConn who was widely regarded as one of the best college prospects in the past few years.
In fact, the trend of selecting players only a few months removed from their senior prom continued with the No. 4 pick, 6-foot-7 point guard Shaun Livingston, 12th pick Robert Smith, 13th pick Sebastian Telfair and 15th pick Al Jefferson. All in all, eight high school seniors were selected, compared with only four college seniors.
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The current trend of going straight from high school to the pros begs the question: Have the best basketball prospects stopped considering college? The answer appears to be yes.
Only a few years ago, teams like Duke, North Carolina and Kentucky would have annual recruiting battles to sign the cream of the prep basketball crop. Now it seems like even these programs are taking a back seat to the ultimate recruiting tool - money.
Many fear this could lead to a diluted talent pool among the best college basketball teams. The possibility of nearly all top prep players chasing the NBA's piggybank may be coming in the near future.
As far-fetched as it seems, all one has to do is think back to 1996 when another well-dressed 18-year-old named Kobe Bryant was drafted. The precedent that was set when he was drafted paved the way for the onslaught of high school players in the NBA today, which no one would have predicted eight years ago.
Howard will make the NBA rookie maximum salary $10,800,900 over the next three years with the Orlando Magic. If his basketball skills live up to the hype, he will make significantly more than that when he renews his contract, as will any of the high school players taken.
It's hard to fault anyone, much less a teenager, for choosing a life of millions, mansions and Escalades over that of study hall, dorms and final exams. Imagine how many UNM students would take an opportunity to make millions of dollars in the workforce over continuing their education.
The benefits of getting a college degree are well-documented, as are the concerns of how 18-year-old players will make the transition physically and mentally from high school to the pros.
However, given the money involved, it looks as though this drafting trend in the NBA is rapidly becoming the norm.
