You may have heard of Brandon Jennings.
He was a standout high school point guard from Compton, Calif., averaging more than 30 points and seven assists his senior year and winning a truckload of awards along the way.
Then came the time for a new rite of passage for prodigious young ballplayers: Picking a college at which to waste a year before entering the NBA. Thanks to commissioner David Stern’s age rule, high school players must be one year removed from secondary school before joining the league.
But that wasn’t the path for Jennings. Instead, he signed a one-year deal with a professional team in Italy, becoming the first American player to pick an overseas team over college.
Reactions were mixed, as always, with a few hack sportswriters claiming that Jennings had subverted the do-gooder nature of the age rule, and others pointing to his mediocre stats on his Roman squad as proof that the young point was a prima donna all along.
And then, this month, in his first season in the NBA, Jennings dropped 55 points on the Warriors and led the once-lowly Bucks to an 8-7 start.
While 15 games doesn’t make a season, let alone a career, it’s now indisputable that Jennings is NBA-ready, and that’s without spending a year in the NCAA, getting barked at by some overheated old man on Maggie’s Farm.
Hopefully, this leads to a revolution of sorts among elite young players.
Proponents of the nonsensical spend-a-year-in-college method claim: 1) that it allows players to hone their skills in a competitive environment, and, 2) that it gives often underprivileged youth a shot at an education.
Well, let’s address those idiocies sequentially.
First, the college game usually relies on adherence to a system — whether the triangle, the Princeton offense, or whatever — that masks the deficiencies of mediocre players and subdues the brilliance of the more talented ones, all in the name of a regimented way to keep overpaid, cantankerous autocrats like Rick Pitino in business. This process often leads to exaggerated résumés for middle-of-the-road players who then make for disappointing pros — like, say, Adam Morrison.
So how, then, would Jennings’ absurd talents be better spent: embarrassing collegiate defenders to the chagrin of his howling coach, or competing for minutes among hardened, professional ballplayers?
And then comes the uglier fallacy: Forcing players to spend at least a year in college grants them a chance at a good education and a better life.
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To retain NCAA eligibility, most colleges only require athletes to complete six hours per semester. So, had Jennings spent a year in school, would that 12 hours of class-taking have bettered his life in any conceivable fashion?
Furthermore, in the recruiting blitzkrieg that precedes signing big-time high school players like Jennings, colleges often throw their own academic standards under the bus.
Derrick Rose, the last inner-city point guard phenomenon, found himself at the center of a scandal when someone at Memphis took his SAT for him, allowing him to join the Tigers and lead them to the NCAA Championship game in his lone college season.
Thus, if a player is clearly ready to play professional basketball and has already drawn interest from the NBA, why do we delude ourselves into thinking that forcing him to sit through remedial math courses will better his life?
Well, because there’s money to be made.
I have no idea who pioneered the modern NCAA system, but I assume he died a rich man. There are tickets to be sold, jerseys to put on the racks and TV rights to sell, and here’s the best part: The labor is free.
College basketball players fight tooth and nail for victories without compensation, all the while risking injury and earning potential. That serves only to line the pockets of university coaches, athletics directors and presidents. And we allow this exploitation to take place under the guise of providing kids with an approximation of an education.
So, back to Jennings.
He skipped over the vampiric collegiate system, signed for guaranteed money overseas, then came to the league and is now the leading Rookie of the Year candidate.
He’s provided an equitable path to the pros for hot-commodity high school players, and until the NCAA and NBA reform their policies, here’s hoping that his method becomes the norm.
