WEEKLY WHINE

Get schooled or get schooled

This morning, CNN and the NBA will have a town hall discussion about players declaring for the league's draft before completing college. I think I'm in a good position to comment about players leaving college for basketball, as I'm a player who left basketball for college.

The town meeting will feature the NBA's omnipresent commissioner David Stern, erstwhile Georgetown coach John Thompson, and a few players. Amongst them will be Michael Jordan, who left the University of North Carolina with one year left but earned his BA in geography later; Tracy McGrady, who didn't go to college but earns the league maximum; and Tim Duncan, who stayed at Wake Forest University for four whole years, earned a degree in psychology, and then won an NBA title with San Antonio in 1999.

The complaint about guys leaving college early - or skipping college altogether - is not that they aren't getting educations but that their skills aren't developed enough to compete in the NBA. So what about the other issue, the one that nobody seems to care about?

These guys aren't going to play basketball forever. Nonetheless, in today's lucrative market, they might accumulate enough money during their playing careers, however short they may be, to last them the rest of their lives. Then again, they might also burn that money away as soon as they get it. Or worse, they might leave it in the hands of an agent or manager who then nabs some of it, as agent Tank Black is alleged to have done. It's questionable whether college would help players avoid these pitfalls. Higher education provides a notorious lack of real world experience.

But like most professional leagues, the NBA has a program for all rookies regardless of their background. In the NBA, the issues include dealing with fans and the media, coping with the pressure of playing basketball [or alternatively, coping with a seat at the end of the bench], and of course, money management. It's kind of like Caltech's Frosh Camp, except that the NBA has no Honor Code. [Maybe that's the problem.] College really comes in handy for basketballers when they're not baskeballers any more, when they find themselves having to do something useful with their lives.

So perhaps it doesn't matter if people join the NBA without having graduated from college, provided that they then finish their degrees before their playing days are over. The trouble is, it's hard to tell how long that will be. Some of the players who left college early, including Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Karl Malone, went on to earn MVP trophies in the NBA. Others, such as Ronnie Henderson, Jelani McCoy, and Michael Lloyd, were drafted and then drifted into oblivion.

Many [if not all] early entries are motivated by the opportunity to make money in the NBA. Some of these promise family members that they will later complete their educations, and some of these make good. No data is available on the frequency with which early entries earn their degrees later. We have only the high profile cases, like Jordan, Jerry Stackhouse, and most recently Shaquille "The Big Graduate" O'Neal, to examine. Nor is there easily accessible data on the fields in which the graduates majored.

So the other issue is whether early entrants are a detriment to the level of play in the NBA. The answer: I don't bleeding know. The LA Clippers are filled with young guys like rookies Darius Miles [didn't go to college] and Quentin Richardson [entered after two years at DePaul University], yet they've performed rather well so far this season. Though they're still out of playoff range, they are better than in years past, when the roster was similarly inexperienced, and have a few major accomplishments under their collective belt. Most notable is last month's win over the Lakers, who had previously beaten them sixteen times in a row.

If things don't go well for the next round of hopeful pros, the round after that will presumably take notice and decide to spend an extra year or two in college. For the time being, the examples of Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, and Tracy McGrady still loom large. Since each of these players made large quantities of cash without having balled in college, the youngsters with game will think that they can do the same.