The Sports Truth

Last summer, NBA commissioner David Stern took action in an attempt to ease the disconnect between his product and his customers. Figuring an older, more mature league would be an easier sell to a fan base alienated by poor team play and boorish conduct, Stern installed a rule requiring players to be at least 19 years old and one year removed from high school when they enter the NBA Draft.

The little man who rules with an iron fist wanted to protect his de facto minor league system, college basketball, which markets new talent free of charge each March. It was a business decision, and one that will boost the level of play at both the college level (where we will actually get to see the elite stars, if only for a year) and the NBA (where they will arrive with more experience).

What this ignores, according to last Sunday’s Boston Globe magazine, is the human fallout.

A few players such as Ron Artest — NBA Public Enemy #1, and a guy who played in college — are the cause of the league’s problems, but it’s the high schoolers who pay the price.

High school phenoms don’t have a right to NBA stardom, but they should have a chance.

Who is David Stern to decree that someone must spend a year in college and potentially risk (through injury, mediocre play, bad coaching, etc.) a life-altering sum of money?

Take the case of Sebastian Telfair (pictured), a member of one of the last classes of high schoolers allowed to enter the draft. Two years after being drafted by Portland, the 21-year-old was traded to Boston this June.

When he suits up for the Celtics, he’ll do so as half the player he would have been had he attended the University of Louisville as planned.

But the point guard bypassed his basketball education, and had every right to do so. After graduating from Brooklyn’s Lincoln High (the famed alma mater of Stephon Marbury), he was picked by the Trail Blazers, who soon grew disenchanted with his wayward perimeter shooting and soft D. Portland ultimately decided that the 13th overall pick wasn’t worth the price.

Now it’s the Celtics banking on this frayed prodigy. Both parties are a bit desperate and flawed, but only the Celtics run the risk of regret. No matter how Telfair plays in Boston, he can’t be blamed for trading the Coney Island projects for his current lifestyle.

It’s a choice all high school prospects should still be allowed to make.

Telfair told Ian O’Connor of Westchester County’s Journal News that he knew more friends shot and killed than he could count. That drug dealers bought him food when he had no money of his own. That his father did hard time for manslaughter. That his high school season was interrupted by the killings of two acquaintances 25 feet outside his door.

Between the Trail Blazers and Adidas, he was guaranteed $20 million on draft day.

In the end, it doesn’t matter that Telfair would’ve sharpened his shooting or learned how to penetrate or how to defend taller guards at Louisville. A poor kid who chose to be a wealthy man, he’s got no reason to look back, and no high school prospect should be denied the right to chase the same dream.

Posted in NBA, Sebastian Telfair