Bob Kravitz is an idiot. There’s just no getting around it. He’s an idiot. And he’s written eight hundred too many columns about how awful the new NBA rule is - the one that says a player must wait at least a year after graduating from high school before entering the NBA draft. It’s an especially relevant topic now that former Lawrence North phenom Greg Oden is in college. Had it not been for this new rule, Oden would most likely have gone pro, been the #1 pick, and be playing in the NBA right now.
Instead, he played with his Ohio State teammates tonight in the championship game of the NCAA Tournament, the greatest event in all of sports. He could choose to stay in college and make another run at the championship next year, with some of the same teammates he played with this year, namely Mike Conley, Jr., another freshman phenom from Indianapolis Lawrence North High School - who is himself considering going pro early. The Buckeyes lost a great game - a great capper to a pretty good tournament and an AMAZING Final Four - but Oden had 25 points and 12 rebounds, stayed out of foul trouble, and kept the Buckeyes in a game that could easily have turned into a rout, consdering that Florida was hitting everything; and despite the fact that he could stay in school and take another run at it next year, Oden will go pro.
What more could a player like Oden learn in college, say critics - like Kravitz - of the new rule that keeps high school kids from going pro straight out of high school? Well, for Oden, playing with guys who are closer to his height would be one thing. Also, learning how not to foul guys who are a lot quicker than the guys you played in high school. And then there’s conditioning. Did you see the game tonight? Did you see how hard Oden was breathing? How slow he was getting back down the court? Granted, Florida’s defense was on him like the press gets on the deaths of quasi-famous golddigging blonde bimbos, but Oden was struggling at times tonight. (And yes, I know he played thirty-eight minutes, including all twenty minutes of the second frame.)
He carries 270 pounds of muscle, some of which is as high as seven feet off the ground. That would wear anybody out. But guess what else you learn in college? How to play longer each night and how to play more games in a season. High school basketball games have four eight-minute quarters (32 minute game); college games have two twenty-minute halves (40 minute game); and NBA games have four twelve-minute quarters (48 minute game). In high school, not counting sectionals, you play 18-20 games; college teams are now playing upwards of 30 games in the regular season; and the NBA has a grueling 82-game schedule. There’s a learning curve there - one kid in a hundred is born with the natural gifts, both mental and physical, to make that leap from high school straight to the pros.
Sure, a guy like Oden could get hurt; in fact, he did get hurt, last year - he had surgery over the summer and missed Ohio State’s first seven games this year. While he was recuperating, he learned how to shoot left-handed. And he’s still going to be the first pick in this summer’s NBA draft.
Kravitz, in last Saturday’s column, at one point asks why people get all bent out of shape about basketball players going pro early, but fail to get all bent out of shape about tennis and golf players going pro early.
Hmm...let me think about that one. Oh, yeah, it would be because a golf course is a golf course is a golf course. You don’t play against anyone. It’s you versus the grass and the sand and the wind, none of which get any more difficult at the next level. (Okay, some of the holes at Augusta National are a little spooky, but for the most part a golf course is a golf course. Also, if you don’t make the cut, you don’t get to finish the tournament.) Eventually they’ll stop inviting you if you keep stinking up the joint. Same thing with tennis. In the NBA, if you get drafted in the first round, you get a guaranteed two-year contract.
The NBA is not about basketball, it’s about money and endorsements and slam dunk contests, and it’s destroying college basketball, which is still a little bit about sports. Sort of. An article in the Star last week, profiling Eli Holman, a hotshot baller from the Oakland area who is going to play college ball at Indiana next year, quoted Eli as saying that he was probably a one-and-done type of player (one year in college, and then on to the pros), although he said he would stay at Indiana long enough to make sure he would go in the first round. And even though I hate the thought of that, I kind of admire his honesty. Apparently he got to talk to Shqauille O’Neal, his idol, who said to Eli that “school comes first.”
Inspirational...tugs at my heart and makes me feel warm inside. Except that it doesn’t. O’Neal is a hypocrite. He left LSU after three years, to go pro. He went back later to get his degree, after he had achieved enormous success in the NBA. So yeah, school comes first. Except when it doesn’t. It’s also sad that Shaquille O’Neal is anyone’s idol, because he isn’t talented. He’s 7’1” and weighs 325 pounds. Neither height nor weight are talents.
I’m biased, of course. I love college basketball. It’s one of the few great spectator sports left in this fading republic. But like almost everything else in this country, it is being ruined by greed and mismanagement - and idiots like Bob Kravitz are helping to kill it.
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