Kwame Brown and Michael Olowokandi would not have been top tier centers had they gone to college. Both picks were reaches to say the least, teams taking a center too high based on wishful thinking. Apparently Jordan’s 3 years in college didn’t make him much of a talent evaluator, that’s why the Bobcats are the worst team in the NBA. And the Clippers were a notoriously poorly run franchise for decades. It isn’t a lack of college that made these franchise take bad draft choices. There just haven’t been many elite centers come up in the last decade, and two of the ones who should have been elite, dominant, centers, have had their careers cut short due to injury (Yao, Oden). Andrew Bynum is one of the elite centers in the league, with excellent fundamentals, very strong defensively, a very good passer out of double teams, and he came into the NBA at *17*. Your argument is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

College is not a necessity for developing basketball skills. How many players in the league have as good of fundamentals as Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, or Dirk Nowitzki? All of them started playing professionally at a very young age.

Why don’t we talk about point guards? The point guard position in the NBA has never been this strong. There a lot of elite point guards and is the position extremely deep as well. Rondo, Deron Williams, Westbrook, Paul, Rose, Rubio, Kyrie Irving, Nash, Parker etc. This is a golden age for point guards in the NBA.

As for rule changes supposedly helping centers, you didn’t mention the zone.

”If you guys could change one rule in the League, what would it be?”

Kevin Garnett: No zone.
Tim Duncan : Yeah, the zone.
Kevin Garnett: If there was one rule I could change today, it would be the zone.
Kevin Garnett: I think it puts players that are really good at a disadvantage, so to speak. Everybody here gets double-teams, if not triple-teams, so we can all speak on this. But it sorta—I remember Phoenix sat somebody literally right there [in the lane].
Tim Duncan: It makes it hard for all of us.

2001, Shaquille O’neal:

“Stinks,” the Los Angeles star said. “I have a lot to say, but not now.

The zone rules make it much harder for post players.

Finally, the part about a lack of shooters is just not true. Effective FG% is higher than it has ever been. 3 point percentage is higher than it has ever been, and 2 point percentage has remained pretty constant, despite less post play, less fouls and free throws, and a slower pace in recent times.

The quality of play in the NBA dipped somewhat in the late 90s and early 2000s, but the talent pool has increased to keep up with expansion. There is no downfall of the NBA, the level of play in the NBA is very high right now. The level of play in college, on the other hand, is really poor right now. The one and done rule hurts college, not the NBA.

Get your Portable ID!

Lotsa things are against the law. Use enough money to hire enough lawyers to find/exploit all the loopholes, Microsoft could classify itself “non-profit”.

As for the rules, yes, there have been rule changes, but if anything they should only help them on the offensive end. Hand check rules and defensive 3 second violations, only help centers in the post up game. The problem is the lack of quality players at the position. Tyson Chandler could be the 3rd best center in the NBA while only averaging 11 points a game. The position is at an all-time low.

Over-expansion could have been a problem, but the league grew as popularity grew. Great athletes began playing basketball instead of football or baseball, so there should have been an increase of quality players as well. We’ve seen a growth in the number of quality college basketball programs so it’s safe to say that the number of college basketball stars is on the rise, but these stars aren’t staying long enough to develop their games into what they ultimately could be.

If you want another example, i could go on about the lack of quality shooters in the league, and how players need to develop a jump shot in college before coming to the NBA.

Is there corruption in the NCAA? Yes. Of course their is. But the fact of the matter is, the money goes to the 1300 institutions. NCAA officials make a yearly salary, and make the same yearly salary whether players are one and done or not. No one is taking home extra money in the form of profits or dividends, because if they did the IRS would have come down on them hard one of the numerous times the NCAA has been accused of operating as a for-profit organization.

Stern’s right about one thing though.. it’s to the NBA’s advantage to keep a lot of these guys in college (free advertising/exposure and better opportunity to scout).

Imagine a business where the greatest expense of payroll, doesn’t exist. For the NCAA, classes is not an issue, keeping a quality product is.

Between 1983 and 1987, 5 centers were drafted first overall:
Ralph Sampson – 4 years at UCLA
Hakeen Olajuwon – 4 Years at Houston (redshirt junior)
Patrick Ewing – 4 years at Georgetown
Brad Daugherty – 4 years at UNC
David Robinson – 4 years at Navy

Brad Daugherty was the worst out of the 5 of them despite being a 20 and 10 player for much of his career and an all-star in 5 of his 8 NBA seasons.

Since 1995, 7 Centers have been taken first overall
Tim Duncan – 4 years at Wake Forest
Michael Olowokandi – 2 years at Brunel University in London, 2 years at Pacific
Kwame Brown – HS
Yao Ming – 5 Years of Pro Ball in China
Dwight Howard – HS
Andrew Bogut – 2 years at Utah
Greg Oden – 1 year at Ohio State

Dwight Howard is the only anomaly, but he gets by on shear size and strength against the low quality NBA centers out there. Duncan was a much more polished player coming out of Wake Forest, having played there for 4 years. I can also through out players like Eddy Curry, Hasheem Thabeet, DeSagana Diop, Stromile Swift, and Brandan Wright, who were also top ten flops that didn’t give themselves time to develop. The NBA needs to fix this problem or the quality of the game will get worse.

After all, there is NOTHING that makes these GMs draft high school kids right? Exactly…they have the right NOT to draft them, maybe that would be the hard lesson that some kids need to see in order to make their butts go to school and actually develop a real game. Most of these all americans are just the best player in their city/region so we dont know how good they will be against others of similar talent level.

my 2cents

http://www.thenation.com/blog/166886/more-march-madness-persecution-jamar-samuels

Frankly they should be able to go right out of highschool You shouldn’t prevent people who are capable of becoming millionaires from doing so. What if someone like LeBron had to go to college and he destroyed his knee which ended his career. He would have essentially been prohibited form becoming a millionaire.

And honestly how bad is it to go straight out of high school? Even if they fall out of the league they tend to find other good work. Either in Europe or with the Harlem Globe Trotters and stuff. I know that sounds ridiculous, but they’d be getting paid more money than most people here to play basketball. I’d rather have that than some marketing degree that I was forced to get.

I like that. They should do the same to college coaches who leave early.