http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323936804578227641349862904.html Really? This is the level of analysis one expects from a major newspaper?
Um, the article never says that the draft class sucks at all. The closest it comes is the title: "The Grade for This Season's NBA Draft Class: D" and that's just a play on words in which the D stands for D-League. Just reads as an informative artice on how its becoming more popular to send 1st round picks to the D-League to develop.
Maybe the Grade of D was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the D-League assignments and not an actual grade of the draft class? I don't know, sometimes my simpleton thinking is too simple.
The article refers to the # of guys in D-League as "not do distinguished" and the fact that Thabeet was there as a "dubious" distinction. There is definitely a negative tone associated with D-League in the article. #Stigma. The negativity is not only in the title.
As long as the media assumes the D-League is some demotion or evidence of setback for young players then the league will continue to have a bad reputation among Rookies and FA. Sad.
Seems the author took going to the D-League as the negative alone. He didn't consider that the NBA is changing and is more actively using the NBDL. There is some truth to what he wrote, as in the impact hasn't been there yet, but I agree with Carl Herrera -- lazy article for the Wall Street Journal. Not to change subject, but this is becoming more commonplace with bigger name sites. Get Joe Schmo to write something free or cheap and we'll push it under the big name... and others will pass it along because it's from the established big name. ESPN does it a lot with people we've never heard of, and people post it here as "from ESPN" or "nice to get the national respect".
Yeah, that was a pretty terrible and completely misleading article. Which is a shame because the WSJ is a forum where you can actually talk about the business of sports and could discuss how the league's use of the NBDL is evolving. Instead, they use the opportunity to take a groundless cheapshot at the draft class.
I agree. The article has a list of players entitled "Minor Setbacks". What is surprising is that 5/8 players listed wore a Rockets uniform at one point in time.
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