High Schoolers Who Don't Make it in the NBA

By Dwain Price
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

With its first full season completed after last year's lockout-shortened disaster, the NBA believes it is no longer courting disaster.

The league has a new collective bargaining agreement, which assures that $100 million player contracts are a thing of the past.

The NBA also received a boost from its championship series, won by the team in the No. 2 television market (the Los Angeles Lakers). It helped, too, that two of the NBA's most popular and marketable players -- Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant -- play for the Lakers.

And with 17 teams finishing .500 or better, attendance increased slightly this season after a dropoff the previous season.

The NBA appears strong.

However, there are warning signs that all is not well.

Attendance increased, but so did the number of no-shows at NBA arenas, and TV ratings continued to decline.

With the 29 early-entry players eligible for Wednesday's draft, the NBA has arrived at the crossroads of a conundrum. How does the league improve while at the same time develop young players into veteran professionals?

And what happens to the young players who don't make it?

Players such as Darius Miles, a 6-foot-9 forward from East St. Louis (Ill.) High School, are the ultimate paradox for the NBA.

According to the league, many general managers did not want to publicly praise Miles, because they believe the NBA is no place for high school players.

And with each year, the NBA is less able to absorb the growing number of first-round players guaranteed three-year contracts. Last year, only 12 of the 23 early-entry players were drafted, not including international players.

"If you don't think these players are ready, then don't draft them," said Billy Hunter, executive director of the players association. "It's that simple."

Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

Who is willing to pass up the next Kobe Bryant or the next Kevin Garnett or the next Rashard Lewis? For all the talk about the NBA not being a place for high school players, Miles is projected to be chosen as high as fourth.

Before Garnett, who was selected No. 5 overall by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the 1995 draft, no player had made the jump from high school to the NBA in 20 years. But since, at least one high school player has been chosen in the first round each year. Only two of those nine players are no longer in the league, including former Mavericks forward Leon Smith.

LEON SMITH

A year ago, Leon Smith imagined himself as the next Kevin Garnett, a Chicago high school player drafted by the NBA. When he was selected by San Antonio with the 29th pick in the first round -- and later dealt to the Mavericks -- it was the greatest moment of Smith's young life.

It turned out to be the worst thing that could have happened.

"Leon wasn't ready for the NBA from a maturity standpoint or a physical standpoint," said Don Pittman, the principal at Marshall High School in Chicago. "Leon was a victim of himself, because Dallas didn't do their homework. But they took him on the first round, and that means guaranteed money, and that really turned out to be a negative.

"If he had to work for that, maybe he would have decided this is not for me. Or, he would have been more focused. But all of this stuff was laid in his lap, and he just couldn't handle it."

Smith, a 6-foot-10 forward, alienated the Dallas coaching staff almost from the start. He had two run-ins with assistant coach Donnie Nelson during the team's minicamp, and later refused to play in the Continental Basketball League. Later, he attempted suicide and was arrested twice within a 24-hour span.

Mavericks coach and general manager Don Nelson wanted Smith to play in the CBA because he failed to show he was ready for the NBA. Nelson, and other GMs, say teen-agers don't belong in the NBA, partly because professional leagues cannot offer the support system of college.

"I wanted [Leon] to go to college and he feels at some point he's going to go to school," said Landon Cox, who coached Smith at Chicago's Martin Luther King High School. "But not everybody wants to go to college, and you've got to realize that and understand that.

"And just because kids go from high school to the pros that doesn't mean they're going to die and go to hell. Baseball has being doing it for years and years and years; tennis has been doing it for years and years and years; hockey has been doing it for years and years and years, and nobody says anything about it."

Today, Smith plays for Team Adidas in the Chicago Pro-Am League. Cox said Smith still has hopes of playing in the NBA.

"People are telling me that he's a monster up there" in the Pro-Am, Cox said. "He has the physical ability to play in the NBA. He'll just have to prove to everybody that he has the mental capacity to do it."

Hunter said Smith, who grew up in various foster homes and was a ward of the state of Illinois starting at age 4, needed a stronger support system.

The high school players "can't hang with everybody, because everybody's older than them," Cox said. "They can't do the same things that other people are doing."

Garnett helped his transition from high school to the NBA by moving his younger sister and some of his high school friends in with him. Bryant moved his entire family to Southern California.

"If that's what it takes, then that's the support we're talking about," Cox said. "Unfortunately, Leon's family is dysfunctional."

After the Mavericks released Smith, Hunter and the National Basketball Players Association took charge of steering him in the right direction.

Smith moved to Houston, where he worked out for the Rockets and also was courted by the New Jersey Nets. But both organizations noted his emotional problems.

"Physically he's quite imposing," said Carroll Dawson, the Rockets' executive vice president of basketball. "We worked him out, but it's more than just a physical development for him.

"There's evidently some emotional things there. I hope he's coming along well, because he's a nice young man."

THE D LEAGUE

The NBA can't prevent any player from applying for the draft, but the league hopes to develop a better system for helping young players make the transition to the NBA.

The NBA announced plans to create the National Basketball Development League, or D League. A player must be at least 20 years old to compete in the D League, which is expected to start in the fall of 2001.

"Now the one exception that we can foresee, as you know in the NBA, we can't prohibit a player for applying for the draft early," NBA deputy commissioner Russ Granik said. "If a player does get drafted into the NBA and then gets cut, we think this league is a natural place for that player to wind up.

"So far, that's about the only exception where we can see that, that a player under the age of 20 would be permitted to play in this league. So, despite a lot of the preliminary comments that somehow this league was going to compete against the colleges or be a parallel path, that's not what we're looking to create.

"We will have a lot of programs educationally and otherwise for players that are below a certain age, which we haven't determined yet. But basically you're going to have to be 20 in order to play."

The CBA, which has nine teams, serves as a minor league to the NBA. However, NBA teams can't send a player to the CBA for more playing time and retain the player's rights, as happens in Major League Baseball.

NBA commissioner David Stern, who insists the D League was not created with Leon Smith in mind, sees baseball's format as a model. Stern said he has discussed an alliance between D League and CBA officials.

"This is not about 18-year-olds who can or can't make it in the NBA," Stern said. "That's a different problem than we're trying to address right now.

"We did this because we think there's a good proposition for developing basketball at the grassroots level in these cities that we're going to go to, which are small cities. And we'd like to develop a group of players who can represent us overseas, and we'd like to develop coaches, marketing folks, and public relations people."

Proponents see the D League as a way for the NBA to avoid the disaster of watching the league become a perpetual stars-of-tomorrow league with transient players and inconsistent overall play.

"I just think these kids need support when they go out on those road trips," Cox said. "All of these teams now are beginning to realize when they draft these high school kids, they're going to have to have -- I hate to call them baby sitters -- but they're going to have to have support for them.

"With Leon, there was a whole lot of things involved, but he's gotten all of that behind him and he'll be ready this time. He's rectified his situation, and he'll be in a better frame of mind."



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