In 1963, Reggie Harding became the first NBA draftee to have never played collegiate ball; in the NBA’s formative years, a four-year collegiate career (and, by association, a degree) was required to be drafted into the NBA—but the rules were changed in 1971, allowing high schoolers to forgo college ball, provided they could prove financial hardship. In 1974, Moses Malone became the first basketball player to go from high school straight to professional ball with the Utah Stars of the NBA’s rival ABA. In 1975, Darryl Dawkins and Bill Willoughby went from high school to the NBA, and then in 1976, the NBA and ABA merged.
After 1975, no player went from high school to the NBA for twenty years—with the exception of Shawn Kemp and Lloyd Daniels, who were both, at one point, enrolled in college but didn’t play. In 1995, Kevin Garnett sparked a revolution by jumping from high school to the NBA. From 1996-2005, a treasure trove of players were drafted from high school and it’s a mix of good and bad:
1996-Kobe Bryant, Jermaine O’Neal
1997-Tracy McGrady
1998-Rashard Lewis, Al Harrington, Korleone Young
1999-Jonathan Bender
2000-Darius Miles, DeShawn Stevenson
2001-Kwame Brown, Tyson Chandler, Eddy Curry, DaSagna Diop, Ousmane Cisse
2002-Amar’e Stoudemire
2003-LeBron James, Travis Outlaw, Kendrick Perkins, Ndudi Ebi, James Lang
2004-Dwight Howard, Al Jefferson, Robert Swift, Shaun Livingston, Sebastain Telfair, Josh Smith, J.R. Smith, Dorell Wright
2005-Martell Webster, Andrew Bynum, Monta Ellis, Gerald Green, C.J. Miles, Louis Williams, Andray Blatche, Amir Johnson, Ricky Sanchez
All in all, forty-one players jumped from high school straight to professional basketball. There are a few first ballot Hall of Famers (Garnett, Kobe and LeBron) and McGrady, Lewis, and O’Neal—at their best—were dominant. Chandler, Howard, Ellis, Jefferson, reigning Sixth Man of the Year Lou Williams and Stoudemire (when he was healthy) were/are extremely efficient in their respective disciplines. There are a few solid role players in there as well—including 2013 Sixth Man of the Year J.R. Smith—but there are busts, too. How are people like Kwame Brown and Darius Miles spending their days without a college education? Have they invested their short-lived NBA career’s earnings well?
The days of high school-to-NBA are over, replaced in 2006 by the “one-and-done” rule, a part of the then-newly-established CBA specifying that NBA draftees had to be nineteen-years-old and one year removed from high school. In the years since 2006, some fantastic players have been one-and-dones: Kevin Durant, Al Horford, Mike Conley, Derrick Rose, Kevin Love, DeAndre Jordan, DeMar DeRozan, John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Kyrie Irving, Anthony Davis, and Andrew Wiggins, to name a few. Outside of role players, some other names that come up on the list scream out immaturity (on-the-court or off it) or injury-prone: Tyrus Thomas, Greg Oden, Brandan Wright, Javaris Crittenton, Jerryd Bayless, Michael Beasley, O.J. Mayo, Brandon Jennings (Jennings is oft-considered a one-and-done, having played in Italy for a year instead of college) , Lance Stephenson, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Joel Embiid and Noah Vonleh.
Then there are the busts: Shawne Williams, Donte Greene, Henry (nee Bill) Walker, Byron Mullens, Daniel Orton, Tiny Gallon, Josh Selby, Anthony Bennett, Grant Jerrett, and Ricky Ledo to name a few.
All told, the most frightening fact is this: The 2015 draft included thirteen one-and-dones—fourteen if you include Emmanuel Mudiay, who played in China for a year in lieu of college—the most since the rule was enacted in 2006. Draftees like Karl-Anthony Towns, D’Angelo Russell, and Jahlil Okafor have played outstandingly thus far, and Justise Winslow has shown flashes. Devin Booker, Myles Turner and Rashad Vaughn have been mediocre-to-decent on reduced minutes—but the rest of the class is struggling (all subsequent statistics in graf from ESPN.com). Emmanuel Mudiay (30.2 MPG, 12.2 PPG, .324 FG%, .259 3FG%, .696 FT%) has looked sloppy. Eighth overall pick Stanley Johnson (20.4 MPG, 7.8 PPG, .373 FG%, .220 3FG%, .696 FT%), twelfth overall pick Trey Lyles (8.5 MPG, 2.1 PPG, .333 FG%, .167 3FG%, .400 FT%), and fifteenth overall pick Kelly Oubre Jr., (8.4 MPG, 3.7 PPG, .344 FG%, .214 3FG%, .615 FT%) look like they could’ve used another year or two in college. Minnesota’s Tyus Jones has barely touched the court, while Brooklyn’s Chris McCullough and Golden State’s Kevon Looney are recovering from long-term injuries.
It’s true that 60% of NBA players are broke within five years of retirement and the average NBA career is less than five years. If only four of the current crop of rookies have established themselves as legitimate NBA players in the year that had the most collegiate freshmen declare for the NBA, there’s cause for concern. Imagine if Kwame Brown could back and attend the University of Florida as he’d planned? Imagine if the big-time high school-to-NBA busts could invent a medical device and start their own company a la Jonathan Bender? Imagine if Greg Oden had stayed at Ohio State or O.J. Mayo hadn’t fled USC so quickly. What could have been?
One thing is for sure…the current rule isn’t working. There are too many busts and flame-outs in comparison to the stars. But we would miss out on a future Garnett or Kobe or a LeBron if the rule were more like NCAA Football’s. Some players are ready at eighteen, so what’s the best course of action?
Ideally, the NBA would go the way Major League Baseball does—an approach which John Feinstein of The Washington Post discussed earlier in 2015: All players graduating high school are eligible for the draft. (The NBA’s draft would have to be much longer—accounting for both college players entering and high schoolers.) Bearing in mind that, in the NBA, only first-round draft picks are guaranteed money, once these high school players find out where they’re drafted and what sort of financial situation they’d be in, they can decide whether to play in college or go to the NBA. Just like baseball, any player who’s drafted and chooses college would have to play three years before entering the draft again; this would not only give the fringe players time to develop, but it would also allow younger players to mature, attend classes and receive the majority—if not entirety—of a college education. NCAA Basketball coaches would be able to actually plan again, instead of promising scholarships to one-and-dones, only to have them open up ten months later. (Imagine how many fringe players have had to forget playing at the school of their dreams due to one-and-dones.)
Most of all, it would bring school spirit and pride back to college basketball. The vampiric John Calipari—the only coach to have Final Four appearances vacated at more than one school—has bastardized college basketball. He even tried to have the aforementioned “one-and-done” phrase changed to “succeed-and-proceed.” Then again, Calipari’s coaching atmosphere welcomes scandal, bribery, vacated wins and NCAA sanctions.
How are fans to root for a school’s basketball team when, each year, the faces change so dramatically? How can a player feel pride for a school when he’s not there long enough to even learn the university’s song? In the same Washington Post article, Feinstein writes “[…] one-and-dones don’t go to college, they represent a college. Many are being told where they will go in the draft before they play a game.” Feinstein discussed how Calipari held a combine for NBA executives in the fall of 2014…before the season began.
The NBA Players Association and the NCAA need to iron out a new rule. It would very literally breathe life back into a sport devoid of true passion, true camaraderie, for so long.