Dr. Giganto

so, the NBA draft was last night, and it was dominated by high-schoolers and foreign players. When will NBA management learn that for every LeBron James, there are 5 Kwame Browns??? And for every Dirk Nowitzki there are 10 Nikoloz Tshkivithvili's???

High schoolers went 1st, 4th, 12th, 13th, 15th, 17th, 18th, and 19th

Foreign players went 11th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 27th, 28th, 30th, 32nd, 39th, 42nd, 46th, 49th, 50th, 51st, and 57th.

That means that 14 of the 29 first round picks (nearly 50%) were high-schoolers or foreigners, and 23 out of 59 overall

Pavel Podkolzine, who was taken 21st overall averaged 2.6 points per game and 2.3 rebounds per game, playing in Europe...AND HE'S 7'5!!!!! You mean to tell me that there were no college-aged American players who could put up 3 points and 2 rebounds in Europe? :roll:

Here are all the high school players drafted in the first round the last 5 years:

LeBron James, Travis Outlaw, Ndubi Ebi, Kendrick Perkins, Amare Stoudamire, Qyntel Woods, Kwame Brown, Tyson Chandler, Eddy Curry, DeSagana Diop, Kedrick Brown, Darius Miles, DeShawn Stevenson, Jonathon Bender, Leon Smith

Take away LeBron, Amare Stoudamire, and maybe Jonathon Bender and Darius Miles, and what do they all have in common? They all SUCK

Here are all the foreign players taken the last 5 years in the first round:

Aleksandar Radojevic, Frederic Weis, Andrei Kirilenko, Darko Milicic, Mickael Pietrus, Zarko Cabarkapa, Aleksandar Pavlovic, Boris Diaw-Riffiod, Zoran Planinic, Carlos Delfino, Leandrinho Barbosa, Yao Ming, Nikoloz Tskitishvili, Nene Hilario, Bostjan Nachbar, Jiri Welsch, Nenad Krstic, Pau Gasol, Vladimir Radmanovic, Raul Lopez, Tony Parker, Hedo Turkoglu, Dalibor Bagaric, Iakovos Tsakalidis, and Primoz Brezec

Kirilenko, Yao, Nene, Gasol, Parker, and Turkoglu are good...but the rest of these guys are chumps.

Who were the best rookies last year: LeBron (a once-in-a-generation thing. He goes beyond all conventional thought), Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Kirk Hinrich, Josh Howard, TJ Ford and Luke Walton. What do they all (except LeBron) have in common? They all played American college basketball

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Freak

I bet it's only a phase the league is going through, where teams are hoping to find a "gem," and draft mostly on potential. Eventually they'll start realizing that LeBron and Dirk are extreme exceptions to the rule, and the focus will shift back to college players who have proven they can play at an elite level... of course, high-schoolers need to enrol in the colleges first too.

DMW

You forgot Darko, who was both a euro guy and a high schooler, and was picked ahead of Carmelo Anthony (granted that Carmelo only had one year of college).

Freak

Actually he included him in the foreign chumps list, which I find pretty unfair. No one expects Darko to do much of anything until around 2007, when he could become a big force in the league.

Dr. Giganto

I also think people underestimate how much that year of college helped Carmelo's game. I saw Carmelo play in person early in his freshman year, and he was playing against my alma mater, which was only in its second year of D-1 basketball. Now, Carmelo was good, but not NEARLY as good as he is now.

To put it in perspective, Carmelo put up something in the high teens or low 20's against us, while one year earlier Preston Schumpert dropped 36 on us before being taken out with 10 minutes left in the second half. Present-day Carmelo (only a year and a half later) would probably drop 50 on us.

Carmelo improved by leaps and bounds over the course of his lone year of college, and i believe that was one of the primary reasons that he was able to make an immediate impact in the NBA

and how could i forget Darko????

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