Derrick Rose to have surgery for meniscus tear

Yeah, there's no nobility on either side and anyone who thinks otherwise is naive. They were interviewing someone from the Big Ten over the weekend and he was saying the freshman eligibility issue was all about academics, which is a load of crap.

This is good for the NBA, great for the NCAA but is vastly unfair to players.

 

Of the Rookies of the Year since the 2000-01 season, three had no college experience, four had one year, four had two years and three stayed all four years.

 

The term "NBA ready" must mean something different to different people. If you look at first-year numbers, they are significantly lower for every one of them. Even though LeBron averaged 20.7 points, that's more than six under his career average and he only shot 41%. Kobe averaged 15 minutes and 7.6 points in his rookie season.

Jordan, on the other hand, averaged 28.2 and shot 51.5 percent in his rookie season after three years at UNC.

Superstars that played three or four years of college ball have rookie numbers that are not far off their career averages. Superstars who came to the NBA straight from high school have rookie numbers that are well below their career numbers.

 

LeBron James averaged 20 points a game. I would say that's a pretty good definition of NBA-ready.

But it really doesn't need to go beyond "if someone is willing to pay him to be the NBA, he is NBA-ready."

 

And LeBron James was a better player his second year than had he gone to college during his rookie year.

Michael Jordan would have been better that year if he had played in the league the year before instead of college.

 

And ... the guys who spend three years in college are 21 or 22 in that rookie year, a.k.a. full-grown men.

The other guys are 18 or 19 and not close to done growing.

 

You do not get better by playing 30 games against inferior competition instead of 82 games against superior competition, while having to go to classes.

 

Yeah ... I guess an extension of Tony's point would be that Rose could have spent three years at Memphis and then jumped in as the NBA MVP, since he won it in his senior season.

 

Imagine how much better he would have been had he spent four years playing in Conference USA for a coach who doesn't do any coaching!

 

The NBA is far more watchable than it was even five years ago. But the last minute or so in the NBA and college is excruciating. I really would love to see college kids stay longer, but it's complete BS to require them to. As someone said here, if someone thinks they are worth drafting, then they're ready. It's not up to the NBA to protect the kids from bad decisions, and it's not fair to keep them from trying to make it if they think they're ready. As with most of the fucked-up things in sports, it's because of the adults who are giving the kids bad advice and convincing them they are ready when they are not. Very few of them are. It still amazes me every year the number of kids who jump into the NFL draft who end up not even getting picked. Doesn't happen nearly as often in the NBA, but I imagine that's only because the draft doesn't have as many rounds.

 

The only reason the last minute of NBA games is excruciating is because the two teams have 14 timeouts and they use just about all of them to advance the ball. It takes 15 actual minutes sometimes to play the final 60 seconds in a close game.

 

I'd be hard-pressed to find anything in sports more maddening (for me personally) than the fouling and timeouts at the end of basketball game. I understand it, but it just kills my interest in the game. And it's even worse when I'm in the office and waiting for a game to end before deadline. Gah!