One-and-done debate hits home
Winslow, Whiteside experiences were vastly different
CHICAGO — Make all the arguments you want about the perils of drafting prospects directly out of high school. But isn’t that essentially what the NBA will do in June with Anfernee Simons and Michael Porter?
To refresh, Simons initially reclassified to the collegiate class of 2018, in order to allow his body to mature. So he enrolled at IMG Academy this fall, essentially for another year of prep seasoning. Only now, amid increasing buzz, Simons is considering a move into the NBA next season.
Then there is Porter, the potential No. 1 pick in June, whose freshman season lasted all of two minutes at Missouri before the need for season-ending back surgery. He nonetheless is expected to be a prime lottery pick.
So if the NBA’s reasoning for at least one year of college or waiting until a 19th birthday is to featured more polished prospects . . . well, um, no.
No less than NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has seemingly backed off opposition to one-and-done, which long has been opposed by the players’ union. The compromise being floated is an approach that requires an actual collegiate commitment, the NBA and NCAA perhaps to work on a rule of at least a two-year collegiate stay if a prep prospect elects to bypass the draft.
Even with uneven Heat history with raw draft prospects, such as selecting Dorell Wright directly out of prep school, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra agrees it might be time to end the one-and-done charade.
“It is a tough call,” he said. “How can you restrict an 18-year-old from pursuing a dream when he can do it in any other sports or other professions? The other side of it, it’s a very tough professional league to come into. All the things that are thrown at you, you can’t expect a player to have full maturity to be able to handle everything at such a young age.”
The NBA, of course, has had plenty of preps-to-pros success stories, highlighted by Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and LeBron James.
“If you were an absolute stud, there’s somewhat of a mockery of going to college for four months just to play 30 basketball games at an elite school and not even finish the spring semester,” Spoelstra said. “That seems kind of ridiculous, as well.”
Amid the increasing debate, Kyrie Irving, who has a unique place in the discussion, was asked about Porter’s situation, having himself been limited to 11 games during his lone season at Duke due to a toe injury, nonetheless selected No. 1 overall by the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2011.
To Irving, there is enough scouting at the earliest stages for NBA teams to have a read on Porter even without a collegiate sample.”I’m sure NBA scouts have enough on him to know whether he’s going to be in the top three or two,” Irving said at AmericanAirlines Arena before his Boston Celtics fell to the Heat. “Other guys will have a lot more film. But I’m sure his talent, ability to handle it and shoot it from the outside, we’ve seen guys drafted who didn’t play.”
The Heat’s past two lottery picks have been one-and-done prospects, forward Justise Winslow out of Duke in 2015 and center Bam Adebayo out of Kentucky in June.
“I’m glad I went to Duke,” Winslow said. “I think it should be any person’s choice to come out of high school. One years, two years, I don’t think the NCAA should be able to control when someone wants to go pursue their passion.
“I think it should be up to the player, high school, one year in college, two years in college, it should always be up to the player.”
Or perhaps up to the school, with John Calipari creating the outline for one and done at Kentucky.
“Some people will say you can’t get better at the NBA if you don’t go to the NBA,” Adebayo said. “From my perspective, my college, it often is said, is based around the NBA.
“Either way, it was like the blueprint to the NBA. It really didn’t matter if I was at Kentucky or not, I was going to do what I wanted to do. And what I wanted to do was to play.”
But there also are cases like Heat center Hassan Whiteside, who was oneand-done at Marshall but then fell to the second round of the 2010 draft, left to toil in the minor leagues and overseas before his Heat revival.
Whiteside said it wasn’t the system that failed him, but rather NBA scouting ineptitude.
“I may have skipped college and gone straight to sign up for the NBA,” he said. “The year I came out, there were a million big men. A lot of GMs made a lot of mistakes that night. A lot of GMs got fired that night. So who knows what would’ve happened?”