He Got Game

While most bets are on whether Kevin Durant or Greg Oden will be the No 1 pick tonight, I have to point out that it really doesn’t matter since its practically a guarantee that neither will win a championship next season. Since 2000, not a single #1 Draft pick has won a championship. LeBron got closest this year, but close doesn’t put a ring on your finger. What is a definite guarantee, however, is that both of them (and quite a few others) will become obscenely rich teenagers.

That’s right. They were born in 1988.

You see, I had my first “Oh shit, I’m not a kid anymore” moment thanks to the NBA: I was at the American Airlines Arena catching a preseason Heat game this past year. Miami was still feeling mighty optimistic, unaware of the complete smackdown that the upcoming season was about to hand us and we were going to accept thanks to some world class craptasticness on our behalf. (Wait, not ours – I had nothing to do with it. Fucking Heat… but I digress). There I was, sitting at the game skimming the player stats and I noticed a good deal of those little fuckers was born after 1983. Not only are most of them my younger brother’s age or younger, but they also made a shit load more money than I did. It was a double whammy of sorts. Sitting there, I was struck by a slight sensation of annoyance realizing that I was essentially paying to watch a bunch of overpaid teenagers play a game (granted, the annoyance faded because, frankly, I love the game).

Unlike the entertainment industry, which snatches (marginally) talented kids off the streets, cokes ‘em up and feeds them to the sharks, the NBA has a rule that not only forces a kid to be talented, but it takes it a step further and won’t allow a player to be drafted until they are 1 year out of high school and at least 19 years old. Ostensibly, this rule is to make sure that drafted players are mature enough to handle the demands of an NBA career (i.e. millions of dollars, fame and pussy galore). I respect this rule and the reasoning behind it, but I can’t help wondering how much of a difference handing millions of dollars to a 19 year old instead of to an 18 year old really is.

To their credit, the NBA is also marginally better than the entertainment industry at mentoring these kids on how to deal with their new lives, (example: Shaq maybe advising Kobe to pay off the hos he sleeps with to stay quiet and not cry rape), but we are still talking about some pretty sheltered young people. To have made it this far, these kids have been training for years, basketball has been their whole lives. For the most part, none of these kids have so much as held a part time job because their focus has been so basketball-centric; a focus that will be rewarded handsomely tonight. Since they began to show potential (or just grew A LOT during puberty), they have been groomed for this moment- entry into the NBA and a career of playing ball all day everyday – and not a whole lot more.

So to Kevin, Greg, Al Horford, Mike Conley, Joakim Noah, Brandan Wright, Corey Brewer, Jeff Green and Yi Jianlian: I wish you luck not tonight, because you’ll all be fine, but tomorrow as the reality of your new fame and fortune set in. All at once it will be the same familiar game it always was and a completely new one. Don’t spend all the money in one place, always use a condom, because trust – these heffas are plotting, and to whoever the Heat gets- please don’t suck (nhoc).