HOOP DREAMS

MAY 2, 1996

This week, two young basketball players announced they were leaving school and going directly to the National Basketball Association. One, Kobe Bryant, is a high school senior in suburban Philadelphia. The other is Allen Iverson, who is just finishing his sophomore year at Georgetown University. Jim Lehrer is joined by two basketball columnists, Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post, and Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe to discuss this growing phenomenon.

ALLEN IVERSON, Georgetown University: I'm excited. I have a lot of confidence in myself, in my game, um, and it makes me feel good that, you know, Coach Thompson is, is, umm, sticking with me on this, and he has confidence in my game as well. You know, that really means a lot to me, for him to, umm, you know, let me leave out of here and for him to think I'm ready for the NBA. MR. LEHRER: Here to talk about the issues raised about this are two sportswriters, Michael Wilbon of the "Washington Post," and Bob Ryan of the "Boston Globe." Michael Wilbon, what is driving this, strictly money? MICHAEL WILBON, Washington Post: Not strictly money, overwhelmingly money perhaps. But there's also a cultural phenomena that is going on, particularly almost exclusively in, in black American communities, where kids think that this is the only way out and the only way up from a certain set of circumstances. You hear kids all the time talking about I want to do something for my family, I've got a daughter to support. In Allen Iverson's case, as we heard from Georgetown University yesterday, his sister has an illness, and he wants to be able to provide the best medical care. And there are some financial considerations, but also it always comes back to it is exclusively basketball that will allow them up and out of certain circumstances, you have a cultural phenomena going on, and indisputably, there are just incredible amounts of money not only on the court but in marketing opportunities, endorsement opportunities, that make kids just look at these zeroes behind these figures and just say, I've got to go right now. MR. LEHRER: Bob Ryan, put us in the picture on how big the money is in professional basketball. The two kids that we just talked about, that we just mentioned at the beginning, what kind of money are they going to make? BOB RYAN, Boston Globe: (Boston) At the high end of the scale, there is a rookie, um, ceiling now, a salary cap on the rookies. The top No. 1 choice and 2 choice, 3 choices, will make in excess of $2 million over a three-year period. Allen Iverson will clearly be one of the top three picks in the draft and can expect to get one of those slots worth about $2.7 million over a three-year period, and then progressively down. The young man, Kobe Bryant, who will be picked somewhere probably, I would hazard a professional guess between ten and fifteen in the draft, will get certainly a million dollars or so a year, which certainly is enough to raise anyone's eyebrow. MR. LEHRER: And as Michael said, in addition to that, there could be endorsements for schools and for T-shirts and all kinds of other things too, right? MR. RYAN: Absolutely. And Michael's correct. The money is there, and I do think that this has driven in some cases but not--these two are not the best examples to speak of the ills of the system-- MR. LEHRER: Okay. MR. RYAN: Because Allen Iverson clearly does need the money. Kobe Bryant doesn't necessarily need the money. He comes from a much different background. His father is a former professional player. He's an assistant coach at LaSalle University. His father has great experience in the field and understands the perils that his son faces, but his son is a very mature young man who speaks fluent Italian. He spoke--he grew up when his father was playing in Italy and he lived there eight years. He's an uncommonly mature young man and would do very well in college. He had over a thousand on his college boards, was being recruited by schools that are at the high levels such as Duke, and he's going into the MBA because he feels that he's mature enough to handle the whole thing. MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Michael, tell us what we should think about this, those of us who don't follow basketball, who look upon this as a, as, oh, my goodness, what's going on here, what should--what is going on? MR. WILBON: Well, I mean, there are individual cases, as Bob mentioned. MR. LEHRER: Yeah. MR. WILBON: And case by case, there's always--there always seems to be a reason. Umm, collectively, however, it's a frightening trend I think when you look at a situation. We see the faces of people who will perhaps make it, but every year, if you go back the last ten, fifteen years, even twenty years in the NBA's annual spring college draft, you'll find players who stayed two years in college and came out, decided to enter the draft, go for the money, and they never were all they could be. Now there are certainly shining examples of people who were on the other side exceptions, like Magic Johnson, who of course has been with the Los Angeles Lakers for quite a while, like Isaiah Thomas, who won the championship for the Detroit Pistons, and there seems to be a new wave of players that we think will wind up being all they can be as professional basketball players. MR. LEHRER: Superstars. MR. WILBON: Superstars like Penny Hardaway who did spend three years in college, though only two years playing basketball, but so many do not make it, so many do not make it, so many just fall to the wayside. Others who maybe make it and stay around in the league eight or ten years, they are never all that they could have been had they stayed in school at least one more year from a basketball standpoint economically, from a marketing standpoint. Yesterday at Georgetown, Allen Iverson, everyone he consulted, told him that he would stand to lose money by coming out this year, as opposed to coming out next year or the year after, when his marketing potential would be much higher, so there's so many cases of guys who do play but they are not what they could have been had they stayed in college for a while. MR. LEHRER: Bob Ryan, compare this with baseball and professional football. MR. RYAN: Well, baseball and professional football, baseball has always been able to take young men who are seventeen, eighteen years old, sign them out of high school. MR. LEHRER: Mickey Mantle. MR. RYAN: Right. MR. LEHRER: Mickey Mantle, one of the greatest stars of all time, came out of high school in a little town in Oklahoma. MR. RYAN: That's correct. MR. LEHRER: When he was 17 years old. MR. RYAN: Commerce, Oklahoma. MR. LEHRER: Yeah. MR. RYAN: This is part of baseball. Then you got to--through an apprenticeship where you go into the minor leagues. You earn very little money. You learn your trade, and then you come up to the big leagues and then you are not paid very much. It's a much different salary situation. Football, everyone comes out of college with very, very few exceptions. They do have to stay the four years, although more and more-- MR. LEHRER: Do they have to stay, or is that an option? MR. RYAN: Well, there the college problem is that, the talent factor, that they simply aren't good enough-- MR. LEHRER: Not good enough. MR. RYAN: --to compete. College you need-- MR. LEHRER: You're shaking your head-- MR. WILBON: Mature enough. MR. RYAN: And hockey, of course, hockey has always preyed on young men in Canada who are taken out of their families literally at age 12, 13, and 14, placed in a junior age system and go through a whole other--well, this is entirely different--to make instant millionaires, as a rule, out of people. Let me just say this. MR. LEHRER: Yeah. MR. RYAN: Picking up on what Michael said, and I couldn't agree more about the detrimental effect of this whole thing on the part of the average young man in high school, we have a situation now in which almost every player in high school today who is a senior, who is judged to be among the top thirty to forty players, envisions himself in the NBA within two years. He's not even thinking about going through college and getting an education now. And they all can't make, fulfill that dream, No. 1. Then, once they get to college, they start harping on playing time, they start creating problems for the coach, and then an agent gets their ear, so their heads are completely in the wrong place at the wrong time--from the beginning-- MR. LEHRER: Yeah. MR. RYAN: --over and above the fact that so many of them are just kidding themselves to think that they've even got a chance to make it in the first place. MR. LEHRER: Is that--is another one of the problems, Michael, that unlike say baseball, where a kid goes into baseball, usually, he very seldom goes right to the majors, there's a developmental phase, these kids don't get that, do they, in basketball? MR. WILBON: No. There's a developmental stage also in just personal maturation away from sport. John Thompson said yesterday he doesn't worry about Allen Iverson's two hours of basketball, he worries, you know, incredibly about the twenty-two hours of the day otherwise in which he's not playing basketball, what is going to happen to young men with all this money who are coming into it instantly, almost like hitting a lottery, who are completely ill-prepared? MR. LEHRER: It is like a lottery. It's like winning a lottery. MR. WILBON: It is absolutely like a lottery, except that they have got many more people preying on them. We're talking about kids with entourages numbering ten, twelve, fourteen people who all expect to be on some sort of official or unofficial payroll. We're talking about parents in the case of one young man who left Georgia Tech and family members, hands out instantly. They want cars. They want homes. They want to be put on some sort of payroll, so a million dollars for Kobe Bryant is not really a million dollars. MR. RYAN: Jim, one of the things-- MR. LEHRER: Yeah, go ahead. MR. RYAN: One of the things that I think has happened is it couldn't have been a worse situation. A young man named Kevin Garnett came out of Sparagot Academy in Chicago last year and went into the NBA draft, the first high school player to come directly in over 20 years, and he has done well. I think every one in the professional ranks and everyone in college was praying that he would not do well because it would not--it would send out the wrong message. He's an uncommonly gifted talent. He is absolutely one in X thousand. Anyone in the pros will tell you this. He has certain weird physical gifts that remind people of the great Moses Malone as a young man who was able to make the same transition 20 years ago. Very few kids are going to be able to do this. Most people think that Kobe Bryant is stepping in way over his head, for example. MR. LEHRER: Is this going to get worse before it gets better, Bob? MR. RYAN: Yes. I think the Garnett thing will send the message out that it can be done and why not me? MR. WILBON: And the terrible thing, Bob, is in Kevin Garnett, for those people who are not into basketball statistics, averaged about 10 points in six rebounds a game this year which-- MR. LEHRER: Who's he play for? MR. WILBON: For the Minnesota Timberwolves. MR. LEHRER: All right. MR. WILBON: Hardly makes him Wilt Chamberlain. MR. RYAN: Right. MR. WILBON: I mean, there has been this rush to proclaim Kevin Garnett as a great, great success, and he certainly had a really nice first season, debut season in the NBA, but it does not mean he's a great basketball player. His team didn't make the play-offs. He didn't make a great turnaround for his team, so we still don't know. The book is still very much open on what kind of professional Kevin Garnett will be. MR. RYAN: True. MR. LEHRER: And we will leave that book open at that. Michael, Bob, thank you both very much.