Ready or Not...HERE THEY COME

You couldn’t find Korleone Young in the NBA this past season.

Not unless you were playing a video game.

Young, who declared for the draft out of high school in 1998, made the roster for EA Sports’ NBA Live 2000 for Sony PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and PCs, but no NBA team.

He spent the season with the Richmond Rhythm in the International Basketball League.

Even so, Young did better than many of the early-entry candidates for Wednesday’s NBA draft will. Picked in the second round in ‘98, he played in three games for Detroit during the lockout-shortened 1999 season.

More than 44% of the players who have declared early since what began as the hardship draft in 1971 have never appeared in even one NBA game.

Their moment of glory? Seeing their name on the draft-eligible list.

That’s one side of the story, the players who try to jump to the NBA and aren’t prepared, the not-quite-ready, the ‘tweeners, the troubled--see Leon Smith. The academic and NCAA casualties, the others who simply try the draft on a lark. And, of course, the surprising number who are oblivious to the obvious: They aren’t anywhere near good enough.

Even some who starred on another stage--the NCAA Final Four--play out their careers on far-flung circuits after leaving college too soon.

Anderson Hunt, MVP of the 1990 Final Four for Nevada Las Vegas, played part of last season in Poland, then was released. Scotty Thurman, a starter on Arkansas’ 1994 NCAA title team, spent the season in Cyprus.

Neither was drafted. Neither has played an NBA game.

There’s another side, of course: In 17 of the last 26 years, the league MVP has been a player who left college early or didn’t attend at all--from Bob McAdoo to Moses Malone to Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, Karl Malone and Shaquille O’Neal.

At this season’s All-Star game, only four of the 10 starters had played four years of college basketball.

The others--O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Jason Kidd, Kevin Garnett, Vince Carter and Allen Iverson--declared early, with Garnett and Bryant making the jump out of high school.

Marginal players all over the country see that, and nothing is harder for a 17-to-20-year-old than recognizing he not only is not like Mike, he’s not even like Indiana’s Jonathan Bender, a lottery pick out of high school last year who watched most of the NBA finals from the Pacer bench.

“I would have to think, every year more and more kids are going to come out, but look at the percentages,” said Rick Sund, vice president of basketball operations for the Detroit Pistons. “The number that come out and don’t make it is a high percentage.”

Six players declared for the first hardship draft in 1971. (Players had to show financial need until 1976.) It wasn’t until 1994 that the list reached 20 for the first time as the number of players declaring soared--and their ages plummeted--during the 1990s.

The number peaked at 40 in 1997, the year after the phenomenal class of underclassmen that included Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Ray Allen, Bryant, Marcus Camby, Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury and Antoine Walker.

This year, 37 players have made themselves eligible--29 undergraduates and eight international players.

On Wednesday, Chris Mihm, Stromile Swift, Marcus Fizer and high school standout Darius Miles will be lottery picks--possibly all in the top five, with rich contracts to follow.

Slip to the second round and it gets dicey: Seven of the 10 second-round picks among those who declared early for the 1997 draft, for example, have never played in the NBA.

And, if an early-entry player’s name isn’t called, the chances of his ever so much as donning an NBA uniform are next to nil. (The Clippers’ Keith Closs, who wasn’t drafted when he left Central Connecticut State after two seasons, is one of the few who have.)

“There are 400 players in the league. How many each and every year could really make the league?” asked Scott Layden, executive vice president and general manager of the New York Knicks. “Some players take one of those 400 spots for 15 years, like Karl Malone. That spot is locked up. The point is the math. It’s very, very competitive.”

Does High School Equal High Risk?

He’s kidding himself. Sure he’d like to come out. I’d like to be a movie star. He’s not ready.

--Marty Blake, NBA director

of scouting services, 1996

The player Blake was talking about was Kobe Bryant.

There’s a problem with wringing hands every time a high school player decides to try to jump directly to the pros: The kids have done all right.

There has been one real disaster. Smith, the Dallas Maverick who grew up in group homes in Chicago, became a first-round pick out of Martin Luther King High last year and flamed out spectacularly without ever playing an NBA game.

He clashed with coaches, ended up in a psychiatric ward after swallowing 200 aspirins and was arrested in Chicago after a rampage against an ex-girlfriend, threatening her and smashing the windows on her mother’s car.

“He had issues,” one NBA general manager said. “People who did their due diligence knew.”

The Smith saga was an illustration of what many in the NBA feared after Garnett’s successful jump from high school to the NBA in 1995: a torrent of high school players far less mature than Garnett who were unprepared for handling sudden wealth and life on their own.

But here’s a flash: What flood?

Though at least one high school player has tried the draft every year since Garnett--four in 1998 and two in each of the last two years--there has been no deluge.

“The truth is, very few high school kids come out,” Blake said. “At one time, we thought it would be like a boat docking in New York and 40 players would come out. But there’s been no flood.”

Including the two this year--Miles, a player from East St. Louis who is drawing comparisons to Garnett, and DeShawn Stevenson, a lesser prospect from Fresno but still a McDonald’s All-American--only 17 prep players have declared for the draft out of high school.

“This year at one point, we were talking about six or eight high school players coming out,” said Rod Thorn, president of the New Jersey Nets, who have the No. 1 pick in the draft. “But close to the time to decide, most kids and their advisors can see it’s just not realistic and don’t end up doing it. But there could be one year. . . .”

In recent years, two utterly unqualified high school players have declared: Taj McDavid from South Carolina in 1996 and Ellis Richardson from Sun Valley Poly High in 1998. Neither was even a highly sought college prospect, but the NBA had no choice but to allow them.

“You can’t stop anybody,” Blake said. “You can’t prevent a guy from applying for a job.”

Still, a glance at the careers of the players who have tried to make the jump from high school shows they have done better than the group of early-eligibles overall. Twelve of 15 have appeared in the NBA.

“When you look at Garnett, Bryant, those guys are stars in the league,” said Thorn, who nevertheless would prefer that high school players were ineligible. “Rashard Lewis wasn’t very good his first year, but he was terrific this year. It’s not impossible.”

The list bears that out:

Moses Malone went from high school directly to the old American Basketball Assn. in 1974 and, after the leagues merged, became a three-time NBA most valuable player and the fifth-leading rebounder in NBA history.

Malone was followed in 1975 by Darryl Dawkins and Bill Willoughby, a serviceable pro, then there was a lull until 1989, when Shawn Kemp, who attended junior college but didn’t play, went through the draft.

Garnett did it in 1995 and has become an All-Star.

Ditto Bryant, in 1996. (A family tradition, by the way. His father, Joe, declared early as a junior out of LaSalle in 1975.)

McDavid, who declared in 1996, wasn’t drafted, and though he was cleared to play at Anderson College, the Division II school he attends in South Carolina, he never joined the team.

Jermaine O’Neal, another of the class of ‘96, had a limited role as the No. 3 power forward for Portland this season and has at times second-guessed his decision to skip college. Still, he re-signed for $24 million.

Toronto’s Tracy McGrady, drafted in ‘97, progressed year by year, averaged 15 points this season and will be a highly sought free agent. He’s an example of the principle of “starting your clock,” meaning a young player might as well get his three years under the NBA’s rookie salary scale over as quickly as possible and become a free agent at a younger age.

“I think a couple of players, Kobe and Garnett, came out and had success playing in their rookie years, and a lot of players said, ‘I can do it too,’ ” Sund said. “They have to ask themselves, ‘Is it better to get money now and sit on the end of the bench or get more money in a couple of years and play?’ ”

Al Harrington, drafted in ‘98, averaged fewer than seven points a game this season and wasn’t on the Pacer playoff roster.

“You have to work hard to get to the point where Kobe is now,” Harrington said. “I’m very pleased with my transition, but I have a lot of room to improve. I’m not satisfied.

“Hopefully, one of these days it will be my time.”

Pacer President Donnie Walsh thinks the experience of watching a team reach the finals helped his young players, and he might be changing his mind about youngsters turning pro early.

“I wish [high school players] weren’t in the draft,” he said. “If there were any way to keep them from being eligible, I wish we could. For reasons of maturity, education, development, all of the above. Life.

“That being said, once they’re in the draft, you definitely have to consider them and it seems to be working out for these guys. That’s been a surprise to me. I have to open the door to the fact that I could have been wrong.”

Lewis is an example of a player about to be tagged as a bust who has suddenly blossomed. A second-round pick by Seattle in 1998, he averaged seven minutes and two points a game as a rookie, only to emerge this season and start during the playoffs.

Then there is Young, a second-round pick who was injured much of his rookie season, didn’t make it with the Pistons and played in the IBL this year.

“Korleone Young was late in the second round [No. 40 of 58 overall],” said the Pistons’ Sund. “Very few second-rounders make it. You take a flyer and say maybe he’ll improve. He probably should have gone to Europe or the CBA.”

Another who hasn’t made it--though no one expected him to--is Richardson, not even a standout among Los Angeles high school players. Not drafted after declaring in 1998, he has since served time in prison for robbery and is living in Florida, still hoping to revive his basketball career.

Bender, Harrington’s sidekick on the Pacers, had a bit role in the playoffs, but Walsh is high on him and Bender expects to play next season.

“Guys say, ‘How hard is it? Is it really that hard?’ ” Bender said. “I tell them, ‘Yeah, it’s really that hard.’

“You have to be mature. If you need somebody to stay with you and can’t handle your own business, it’s not for you. If you get homesick, you shouldn’t be in this position.

“People look at Kobe. It’s not that easy. You have to have the God-given ability. Not just anybody can do it. Some guys, it’s harder than they think. A lot harder.”

And Smith? Out of basketball, although there are rumors he wants to try to play again if anyone will take him.

College Daze

There are always those who don’t belong anywhere near the draft.

San Jose City College freshman Gene Shipley was one last year.

“He felt this little bird in the air calling him, saying ‘Gene Shipley, come to the NBA,’ ” said Coach Percy Carr, who advised Shipley against declaring for a draft that predictably passed him by. “He did not hear my voice or any other voice. He continued to hear the little bird.”

Michael Maxwell, a junior at Western New Mexico, was another of the undrafted.

“He averaged about four points as a junior in Division II,” said Maxwell’s coach, Troy Hudson. “Marty Blake from the NBA called me to ask about him, and I said, ‘He’s about 33%: He shoots 33% from the floor, and he’s about 33% in the classroom.’ I think he’s working as a security guard, or somebody said he joined the service.”

But plenty of the undrafted are legitimate Division I players, some of them stars.

Albert White, a solid scorer at Missouri two seasons ago, came out after his junior season last year and never heard his name called.

Because of a procedure to lance a painful boil on his leg, White said, he was able to play only one day at the NBA’s pre-draft camp in Chicago, and then at less than 75% effectiveness.

Undrafted, he landed with the Sioux Falls Skyforce in the CBA, where one of his teammates was Victor Page, who played at Georgetown with Iverson and led the Big East in scoring in 1996 with a 23-point average. Page wasn’t drafted and hasn’t played in an NBA game either.

White said, if it weren’t for his having a child to support, “I probably would have stayed [in college].

“It wasn’t a hard decision at all. College is once in a lifetime. I miss it, but I had responsibilities to take care of. My daughter Nyjah, she’s 1.

“[Playing in the CBA] pays the bills. I can take care of my daughter.

“I’m working out, trying to get a look from NBA teams. Still trying to play.”

Bigger names than White get passed by.

Hunt scored 29 points in UNLV’s 103-73 victory over Duke in the 1990 NCAA title game for a team that also had Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon and Greg Anthony.

A year later, Hunt tried the draft after his junior season but wasn’t drafted. He has never played an NBA game, hasn’t played in the CBA since 1996 and started last season in Poland, playing for LKS Spojnia Komfort Stargard before he was released in late September.

“I think if he’d come back [for his senior season], he’d have made it [in the NBA],” said Fresno State Coach Jerry Tarkanian, Hunt’s coach at UNLV.

“‘He’d been a shooting guard, a 6-1 shooting guard for us, when Greg Anthony was playing point. For him to play in the NBA, he had to learn to play the point. Greg had graduated, and he was going to play point for us.

“He was talked into going pro by somebody who got into his head and told him he’d go in the first round. Everything he wanted to hear.”

Thurman, a starter for Arkansas when the Razorbacks won the NCAA championship in 1994, as well as in the loss to UCLA in the 1995 title game, left after his junior season.

Undrafted, he has played in the CBA, Macedonia, Greece and Cyprus.

“I hated to see him make that decision,” Arkansas Coach Nolan Richardson said. “He was such a great friend and roommate of Corliss Williamson that when [Williamson] left, it prompted Scotty to go also.

“I knew Corliss would be a lottery pick. But no one gave me any indication Scotty would be drafted in the first round. I think the sad part about it was, he wanted to test the waters. He could have done that without signing with an agent.”

And if Thurman had stayed?

“I think he would have been a first-rounder,” Richardson said. “He’d have been able to be a marquee player. Him and Corliss were the same grade, and Corliss was the MVP of the SEC two years in a row. He would have had a lot more opportunity if he came back.”

At least Darnell Robinson got to hear his name called in 1996.

Another member of Arkansas’ Final Four teams, Robinson--who set a California state career scoring record in his days at Emeryville Emery High--was chosen by Dallas with the final pick of the draft, 58th overall, after leaving Arkansas after his junior year.

But the 6-11 center has never played an NBA game, and spent last season playing for ARIS Thessaloniki in Greece, the latest stop in a career that also has taken him through Italy, Israel and France.

“Sometimes I look at the decision when I came out and think about whether it was a good decision,” Robinson said. “But Coach [Richardson] wasn’t playing me and I was having a newborn girl--Darnesha, she’s 4.”

His vagabond life in Europe has been “an interesting experience.”

If fans occasionally throw coins onto the court, well, it comes with the territory.

“Once a guy got pulled into the audience when he was trying to throw the ball in,” Robinson said. “But that’s not routine.”

Like many players bypassed by the NBA and playing overseas or in the alphabet of leagues in North America--the CBA, the IBL, the USBL--Robinson still is hoping to break through.

“My agent is looking at some opportunities,” he said. “I think I need to be in the right place at the right time and be in good shape.”

Richardson shrugs at the Robinson case, saying he was a player who wanted to turn pro as soon as he thought he could.

“You couldn’t tell him. Once the agents gain control, you can’t tell them differently. I’ve said all along, ‘I can know you four years, but an agent can walk up in about 30 minutes and tell you how much money you’re going to make, and you think I’m just trying to keep you playing college ball.’ ”

Second-round picks who have never played in the NBA aren’t hard to find.

Rashard Griffith, a 6-10 center who left Wisconsin after his sophomore year in 1995, plunged from possible lottery pick to the second round and was playing in Turkey for Tofas Bursa recently, until the team was shut down because of financial problems.

“It’s a little easier in hindsight,” said Griffith’s agent, Ken Porter, adding that the Milwaukee Bucks have made offers to Griffith at the minimum NBA salary but he chose to stay overseas because he could make hundreds of thousands more.

“His dream is the NBA, like all kids. For the majority of guys, another year seldom hurts. You take a look at what happens, and most guys could have used another year, maybe two. In his case the same thing applied.”

Ronnie Henderson, a second-

round pick from Louisiana State after his junior year in 1996, was cut in the NBA, the CBA and Australia and two seasons ago played a few games for SSA Sopot in Poland.

Mark Sanford, who declared early after his sophomore year at Washington but withdrew, only to declare again after his junior year in 1997, was drafted in the second round but has never played in the NBA. He played in Belgium, the CBA, and with the Harlem Globetrotters before playing in France last season.

Tremaine Fowlkes--once the Pacific 10 freshman of the year at Cal before transferring to Fresno State--was drafted in the second round after leaving Fresno after his junior year in 1998 and has never played in the NBA. He’s still hoping to break through after playing for Yakima in the CBA and Cincinnati in the IBL.

Mark Blount, a 7-foot center who left Pittsburgh after his sophomore year in 1997, has failed in attempts to make the NBA in Seattle and with the Clippers and is living in a hotel and playing for the New Jersey Shorecats in the USBL, a summer league, after having played for Baltimore in the IBL last season.

“I just didn’t have good guidance,” Blount said. “I never regret it. I just learned. I learned about people.”

One of the more promising players to go bust after leaving early was God Shammgod, who helped Providence reach an NCAA regional final in 1997, when the sophomore point guard scored 23 points against Arizona’s Mike Bibby.

Drafted in the second round, Shammgod played 20 games for Washington during the 1997-98 season, joined the LaCrosse Bobcats in the CBA and was last listed as playing for a team in the Dominican Republic.

“We went to the elite eight his sophomore year--phenomenal year,” said Manhattan Coach Bobby Gonzalez, the Providence assistant who recruited Shammgod.

“But he had a baby with a girl, he wasn’t doing great in school, and he got in with the wrong people. People telling him he was going to be a lottery pick, which was ridiculous. He put his name in the draft and missed so much school he couldn’t come back.

“I tell you what, if he had stayed on track, stayed eligible, he could have been a lottery pick by his senior year. He was one of the best point guards in the country his sophomore year. He needed to improve his outside shot, get stronger, get more experience. I think he would have been a very high first-round pick if he stayed in school.”

Twenty-seven more undergraduates will take their chances Wednesday. The first-rounders figure to be fine, with guaranteed three-year contracts.

Second round?

“Good luck, especially now,” said Orlando Coach Doc Rivers, who says he took “a horrible risk” when he left Marquette after his junior year in 1983.

Drafted in the second round, 31st overall, Rivers had a nice career.

“I’ve wrestled with the argument over whether they should come out,” he said. “My answer is, if they’re ready, why should we hold them back?”

But the players who aren’t ready usually are the last to know.

*

Information from the Web sites STATS Inc. and Telebasket.com was used in compiling this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

NBA Draft

Where: Minneapolis

TV: TNT

Time: 4:30 p.m.

*

BABY BOOMERS

2000 NBA All-Star game starters who entered NBA draft early:

Shaquille O’Neal C

1992, LSU, Junior

Kobe Bryant G

1996, Lower Merion (Pa.) High School

Jason Kidd G

1994, California, Soph.

Kevin Garnett F

1995, Farragut Academy (Chicago)

Vince Carter G

1998, North Carolina, Junior

Allen Iverson G

1996, Georgetown, Soph.

*

CLASS OF 2000

High school players eligible

for Wednesday’s draft:

Darius Miles G-F

East St. Louis (Ill.)

DeShawn Stevenson G

Fresno Washington Union

Young and Restless

PLAYERS WHO WENT FROM HIGH SCHOOL TO ENTER NBA OR ABA DRAFT EARLY

*--*

Year Player Comment 1974 *Moses Malone Made list of NBA’s 50 greatest after ABA start 1975 Darryl Dawkins Spectacular dunker played 726 games 1975 Bill Willoughby Eight NBA seasons, averaged six points a game 1989 **Shawn Kemp Six-time All-Star for Seattle, Cleveland 1995 Kevin Garnett No. 10 in NBA scoring (22.9) this season 1996 Kobe Bryant 2000 All-Star starter, NBA champion Taj McDavid Not drafted. Has not played professionally Jermaine O’Neal 3.9-point average, new $24-million deal 1997 Tracy McGrady Free agent averaged 15.4 points in 1999-00 1998 Al Harrington Reserve wasn’t on Pacer playoff roster Rashard Lewis Breakthrough season included 30-point game Korleone Young Three NBA games, played in IBL in 1999-00 Ellis Richardson Not drafted. Has not played professionally 1999 Jonathan Bender Averaged five minutes a game as Pacer rookie Leon Smith Out of NBA after off-court problems

*--*

* Malone was an ABA draft selection.

** Kemp was drafted out of junior college, but did not play basketball there.

Entry Point

After a lawsuit was filed by Spencer Haywood, the NBA was required by the courts to grant admission to undergraduates, even though their college classes had not graduated.

In 1971, the league held a separate draft for undergraduates wishing to enter the NBA draft.

In 1976, the hardship requirement was eliminated and the current Early Entry procedure was adopted.

In 1989, the draft was reduced to two rounds.

Number of underclassmen who entered the draft: 399

Number of underclassmen who never played in the NBA: 176

*--*

YEAR PD EED PCT. EEC DNP 1972 198 3 1% 6 4 1973 210 7 3% 9 4 1974 174 11 6% 13 5 1975 174 14 8% 16 5 1976 173 7 4% 13 6 1977 170 4 2% 6 2 1978 202 4 2% 5 1 1979 202 4 2% 4 1 1980 214 4 2% 7 4 1981 223 5 2% 5 2 1982 225 9 4% 12 3 1983 226 6 3% 6 0 1984 228 8 3% 9 3 1985 162 11 7% 12 5 1986 161 7 4% 9 3 1987 161 5 3% 9 5 1988 75 8 11% 12 5 1989 54 6 11% 14 8 1990 54 7 13% 14 7 1991 54 6 11% 12 4 1992 54 4 7% 16 11 1993 54 7 13% 12 5 1994 54 12 22% 20 7 1995 58 13 22% 16 4 1996 58 21 36% 36 18 1997 58 19 33% 40 24 1998 58 20 34% 33 13 1999 58 15 26% 27 14

*--*

KEY: PD--Players Drafted; EED--Early Entry (candidates who were) Drafted. PCT.--Percentage of early entry players drafted to total players drafted; EEC--Early Entry Candidates; DNP--Early entry candidates who did not play in NBA.