Caring for the NBA’s Corps of Kids

One month into their NBA careers, the teenagers drafted in June are starting to get accustomed to the pro basketball drill: airport, plane, hotel, arena--a routine repeated day after day, week after week.

Watching how they adjust to that grind are Tom “Satch” Sanders and Mike Bantom, who played a combined 22 years in the NBA and now occupy a couple of corner offices, helping the next generation of players fit into the fast and furious life of pro basketball.

Bantom and Sanders operate the league’s player program and basketball development departments, fancy corporate titles for making sure the corps of teenagers don’t get swallowed up by the lifestyle.

Three of the first four players to go in June’s draft were high school seniors, each of them equipped with huge basketball talent. Sanders and Bantom get to work on the other part of their game, the part that doesn’t include dribbling and dunking.

“Rookies have a difficult adjustment to make, even for the best players,” Bantom said. “It takes a while on the job. We’re there to hold their hands. We don’t let them get too down. It’s rare to move from high school and have immediate success on this level. It takes a couple of years to get comfortable on the court and longer to do it off the court.”

Most rookies start out on the bench, especially if they’ve arrived in the league straight out of high school. Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler, teammates on the Chicago Bulls, are averaging 11 minutes and seven minutes respectively. DeSagana Diop, Cleveland’s No. 1 pick, is averaging six minutes. No. 1 pick Kwame Brown hurt his ankle in the Washington Wizards opener and hasn’t played since.

The success of special players like Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant complicates the task of the league because it leads other teenagers to make a jump they may not be ready to make.

“We’re dealing with kids here, planting seeds,” Sanders said. “Maybe it’s some kid in Louisiana. They tell him he’s as good as Karl Malone and he begins to think he is and says to himself, ‘Maybe I belong in the pros.”’

And maybe they learn they really don’t.

Bantom and Sanders try to provide a soft landing. They relate to the rookies one-on-one with a program less formal than it is personal, an attempt by two ex-players and several other NBA alumni to educate the next class about what to expect.

“Even though the focus lately is on all the 18- and 19-year-olds coming into the league, we’ve been dealing with young people since the rookie transition program was established 15 years ago,” Sanders said. “We’ve always made the assumption that young players with skills can handle the basketball part. What they need is help becoming a well-rounded person.

“So it’s about what you do away from the game. They have to learn how to deal with friends, to understand there’s a lot at stake for them. There are a lot of people out there who want to take advantage of their lack of sophistication. Don’t be flattered about how much they love you because they may just want a piece of you. They have to learn how to screen those people.”

There is more to it than that, an attempt to help these kids take a more mature approach to things as basic as what they eat. A burger and fries is fine in high school and college but in the NBA, it may be time to leave the happy meals behind them.

“Think about the schedule,” Sanders said. “They’re going to be playing three years in one, 82 games plus preseason and playoffs in the NBA after maybe only a 30-game season in college. If they don’t take care of themselves, they’re going to be sucking wind.

“It’s a difficult jump to the NBA. You’ve got to find your way. We know you have talent. Now we have to find out if you can make it here.”

The safety net is still there when the cheering ends and real life begins.

“We recognize that part of this business is to plan the support and services players need and we can give,” Bantom said. “We’re here to address their needs, based on what players tell us. We want to focus on the world outside of basketball, which sooner or later we all return to.”

The trick for the teenagers is to make that later rather than sooner.