Fast Track to Uncertain Future

March can no longer contain the madness, which spills over into April as the excitement peaks and everyone gathers, young stars, TV people, sponsoring corporations, NBA scouts ...

Welcome to the 2004 McDonald’s All-American game!

Oh, the NCAA tournament is going on too.

The NCAA has the office pools, Billy Packer, the prime-time TV slot and San Antonio, also known as the honeymoon capital of Texas with its restaurants and clubs opening out onto its charming Riverwalk.

The McDonald’s game has the players, or at least the prospects. Even if they’re teenagers, talent remains the imperative. So most members of the NBA brass chose their teams and careers over ambience and flew instead to Oklahoma City, the honeymoon capital of Oklahoma.

The McDonald’s game used to be a harmless showcase but lost its innocence long ago. Now it’s the glamour stop on a spring tour that starts with the EA Roundball Classic in Chicago and concludes with today’s Nike Hoop Summit in San Antonio, where the best American players meet the best international teens.

This will be a watershed draft, like 1995, when Kevin Garnett reawakened the youth revolution, and 2001, when prep players Kwame Brown, Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry went Nos. 1, 2 and 4 and Pau Gasol, a 20-year-old Spaniard, No. 3.

For the first time, high school and international players will make up more than half of the first round. There could even be more prep players than collegians.

Not that this is simple, or good.

Three years later Brown, Chandler and Curry may not be busts, but none is what his team had hoped he’d be and the citizenry is getting restless.

“You can’t run an NBA team with these young players,” wrote the Chicago Tribune’s Sam Smith. “Ask the Bulls. Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry ruined the franchise. Well, actually, [former general manager] Jerry Krause did that by drafting them. It’s not their fault, and there is hope for Curry. But no one ever will put two high school kids together again like the Bulls did.”

The Bulls now pine for the days with Elton Brand, Brad Miller and Ron Artest, before the 2001 draft. Not that this would have restored their dynasty but at least they’d be making the playoffs, which seems like a lot now.

You’d be hard-pressed to run an NBA team ignoring “these young players,” who included Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, Jermaine O’Neal, Amare Stoudemire and LeBron James.

Of the 11 prep players in the lottery, five -- Garnett, Bryant, McGrady, Stoudemire and James -- hit it big. Four -- Brown, Curry, Chandler and Jonathan Bender -- retain promise and two -- Darius Miles and Sagana Diop -- appear to be role players.

Then there are the other first-rounders who were steals: O’Neal, a No. 17 pick by Portland in 1996, and Al Harrington, Indiana’s No. 25 pick in 1998.

The moral for the GMs: Get the right young man or try some other business.

The moral for everyone else: This isn’t right.

It’s not because it hurts the colleges, which Packer equates with the game, but because it hurts the game at all levels. Worse, it hurts the young people who play it, the ones who dream impossible dreams and even some of those who make it.

It’s not just a matter of whether they can handle the game, but the life. That’s why golden children such as Bryant and Chris Webber, who were gifted, bright, personable and from good families, got in so much trouble.

Commissioner David Stern, who understood the promotional boost he received from the college game, proposed an age rule that would let players turn pro at 18 or 19, but wouldn’t start the five-year countdown to free agency until they turned 20.

This was meant to counter the unintended consequence of the rookie scale: agents telling kids that the earlier they started, the sooner they’d be free agents.

Stern’s proposal was fair, preserved the NBA option for young men who needed the money, balanced that off against everyone’s interest in letting kids be kids, and got nowhere.

The NCAA, clinging to the last of its arrogance, wouldn’t even sit down, and the NBA Players Assn. opposed it adamantly. Even the union’s most senior members, whose jobs may go to someone who hasn’t even been to his senior prom yet, back the current system, which is no system at all.

“There’s no age limit on anything else,” says Houston’s 39-year-old Mark Jackson. “Acting, look at Macaulay Culkin. Golf. If you’re good enough, you’re good enough....

“I’m still here and there’s high school players and I’m old enough to be their pops.”

Not that the NCAA is out of touch, but college coaches can’t even attend these events, because this is a “dead period,” while the pros and, worse, the agents swarm all over their players.

Stern suggests he’ll give up. It probably doesn’t matter since prep stars now measure themselves not by whether they can get into Duke but whether they can get into the first round.

For a glimpse of the future, there’s (shudder) the McDonald’s game, now an ESPN event spread over four days of merchandising and preening as it moves from site to site, making friends wherever it goes.

Or not.

“The McDonald’s people weren’t that helpful, as far as providing access to some of the players,” said Daily Oklahoman columnist Jenni Carlson.

“They’d say they had to check with their people. Excuse me? Seventeen- and 18-year-olds have people? It was bizarre.”

That’s the problem, the players have lots of people. Dajuan Wagner’s entourage at the 2001 game was estimated at 20 to 30. They lined up outside Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium before the doors opened, grabbed seats behind the East bench and stayed seated during the national anthem.

NBA general managers provided the star power at Oklahoma City but most, like Indiana’s Larry Bird, Boston’s Danny Ainge and the Lakers’ Mitch Kupchak, came for the practices and left before the game.

“We know what the game is,” said one of the NBA people, “dunks and no defense.”

For better and worse, here’s how it turned out, from a scout’s viewpoint:

* Helped themselves and are now considered first-rounders:

Dwight Howard, a 6-10 prodigy from Atlanta, expected to go No. 1 or No. 2.

J.R. Smith, a 6-5 guard from Newark, N.J., who signed with North Carolina but popped up on radar screens after being MVP in Chicago and co-MVP with Howard in Oklahoma City.

Robert Swift, a Bakersfield 7-footer who signed with USC but is expected to go pro, bouncing back from a bad showing at the Pangos event at UCLA.

Marvin Williams, a 6-8 Tar Heel signee from Bremerton, Wash.

Al Jefferson, a 6-8 wide body from Prentiss, Miss., who signed with Arkansas but impressed NBA scouts by slimming down.

* Didn’t help themselves but are still first-rounders:

Josh Smith, a 6-8 Indiana signee now at Oak Hill Academy in Virginia, may make the lottery on sheer excitement.

Shaun Livingston, a 6-7 point guard from Peoria, Ill., who is a reedy, gifted playmaker and has signed with Duke.

Sebastian Telfair, a much-hyped point guard from Brooklyn (see: Sports Illustrated cover, March 8), a Louisville signee who’s 6-0, 5-11 or 5-10, depending on what he’s standing on.

* Didn’t help himself and may not be a first-rounder:

Jamarcus Aldridge, a 6-10 string bean from Dallas, a Texas signee who now says he’ll go to school.

Of course, the agents never tell the teens that most of them won’t play much next season. In three or four years, some of the biggest success stories like Garnett or O’Neal will be wincing at the thought of their introduction to the adult world, and even Bryant will be admitting wistfully that he used to drive past UCLA, wondering about what he’d missed.

Take it from the adults: You get here soon enough.