August 13, 2009
Jeremy Tyler
Groundbreaking crossover today between high school and professional basketball, which may have interesting future ramifications for basketball in Michigan and the United States.
Jeremy Tyler, 6-11 SoCal senior-to-be, is now a senior-not-to-be. Which raises some questions.
The nation’s top player in the 2010 class will forgo his senior season of high school to play basketball professionally in Europe. He is now officially under contract to Maccabi Haifa of the Israeli Premier League.
One more time: he will skip his senior season of high school to turn pro.
The closest thing to a precedent, Brandon Jennings, skipped college to spend a year playing basketball professionally in Rome, returning after the mandatory year between high school and the NBA to be selected 10th in the NBA Draft by the Milwaukee Bucks.
Tyler, who already committed to Louisville, couldn’t wait that long. Citing the lack of any semblance of competition at the high school level, he will head overseas to play with grown men.
At first blush this smacks of travesty. The age limit was imposed by the NBA specifically to avoid this situation, the intention being to give players a chance to a) mature both physically and mentally before competing against the biggest guys in the world for millions of dollars, and b) potentially slow down enough to realize the merits of earning a degree. The fact that Tyler is skipping out on even earning a diploma is one of those decisions that those closest to him should convince him against. It’s their duty to make sure he doesn’t do something stupid that he may later regret. Right?
Maybe not.
From Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! sports:
(Tyler) is as close to a can’t-miss NBA prospect as there is; a tantalizing mix of size, speed and smarts. Scouts project him to be the No. 1 pick in the 2011 draft, when he’s eligible under the NBA’s age requirements.
In the meantime, Jeremy Tyler’s options were to:
1. Spend the next year at his local school, San Diego High, where he faces quadruple teams and isn’t experiencing much development; or
2. Transfer to a basketball factory in some rural outpost back East which has a big-time team but resembles a traditional high school in name only; and then
3. Play college ball for a few months dealing with NCAA limitations on practice time and coaching contact while competing against many of the same guys he has the last few years.
All for free, of course.
Instead Jeremy and his father, James, who owns his own home improvement company and is about to open a family restaurant, surveyed the traditional route, decided it made little sense, and went looking for a new plan. They called retired sneaker executive and hoops dealmaker Sonny Vaccaro and plotted a course for Europe.
It isn’t the easy way – hanging out in high school, AAU and college is safer and far less demanding – but it is what they believe will be the best way to prepare for the NBA. It’s exactly what a teenager of comparable talent would do if they were pursuing a career in music, acting, tennis, hockey or even academics.
So Tyler’s move is therefore made the direct result of the inadequacy of the American system of developing basketball players. The simple fact is that there are athletes, like Tyler, who are custom built for the NBA. And considering the multifaceted appeal of that particular career path, both for the player and for those around him (let’s not underestimate their influence), many of those athletes are groomed for the NBA from an age much earlier than high school.
Right or wrong, this is just reality.
And now that Tyler has shown up and coming athletes that there is in fact an alternative, is there a need for a new system?
From The Sporting News’ Bethlehem Shoals:
With the game increasingly global, this lack of parallelism will only make sense for so long. Teens can join some level of professional franchise very young, be tutored privately and get paid for their services. Now, this is hardly true for all high school players, but many face very little meaningful competition during the actual season, are harassed by smaller players and have no chance to actually learn to play (against guys their own size), and stay raw. What’s more, “earning a degree” in high school can be as relative as “the benefits of a year of college.”
For those who seek to bring about the end of college athletics, the answer lies not merely in the Jennings option — just another form of one-and-done. No, what is required is an entire infrastructure by which teens are professionalized, developed and educated in a way that both prepares them for the NBA and keeps them free of sleaze.
I know Sonny Vaccaro is in on this Tyler arrangement, which to me would nullify the final point. But at this point, would some sort of program that allowed kids to take a, for lack of a better word, “vocational” basketball path with on-the-job training (and an inflated intern’s pay) be that much worse than the circus that recruiting, AAU and big-time college ball has become?
It’s an interesting question. And it may need an answer sooner rather than later.
There are a lot of eyes on Jeremy Tyler, even from halfway around the world. His success, or lack thereof, may influence more than the up and coming generation of ballers. He may play a part in the future of basketball in America.
Heaven forbid he gets injured over there.
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