DAFT ABOUT THE DRAFT

 

               We Americans love sports but we love sports hype more. Nothing makes that point stronger than the telecasts of the annual NFL and NBA amateur-player drafts, the NBA version of which will be held next week. The leagues have been televising those exercises “live” since 1980 and although the “action” consists of men in suits reading names, their ratings typically exceed those of the actual games the airing networks carry.

               The drafts are quintessential hype events, the culmination of months of speculation. With its seven rounds compared to the NBA’s two, the NFL’s is the bigger deal, having spawned a sort of mini-industry, but the basketball edition also is big stuff. Most of the players involved haven’t taken the courts for real since their college seasons ended in March, and won’t play again until the next NBA season starts in October, so that leaves a full six months to fuel imaginations.   

               Most fans never think about it, but the drafts are among the most unAmerican of American institutions. They are illegal on their faces, with the young men involved (and women, via the WNBA) having no choice in their initial professional postings. How would you have liked to have been told you had to spend a few years working in Oklahoma City, under a restricted salary scale, before you could do as you pleased? They exist because the players’ unions agree to them, and because our Congress and courts go squishy on anti-trust law when it comes to sports. That the unions represent only players already under contract is another reason to look askance at the process, but that, too, is generally ignored.

To hear the draft analysts tell it, talent evaluation in our big-time professional sports is highly scientific, based on many things that aren’t in the box scores. Prospects are weighed, measured, timed, tested, interviewed, investigated, poked and prodded, all with the intention of exposing weaknesses. To feed the hype machine the NFL has made a show of its draft preparations, televising its week-long “combine” in Indianapolis every February. Prospects run sprints before the cameras, pump iron and do such basketball-looking things as vertical jumps. Scouts hover, punching stopwatches. Commentators comment. The NBA also has tryout camps, albeit quieter ones.

Foolproof, huh? Not really. In this century the No. 1 choices in the NBA draft— supposedly the crème de la crème of their classes—has produced such busts as Kwame Brown, Greg Oden, Anthony Bennett and, apparently, the oft-injured Markelle Fulz, plus a few others who’ve had marginal pro careers.  The chance of any team’s top choice becoming a dependable starter is no better than 50-50.

The bust-out draft bust came in the NFL’s 1999 event, when the New Orleans Saints traded their entire list of picks, plus a few the next year, for the right to make U. of Texas running back Ricky Williams the fifth player chosen. Williams had an up-down, three-team career marked by suspensions and a premature retirement before he decided he liked marijuana better than football and quit the game altogether. He’s now an advocate of the weed’s medicinal properties.

Failures by the basketball and footballers are all the more apparent when their draft situations are compared with those of Major League Baseball. While our nation’s universities thoughtfully provide high-level care and training for young basketball and football players, the baseball teams must pretty much do that on their own dime, through their minor-league systems. The baseball draft, 20 rounds in all (it used to be 40 rounds), involves many high schoolers as well as collegians. These youngsters are, typically, three to five years from big-league ready.

“The toughest thing in sports isn’t hitting a Major League fastball,” Jerry Krause once said. He was a 15-year general manager of the NBA Chicago Bulls (1985-2000) and a baseball scout before and after. He continued, “It’s looking at a high-school hitter playing in 40-degree weather in the Midwest in April and projecting how he’ll do in the Bigs.”

Participants in the drafts always exude confidence in their choices, but this doesn’t mean they are free of doubt. As in other facets of their sport, they’ve developed their own language with which to discuss the proceedings. For instance, after every first-round pick except for the very first is announced, a honcho from the selecting team can be expected to say he was surprised to see that the lad still was available when he was, adding “we had him ranked higher.” What he really means is that he wished he knew what the other teams know that he doesn’t.

               Similarly, when a football player is drafted in the middle rounds, or a basketballer in round two, the drafting team will claim “he meets our needs.” Translated, this means that his team has so many holes that any large, warm body would be an improvement.

 If the exec is less bullish on a choice he’ll say he thinks the selectee “can compete for a job.” The unsaid line is “as a management trainee at Target.” If a kid is praised for “high character” it can mean that his rap sheet contains no felonies, only misdemeanors.

So enjoy the draft, but try not to get too carried away.