Boys Among Men: How the Prep-to-Pro Generation Redefined the NBA and Sparked a Basketball Revolution

by Jonathan Abrams

  Bryant was marvelous throughout the playoffs. Against Phoenix in the second round, his last-second jumper lifted the Lakers to a Game 2 victory. His lob to O’Neal capped a frantic comeback in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals over Portland. But his coming-of-age moment arrived in a pivotal Game 4 against the Pacers in the championship. The game stretched to overtime, where O’Neal fouled out. Jackson finally offered Bryant what he had yearned for since the debacle against Utah—a green light on a big stage. “In a situation like this, Jordan wouldn’t let his team lose,” Bryant told his teammates. “I’m not going to, either.” Bryant scored 6 of the Lakers’ final 8 points for a total of 28 and the Lakers pulled away from Indiana and assumed a commanding 3–1 lead in the series. On the sidelines, Pacers coach Larry Bird watched. He was set to retire after that season and it seemed as if Bryant, a legend in the making, had hurried another into retirement. “Every shot was all net,” Bird told reporters. “I mean, it wasn’t even close. He made big play after big play. I thought Reggie [Miller] came back and made some big plays, but we knew Kobe was just going to take over. It’s just that we didn’t stop him…And it was awesome.”

  As Bryant closed in on his first title with the free throws, Mark Heisler watched from the Staples Center’s press row. Heisler was a veteran journalist who covered the NBA for the Los Angeles Times. Years later, he would look back at Bryant’s performance against Indiana and recall it as the first time Kobe was really Kobe. Bryant had flashed what he could do by his lonesome in bits and spurts before, but he always had O’Neal or another veteran teammate on the court to contend with. Against those Pacers in Game 4, the game was firmly his to win or lose. For Heisler, the moment also marked a definitive shift in how players arrived in the NBA. Heisler himself had been part of a revolutionary period of sports journalism. He was in Philadelphia in 1969 at the age of 25, fresh out of journalism school and ready to take on the city’s sports scene. He was part of the Chipmunks, a new breed of sportswriters given the name by the legendary journalist Jimmy Cannon when he one day spotted a group of young sports journalists hurriedly chatting. They were different from the older generation of writers who revered sports figures and wove myths about their heroic deeds on the field. These writers now sought out hard news stories and treated games with the same seriousness a city hall reporter covered council meetings. Instead of friends, they had sources. Instead of idolizing sports figures, they often made enemies, and a wall quickly developed between the sides. Heisler was assigned to the Philadelphia 76ers when the organization drafted Darryl Dawkins in 1975. The decision did not particularly strike Heisler as groundbreaking. The 76ers had been the NBA’s worst team only a couple of seasons earlier and needed drastic improving. In that same draft, the 76ers took Lloyd Free, soon to be known as World B., and traded for Joe “Jellybean” Bryant. The trio, Heisler found, was inseparable and indistinguishable. Listening to their conversations, Heisler thought, one could not discern who had gone to college and who had not. It was Dawkins who first came to Heisler, telling him that he wanted a story written about the lack of playing time awarded to him by their coach, Gene Shue. Free soon followed with a similar request. When Joe Bryant asked Heisler to write the same story about his own need to play more, Heisler asked him to hold on, that he still had to get Free’s complaint published. Shue wanted a defensive center who rebounded, like the one he already had in Caldwell Jones. It was natural that Dawkins often rode the pine. He was a fan favorite, though, because of his tremendous dunking ability, but never advanced much beyond that level. He got so much so soon, it was enough for him, Heisler thought. No matter what tactic he tried, Shue could not mold the high school prodigy. His scout Jack McMahon returned from a high school All-Star Game the following year and touted a player named Darrell Griffith as the most talented draftable player, no matter what the class. Shue brushed him off. “We’re not going to go through this again,” he said.

  Due to the troubles encountered by Dawkins and Bill Willoughby, Heisler was not surprised that the pipeline of high schoolers going to the NBA had closed for so long. But then, by the time Heisler had arrived in Los Angeles, Garnett came onto the scene. Anyone with half a brain could see his talent, Heisler thought. Kobe Bryant followed. Heisler saw that he had his father’s small face and big ears and a great deal of his basketball talent. But Heisler knew the family well enough to realize that Bryant had received his desire to fight through adversity from his mother, Pamela. One day in Chicago, Heisler ran into Kobe Bryant at the predraft camp and introduced himself, informing Bryant that he had covered his father. To Heisler, Bryant was young and earnest. Not unlike talking to my paper boy, he thought. Bryant told Heisler that he was soon headed to Los Angeles to work out for the Lakers. Heisler did not think much about it at the time, but realized later that this was the fateful session where Jerry West would decide to do his best to draft Bryant. Heisler was there to chronicle those early days when people first wondered whether a player of Bryant’s size out of high school could survive the NBA and then if Bryant could learn to play as a member of a team. Heisler knew it was the first time Bryant had ever played with players of considerable talent. He had never had to back off before and Heisler wondered whether it would have even mattered if he had played with better players before. He compared Bryant to a lone wolf. He was wild on the court, but fearless. He watched those air balls against Utah during Bryant’s rookie season and never saw Bryant again overmatched on the court. It seemed that every fall, Bryant arrived with something else perfected—his jumper, his jab step, his crossover—after a summer of endless work. Slowly, the talent outshone the flaws. In the All-Star Game against Michael Jordan a year before the championship, Heisler charted Kobe Bryant’s shot attempts. “He’s taken eleven shots the thirteen times he’s touched the ball,” Heisler whispered to Raymond Ridder, who worked in the Lakers’ public relations department. “That’s two less than he took in the rookie All-Star Game last year,” Ridder responded. After that game, when it seemed that Bryant had matched Jordan, Heisler ran into Joe Bryant at Madison Square Garden. “That was a pretty good game he had,” Heisler said of Kobe Bryant’s performance. All Joe Bryant responded with was “See?” To Heisler, there were only a couple of people who first predicted Bryant’s complete stardom: Kobe Bryant and his family. Joe Bryant’s prediction had once seemed far off to John Nash, who, even though he had desperately wanted to draft Kobe Bryant, did not envision him becoming an NBA star so quickly. Joe Bryant’s original forecast of his son’s instant stardom may have been off. But it was not off by much.

  At the age of 14, Moses Malone scribbled in the back of his Bible that he wanted to be a professional athlete. He turned pro in 1974 after an ABA team recruited him from Virginia’s Petersburg High, becoming the first player to play professional basketball straight out of high school. Shortly after, Malone joined the NBA and became a three-time MVP and one of the league’s 50 greatest players of all time.

  Bill Willoughby never experienced the NBA stardom he had hoped for, although blocking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s shot in the 1981 playoffs qualified as a memorable moment. Many regarded Willoughby’s struggles to assimilate from high school to the NBA as a primary reason why no one else made the jump for another two decades. Willoughby went on to obtain his college degree and now hopes to counsel young players.

  Even with Kevin Garnett’s name on the tip of every NBA executive’s tongue, his mother, Shirley Irby, wanted Garnett to attend college, after gaining his diploma from Chicago’s Farragut Academy.

  Kevin Garnett reopened the door for prep players to join the NBA in 1995 when he declared for the draft out of high school. Garnett became a superstar, but still did not want others to follow in his wake. He knew the transition had been difficult.

  Players routinely signed Arn Tellem to represent them after declaring for the NBA from high school. Tellem represented Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, Eddy Curry, and Kwame Brown. He navigated Bryant’s route to Los Angeles in 1996, refusing to
allow him to work out for several teams and helping to orchestrate his trade from Charlotte. In 2015, Tellem left his agency to become an executive for Palace Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Detroit Pistons.

  Kobe Bryant dazzled while attending Lower Merion. Gregg Downer, his high school coach, believes Bryant would have declared for the NBA even if Kevin Garnett had not made the same decision a year prior.

  Sonny Vaccaro’s ABCD camp became a launching pad for talented high school players to showcase themselves and bypass college. Players like Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, and LeBron James first gained national acclaim following their performances at the camp.

  Kobe Bryant looked to make his mark quickly in the NBA. Del Harris, his first NBA coach, realized that Bryant was different from most of his players. He was obsessed.

  Kevin Garnett works for position against Kobe Bryant. In 1995, Garnett became the first player in two decades to join the NBA out of high school. Bryant jumped straight to the NBA the following season. Both experienced bumpy introductions but quickly blossomed into dominant players, reopening the door for an influx of high schoolers to follow in their footsteps.

  Jermaine O’Neal made the transition all the way from South Carolina to Oregon when he joined the NBA from high school in 1996. O’Neal’s career started slowly in Portland, where he seldom departed the bench. But with the Indiana Pacers he evolved into a frontcourt force and a regular all-star.

  No team executive placed more faith in high schoolers entering the NBA than did Chicago Bulls general manager Jerry Krause, who confers here with Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf. Krause believed he could gain a step ahead of his NBA peers by drafting high school players. In the wake of Michael Jordan’s second retirement from the Bulls, Krause drafted Eddy Curry and traded for Tyson Chandler, both fresh from high school, in 2001. Neither performed to expectations, and Krause departed the Bulls in 2003.

  As a high schooler in Illinois, Eddy Curry had been projected as the second coming of Shaquille O’Neal. Curry’s hometown Bulls plucked him out of high school with the fourth pick in the 2001 draft. Curry had his moments in the NBA, but his career was ultimately a disappointment.

  Tyson Chandler was known among pro personnel at an early age before ultimately joining the NBA out of a Southern California high school in 2001. He essentially skipped adolescence. Said Chandler, “My life was accelerated because I had to learn how to protect myself and use people who thought they were using me and do all of that to get to where I wanted to get to.”

  Kwame Brown became the first high schooler drafted first overall when Michael Jordan handpicked Brown to join the Washington Wizards in 2001. The stress and expectations of being not only the top pick but also the player chosen by Jordan derailed Brown’s career. He evolved into a role player, never developing into the superstar that many had predicted he’d be.

  No one knew Tracy McGrady before his performance at the ABCD camp. A devastating dunk landed him on the radar of college recruiters. But McGrady skipped college to declare for the 1997 NBA draft.

  Tracy McGrady began his first NBA training camp in the fall of 1997. He drove the baseline during one scrimmage and tomahawk-dunked over Sharone Wright. “It was one of the nastiest dunks nobody ever seen,” said Damon Stoudamire, McGrady’s teammate in Toronto.

  Leon Smith became one of the poster figures for skeptics of the idea that high schoolers could be ready for the fast-paced world of the NBA. The Dallas Mavericks selected Smith in the first round of 1999’s draft without working him out. Smith never played a game for Dallas, while suffering from psychological issues.

  Rashard Lewis sat through the entire first round of the draft waiting for his dream to be realized and a team to call his name after declaring for the 1998 draft out of high school. The Seattle SuperSonics finally summoned him in the second round, with the 32nd overall pick. Lewis, unlike those selected in the first round, did not start off with a guaranteed NBA contract. But he matured into a dependable inside-outside threat and signed a deal in 2007 with the Orlando Magic worth nearly $120 million.

  LeBron James supported a burgeoning economy that his talent and work had created as a high schooler in Ohio. Several of his games were even carried on national television. USA Today estimated that James generated $1.5 million his senior year of high school for his school, promoters, and others. Yet under amateur rules, he could not profit off himself at the time.

  LeBron James sits next to Carmelo Anthony before the 2004 Rookie Challenge game. No high school player seemed as ready for the NBA as James. But even he experienced growing pains as a teenage professional and was met with jealousy from veteran Cavalier players when he joined the NBA in 2003.

  Many predicted years of high-soaring exploits from Jonathan Bender when he joined the Pacers in 1999 out of high school in Picayune, Mississippi. But knee injuries severely truncated his professional career. Bender, whom Indiana chose with the fifth overall selection, started just 28 games as an NBA pro. He found a second calling as an entrepreneur by starting a nonprofit and inventing a resistance-training device.

  In 2003, as a member of the Phoenix Suns, Amar’e Stoudemire became the first player who joined the NBA out of high school to win the league’s Rookie of the Year Award. Stoudemire overcame a difficult upbringing to make an immediate impact in the league. Jerry Colangelo, who ran the Phoenix Suns, had been reluctant to draft high school players. But Colangelo realized he had to adapt to the times if he wanted to remain competitive and accrue talent.

  Sebastian Telfair, Dwight Howard, Rudy Gay, and Josh Smith sit on the bench at the 2004 McDonald’s High School All American Game in Oklahoma City. A solid performance in the game can drastically raise a player’s stock in the minds of NBA front-office personnel. Ultimately Telfair, Howard, and Smith all bypassed college to enter the NBA. Gay spent two seasons at the University of Connecticut before declaring for the NBA.

  Dwight Howard embraced Stern when his name was called as the first pick in the 2004 draft after he decided to forgo college for the NBA. For Stern, the trickle of players who entered the league out of high school turned into a steady procession. In 2004, 8 of the first 19 players selected were high schoolers. Change arrived when the NBA began disallowing players from entering straight from high school following the 2005 draft.

  14.

  The energy in the gym suddenly shifted. Tyson Chandler felt it, his back to the door as he went through a workout at the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Monica. Chandler knew he had entered without having to swivel his head. A voice followed that Chandler immediately recognized. Any kid with even a fleeting interest in basketball would have. It was deep and modulated. “Tyson,” the voice said, “when you’re doing this drill, you need to pay attention to how you’re planting your foot.” Chandler still hesitated to turn around. He was already nervous and feared being made even more timid. Finally, he decided it would be disrespectful not to acknowledge the advice. “OK, Mr., uh, Jordan,” Chandler bashfully said. “I’m not sure what to call you.”

  “Just call me Mike,” Michael Jordan responded.

  Chandler mumbled and tried returning to his workout as though the greatest player in history were not sitting in judgment of him. It was the spring of 2001 and Jordan had recently and unexpectedly returned to the NBA as a part owner of the Washington Wizards with authority over their basketball decisions. The arrangement had been fashioned quickly. Jordan had spent the lockout-shortened season decompressing from the game’s glare and spotlight. Rumors of a comeback occasionally surfaced, but never from Jordan himself. Still, a competitor needed his fix. Ted Leonsis, a senior executive with America Online and one of Washington’s minority owners, bet correctly that Jordan sought a new challenge to whet his competitive appetite. A dinner between Jordan and Abe and Irene Pollin helped consummate the deal. Abe Pollin had purchased the Baltimore Bullets all the way back in 1964, eventually moving them to Washington, D.C., and changing the team’s name. Pollin was a link to the game’s earlier days. He had bee
n made more wealthy by its popularity spike, but he also now paid millions to players whose salaries had once been much more manageable. That they dined in the first place was a surprise to those who knew both. Pollin and Jordan had shared a heated exchange during the lockout when Pollin complained about escalating player contracts. “If you can’t make a profit, you should sell your team,” Jordan said. At the time, the comment infuriated Pollin. But at dinner, he found Jordan affable and with direction on how to turn the franchise around. He started envisioning a successful partnership.