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

by Jonathan Abrams

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  Tellem spoke at one of his favorite breakfast spots near his Brentwood offices. He wore a sports jacket. At 60 years old, Tellem still had boyish features that complemented his wavy, thinning hair. Tellem wanted to discuss the facts. “That group of [high school] players by far is the most successful, the most marketable, the most highly compensated, and the most decorated as far as achievement of any group of players in the last twenty years since Kevin Garnett went pro,” Tellem said.

  The evidence supported Tellem, who also had a vested interest in his clients realizing their earning potential. In 2004, before the introduction of the age minimum, Michael A. McCann published a paper called “Illegal Defense: The Irrational Economics of Banning High School Players from the NBA draft.” McCann, then a Harvard Law School visiting scholar, studied the 29 high school players who had declared for the NBA draft and signed with agents from 1975 to 2003, finding that those players had stayed in the NBA much longer, while earning larger contracts and maximizing their earning potential, than their counterparts. “Simply put, for every Korleone Young, there are two or three Kevin Garnetts,” McCann wrote. The NBA drafted 83 percent of the high school players who had declared, compared with only 46 percent of the players from 2001 to 2003 who had gone to college and then declared early for the NBA. McCann found that only three high school players who had signed with agents—Taj McDavid, Ellis Richardson, and Tony Key—had been unable to make a living playing basketball (although James Lang might be added to that list in the future for health reasons). McCann wrote that a player who bypassed college for the NBA was in line to earn as much as $100 million more in his career than if he had earned his degree. “In turn, since those players are often the most talented, they tend to develop at a uniquely accelerated rate, and thus their early arrival—and longer stay—ultimately benefits the NBA and its fans,” McCann wrote. He predicted the future financial earnings of Tyson Chandler, who entered the NBA at 19 years old in 2001, and Shane Battier, a rookie the same year at the age of 23. McCann anticipated that in 2011, Chandler would be entering the prime years of his playing career and could sign a maximum contract he expected to be around $118 million over seven years. Battier, meanwhile, would be 32, on the downhill of his career’s slope, and unable to sign a contract for nearly as much. In reality, that is close to what happened. Chandler signed a four-year, $58 million contract with the Knicks in 2011, while Battier joined the Miami Heat as a role player for three years and $9.4 million. In the summer of 2015, Chandler signed a four-year, $52 million pact to play for the Phoenix Suns. Meanwhile, Battier had retired from the NBA after the 2013–2014 season. To be fair, the trade-off is the difference in return teams garnered from the two early in their careers. Chandler experienced his growing pains in Chicago as a young player, while Battier entered the league as a capable two-way player.

  Nearly all of the 17 players drafted after McCann’s study in the two years the NBA continued allowing in high school players experienced sustainable professional careers after encountering initial growing pains. They ranged from those who progressed into franchise players, like Dwight Howard, to those who maximized earnings they would not have received had they gone to college and likely been exposed, like Robert Swift, to some who, while not becoming stars, made millions annually for years as journeymen, like Sebastian Telfair.

  Tellem ordered an omelet made with egg whites and mushrooms, fruit, and whole-wheat toast. He had endured heart-bypass surgery nearly two decades earlier when his cholesterol levels climbed toward 400. He vowed to eat better—he was a sucker for bagels—only to continue a frenetic work pace. He completed a deal for Rex Hudler, a journeyman baseball player, just a few days after the heart surgery.

  He returned to the facts. Today, the average NBA player will make about $25 million, while playing five years. It is impossible to state how long the average career length and salary will be among those who entered the NBA from high school. It is safe to assume that they will shatter the average. Many are still in the NBA a decade after the implementation of the age minimum, with several drawing maximum salaries. “Roughly twenty percent of the league is thirty or over,” Tellem said. “So eighty percent of the league doesn’t make it to age thirty. There’s a lot who don’t even make it to age twenty-five or twenty-six. So when you factor in injury and the desire of teams to have younger players, to lose that year in a career is incredibly detrimental. This is a young person’s sport, much like tennis. This is not like baseball, where, once you make it, players can play well into their thirties. Here, there’s fewer opportunities on everything from success to achievement to opportunity, and when you factor in just how the teams value players, how they put a premium on youth, to deny them that opportunity to go pro when they’re ready is a huge miscarriage of justice for these players.”

  Tellem did not hide his frustration with Billy Hunter at the breakfast or before the ouster of the former executive director of the players union. Tellem had called for Hunter’s removal earlier. Just before the 2013 All-Star Game, Tellem sent a lengthy letter to his basketball clients, heavily criticizing Hunter’s tenure. NBA players deserve better representation from the union they fund, Tellem wrote in the letter. I implore you and your fellow players to take control of your union and your future. It’s time for Mr. Hunter to go. To Tellem, Hunter broke the cardinal rule of entering negotiations: Know every option. “Rather than just blindly accepting their facts, their arguments, and then just playing defense, he never really understood or bothered or cared to understand [that] there are better alternatives than what they have to protect kids,” Tellem said. For years, Tellem publicly disagreed with an age minimum and penned articles in newspapers that carried his opinions and the statistics. Tellem argued for a model most closely resembling that of Major League Baseball—to either allow players to become professionals out of high school or free them to leave college after two years (instead of baseball’s three). He also preferred that the NBA develop a true minor league system. The NBA Development League has evolved greatly in recent years. More NBA teams are financially investing in the D-League, owning their own franchises and using them to groom players. But the NBA’s roster for each team is maxed at 15 players. Teams usually expect their first-round selections to develop in the NBA. The vast majority of D-League players are not signed to the parent clubs due to these small numbers, although quite a few current NBA players have spent time in the minors. The top D-League players usually make only about $25,000, a mark that pales compared to what most are offered to play overseas. Tellem advocated teams being allowed to draft more players and submit them to the D-League for seasoning, maintaining their rights without their contracts counting against the team’s cap. “But that goes toward protecting the individual,” Tellem said. “If you care about protecting the individual, not punishing the individual, there are rules that could be modified, which is where I come from, and it’s better for the teams. The teams want the best players. The teams that are building for the future want access to the best talent. It’s in the league’s interest to allow these players to come. It’s clearly in the player’s interest and there are ways that you protect those that this is not the right decision for. But you shouldn’t punish future generations—the LeBrons, Kobes, Kevin Garnetts, Jermaine O’Neals, Tracy McGradys—and deny them the opportunity.”

  Tellem’s phone buzzed. The caller ID revealed that the number belonged to Kendrick Perkins, another of Tellem’s clients who leapt from high school and remained in the NBA. A few months later, Tellem would return to his roots of working for an NBA team by leaving his agency and becoming the vice chairman of Palace Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Detroit Pistons. “Part of me thought, ‘I can’t possibly accept,’ ” Tellem wrote in explaining his decision to Sports Illustrated. “I’m responsible for helping to guide the careers of scores of pro baseball and basketball players. But I grew pensive when I remembered something a friend once told me: that making a difference in a commun
ity gives you a deeper sense of purpose…I thought, ‘I’m sixty-one. If not now, when?’ ”

  But at the moment at breakfast, he was still one of the NBA’s most powerful agents. The meal ended. Business had called.

  22.

  Rick Stansbury made the long, lonely drive from Starkville to Picayune a few times a month. He sometimes contemplated how fast life moved during the isolated stretches along Mississippi Highway 25. Basketball was his life. As a child, he worked on his family’s rural Kentucky farm all day with his brothers. When the day ended, they lugged and moved hay, converting the barn into a dusty basketball court. They just hoped that an errant pass did not land the ball in cow manure. Stansbury worked his way up the coaching ranks when his playing career ended at Campbellsville University. He became an assistant at the school and later joined Mississippi State’s coaching staff. In 1998, the Bulldogs named Stansbury head coach. He was 38 years old with job security and freshly married to his wife, Meo.

  “I had just gotten married and was falling asleep, thinking about Jonathan Bender,” Stansbury recalled.

  Bender was the reason for those lengthy drives. In later years, once Stansbury had seen Kevin Durant’s prodigious talents, he would compare a youthful Bender to the NBA’s future MVP. Stansbury was an assistant at Mississippi State when he first saw Bender play in middle school. This could be one of the best players to ever come out of the state, Stansbury immediately surmised. Bender was quiet and modest, allowing his game to speak for him. He started playing ball as a youngster, following in the footsteps of his older brother, Donnell. He had been cut from his team in junior high only to grow another four inches that summer, sprouting to 6 feet 4 inches as an eighth grader. Bender had added another three or four inches to his frame by the time Stansbury took a serious interest in him. As a young assistant, Stansbury had been told at one of his first staff meetings at Mississippi State that the school could not land some of the top in-state recruits. Those prospects wanted a bigger spotlight elsewhere. Stansbury planned to change that, believing that Mississippi State was the perfect school for the top Mississippi high school basketball players. Stansbury became a masterful recruiter. He could relate to any kid, any family, anywhere because of his devotion to basketball. The better players began arriving at the school as a result of Stansbury’s nudging. The Bulldogs appeared in 1996’s Final Four—aided by the strong play of Dontae’ Jones, who soon encountered a young Kobe Bryant in draft workouts. Stansbury thought Bender could continue the program’s good fortune. They established a rapport, talking basketball while escaping on hours-long fishing trips. They maintained that rapport as other schools began noticing the silky-smooth big man with the skills of a guard. Bender committed to Mississippi State during Stansbury’s first year as head coach. Stansbury considered the day as one of the greatest of his life. The frequent drives to Bender’s hometown had paid off.

  The school appeared on the brink of becoming a national powerhouse in an era before elite high school players routinely passed on college for the NBA. Once the exodus started, colleges lost out on players they had spent months or even years recruiting. The sidestepping impacted many high-stakes programs. Coaches could land lucrative jobs and teams could make deep tournament runs, providing a financial windfall for the university, off the strengths of one dynamic player alone. No university basketball program would be affected more by players skipping college than the Mississippi State Bulldogs and no coach would have more hard luck than Stansbury. “That was such a badge of honor before they changed the rule,” said Phil Cunningham, an assistant coach under Stansbury at Mississippi State. “They all wanted to go and make money. No one said, ‘Man, I want to go play for Alabama or LSU or Michigan State, rather than the NBA.’ That’s hogwash. Anyone who believes that is in a fantasy world.”

  Thoughts of making Bender the centerpiece of Stansbury’s recruiting class began unraveling at the 1999 McDonald’s All-American Game in Ames, Iowa. In a game with rosters full of future NBA players, Bender stood out. Stansbury watched from the stands. He cheered for Bender—until Bender started performing a little too well. Most of the crowd arrived in support of Nick Collison, a native of the state. Their allegiance changed once Bender released a barrage of outside shots. As the game wore on, fans clamored for Bender’s teammates to pass him the ball. He felt as if he could not miss. The jitters started in his stomach once Bender realized he was closing in on the record 30 points that Michael Jordan had scored in the game in 1981. A free throw gave Bender 31 points. Anyone who breaks Jordan’s record in anything basketball-related will garner attention. Unbeknownst to Stansbury, Bender had made joining the NBA out of high school a secret goal of his. He had watched Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady make the leap. He wanted to lift his family’s spirits and finances. Bender’s father, Donald, had died following a seizure six years earlier. The family lived in a brick home near railroad tracks where trains disrupted their sleep. To Bender, his performance at the McDonald’s All-American Game simply cemented in his mind the notion that the jump was meant to be. He still had to persuade his mother. Willie Mae Bender recognized the value of an education. She worked nights at Walmart and attended classes at the University of Southern Mississippi during the day. At 44 years old, she earned her degree and graduated in the same class as her daughter, Valerie. Willie Mae Bender thought education provided a path out of poverty. Jonathan Bender convinced her that he would return for his education, that the NBA would provide the fastest route for a reprieve. She hesitated, but left the decision to her son.

  Stansbury had heard the rumors and whispers that Bender would now skip college. He maintained hope. The conviction stayed with him when he checked into a New Orleans hotel to meet with his prize recruit. Bender and Thaddeus Foucher, his AAU coach, knocked on Stansbury’s door. Stansbury knew that even if Bender declared, a chance remained that he could still honor his commitment to Mississippi State. Players could declare for the draft and work out for NBA teams, gaining a measurement of how they were valued by NBA teams. If they had not hired an agent, they could withdraw their names up to a week before the draft and retain their college eligibility.

  But Bender had no plans of turning back.

  He looked Stansbury in the eye. His voice did not waver. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, but I’ve decided to go pro,” he told Stansbury.

  Stansbury felt crushed. He tried, in vain, to convince Bender otherwise, but knew he did not have much to offer to counter the decision. Soon, Bender asked to leave the hotel room. He had never seen that look of disappointment in a man—a mix of anxiety, angst, and heartbreak. He needed a moment, but stayed firm in his conviction. “It was one of the most crushing blows I’ve ever had,” Stansbury recalled. “For about two weeks, all I wanted to do was crawl into a hole. I put so much into that thing for five years. It was absolutely just a killer.” It was hard, especially at the time, to admit it, but Stansbury knew he would have made the same choice if given the option. The Toronto Raptors drafted Bender fifth overall—the highest a high school player had been taken at that point—and dealt him to the Indiana Pacers. Bender’s NBA career would be sidetracked by chronic knee injuries. He retired in 2006, unable to walk up stairs without experiencing jarring pain. A comeback attempt three years later with the Knicks ended briefly and quietly. But Bender was careful with his money. As a player, he read books and listened to advice. He became an entrepreneur and philanthropist, aiding several families displaced by Hurricane Katrina. “[Bender] made the next one not hurt quite as bad,” Stansbury said with resignation in his voice. “By the time you got to Monta [Ellis], you just understood it. It was just part of it and I moved on.”

  The next one arrived in the form of a hometown product. Three years after losing Bender, Mississippi State poured its recruiting efforts into Travis Outlaw, a 6-foot-9-inch, 205-pound sky reacher. Outlaw grew up in Starkville under the colors of Mississippi State’s maroon and white. His father, John, worked as an assistant chief in the police
department. His mother, Markeeta, was a city clerk. Robert Kirby, another of Stansbury’s assistant coaches, spent almost as much time at Outlaw’s high school games as he did with Mississippi State’s team. Outlaw finally disclosed his college choice at a morning press conference inside the Starkville High School library. He decided he would not go far and opted for Mississippi State. “I wanted to stay close to home,” he said. “I’m kind of a momma’s and daddy’s boy. I also feel comfortable with the decision.” Less than a year later, Outlaw announced another decision that made his pockets comfortable. He would be leaving home after all and joining the NBA when the Portland Trail Blazers drafted him in the first round.

  The staff’s final blow came from Monta Ellis. Ellis had experienced a dazzling career at Mississippi’s Lanier High School. He was only around six feet tall, but the bigger the game, the better Ellis seemed to play. He punctuated one performance by scoring 72 points. Cunningham worked hard to recruit Ellis, landing his verbal commitment to Mississippi State in February 2004. “When we stopped worrying about Alabama, Texas, and North Carolina, we started seeing those NBA logos on those shirts at his games,” Cunningham recalled. Cunningham still did not see much reason to worry. No guard of Ellis’s diminutive size had successfully jumped to the NBA from high school. They, more than any other type of player, needed time in college to grow into their bodies. But Sebastian Telfair changed that. Telfair was a New York legend as a high school point guard who declared for the 2004 draft shortly after Ellis had made the decision to attend Mississippi State. Telfair stood just six feet tall. The best high school players had congregated in Colorado for a Team USA camp in 2004 as the draft looped on television. Portland took Telfair 13th overall. “When Sebastian got drafted, that kind of opened the door for smaller guards to think, Hey, we may have the opportunity to do the same thing,” said Lou Williams, a point guard from Georgia who went up against Monta Ellis in high school and also skipped college. “At least that’s how I took it. So when he was drafted, and not only drafted—he was a lottery pick—that gave me a lot of confidence to feel like I could do the same thing. That was the main thing that went into my decision.”