How Many More Will Follow Jennings to Europe?
July 11, 2008 by Kevin Hunter
Filed under Basketball
The answer – Plenty!
Now that Brandon Jennings is setting a precedent and blowing off both college and the NBA for a year or more to play in Europe, expect more high school players to follow suit. In this great country of ours, nothing is going to stop someone from making a living, and you can’t force someone to go to college if they don’t want to (unless it’s a requirement to get to the NBA).
The NBA has been allowing foreign players with no college experience to come over here for years. It’s about time Europe and other nations started allowing our players to go over there.
If the powers that be allowed high school players to go to Europe a few years ago, O.J. Mayo would have probably gone and USC wouldn’t be in the mess that it’s in today.
Europe used to be for college players who couldn’t get drafted, or for struggling or end of the line NBA players. Now it may become a hotbed for high school players too dumb to pass their SAT’s or who want to get an early start on their NBA careers.
Will this force the hand of NBA Commissioner David Stern and make him rethink this silly one year of college basketball requirement?
What will college coaches do now knowing that all the time they invest in bringing in some McDonald’s All-American who has the brains of a donut when it comes to grade school work, may blow them off go to Europe if they can’t meet the minimum requirements on the SAT? Will they start to go after real “Student Athletes”?
This may be a great thing for Jennings and players like him, but it may turn out to be a black eye on college basketball, the NBA, and a failed system that really needs to be fixed.
