I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It - Charles Barkley [59]
A whole lot of these kids who are turning professional out of high school should go to some form of minor leagues. Every NBA team should have multiple affiliated minor league teams. These kids aren’t ready when they come out of high school, but most of ’em also aren’t interested in going to college. And anybody who tells you these kids get better sitting on the bench in the pros than they do playing in college, they’re lying. You’re not getting better sitting on the bench.
The reason I want to see the pros make better use of a minor league or this new developmental league the NBA started, or whatever you want to make available, is that it just isn’t fair, it ain’t moral, to just use a kid to make millions of dollars for a school and just turn him loose on the world uneducated with no chance to succeed. If you bring a kid into school you know has little chance to graduate just to help you make money by appearing on television and helping you fill your stands every week, and then say after four years, “See ya!,” well, what the hell is that?
I know that not every kid who goes to college is interested in an education. A whole lot of ’em are trying to get to the NBA or NFL and that’s their only goal. But the entire big-time college athletic system encourages this stuff.
My first day at Auburn—and I’m presuming this happens at a whole lot of other schools, too—they asked, “Do you want to stay eligible or do you want to graduate?” Hell, you’re eighteen years old and you don’t want to flunk out of college after one year so you say, “Yeah, I want to be eligible.” I’m just tired of hearing that if you go to these schools you’re getting something, that you’re getting a college education. You’re not getting a college education if the graduation rates are what we’re being told.
And what makes it really bad is they’re not graduating and they’re not making themselves great basketball players either. But they come into the pros and think they are. Young guys now aren’t nearly as accepting of criticism from coaches as we were. I’m talking about even the mildest criticism. They’re not even receptive to their parents’ criticism. Basic coaching is something they consider criticism. I guess it’s like that for kids of this era no matter what they do. I have friends in the media who tell me the same thing about young reporters. But society has done this. Mainstream society has made every single thing about money. Basketball, football, network TV, it’s all the same. When I look at a show like Fear Factor, what the hell is that but some quickie, gimmicky way to make money? And a network will put that on, which encourages young writers to turn out a piece of junk ’cause they’ll make some money right away, instead of putting on quality programming. That would reinforce the idea of working harder to develop something of higher quality. People don’t want to work to develop skills if they see some quickie, gimmick way to make money. All these reality shows on TV now, that’s all they are about, instant money and instant notoriety and becoming some celebrity wannabe.
I know I sound like an older guy now just attacking young guys, and I know it sounds like jealousy. But damn, we’re right. The older guys are right in this case. In terms of basketball, the game is not the same. It’s entirely money-driven. It was always like that for the owners and networks and sponsors. But it’s become like that for the players, too. The owners have always been greedy, but the players have turned into the same people as the owners, and that’s amazing to me.
To me, the whole process just screws the fans. You know if you draft a high school player he isn’t going to help your team for three years. Kobe Bryant, great as he is, didn’t help the Lakers until his third year. But that’s not the way drafts are designed in any sport. The purpose