Sung to the tune of “The Brady Bunch” song
Dear Jamie Campbell
Oh how I hate thee
Your voice is garbage you sound like a gameshow host
your enunciation makes me want to punch you
I don’t like Leo but I dislike you the most
You look eleven
Your jokes are awkward
I swear to God you are a goofy fucking jinx
What kind of loser gets star-struck by Eugune Levy?
I bet Pat Tabler never wants to go for drinks
Oh Jamie Campbell
I sure do hate thee
Hearing your voice today just made me want to die
That you have not yet lost your job is just beyond me
I bet if you read this you’d begin to cry
Grow a mustache
What makes good NCAA basketball players become great NBA players? On the other side of the coin, why do so many great NCAA players fizzle in the NBA? I don’t know if ‘on the other side of the coin’ works here, but let us pretend that it does.
I figure the obvious answer is ‘because some players put in more hard work than others’, which is probably true. But, what else might it be?
The main reason this is on my mind is because Tyler Hansbrough has now passed JJ Reddick as the NCAA’s all time leading scorer. I’ve yet to hear a single person say they think Hansbrough will ever become anything more than a solid role-player in the NBA. This is probably true, given the odds against any one player becoming a star. However, that would mean that the top two all time scorers in the history of the NCAA would be NBA afterthoughts. Does anyone honestly believe that someone who has worked as hard as these two have to score as many points as they have would let something like more hard work stand between them becoming great NBA players? This is hard for me to grasp, and so I don’t accept that work ethic is the main factor at play here.
Hansbrough
There’s also the argument that the NBA game so far ahead of the NCAA level in terms of physical ability – jumping, speed, strength, stamina – that some players can just never develop enough physically to compete on the same level. It’s hard to argue with this point. We all know that some people have certain physical limitations that they can do nothing about; limitations that get exploited at the NBA level.
Robert ‘Tractor’ Traylor is a good example. At the University of Michigan, he absolutely dominated other players with his size – 6′8″, 285lbs (fat) – and strength. He could literally push other forwards around to get to whatever spot on the court he needed to be at, and did so on his way to a 16 and 10 season in his junior year. After being taken 6th overall in the 1998 draft by Milwaukee, he was immediately traded to Dallas for Pat ‘Dawson’s Creek’ Garrity, and the 9th pick in that years draft, Dirk Nowitzki. It was a terrible terrible trade, and Traylor was a flop. Why?
Traylor
When a player who dominated the NCAA with their physical abilities reaches the NBA, they tend to find guys on each and every team that are either bigger, stronger, or faster than them, not to mention smarter. This is because the cream rises to the top. The guys who can get pushed around at the NCAA and dominated physically never survive past their first NBA season, if they make it that far at all. They either find themselves in Europe, or buried at the end of some bench until their rookie contract expires. Eventually players with one-dimensional games find themselves matched up against guys who posses something they don’t. In Traylor’s case, it was speed and stamina. He couldn’t get his ass down the court in time to get in the play, and by the third or fourth time he did make it over, he was gassed and weakened, and next to useless. Traylor was a victim of the NBA game, and learned first hand how much it differs from the one he played in College.
So what is it then, that turns good to great? I think it has a lot to do with the desire to learn and grow – not simply hard work, but smart work. The guys who figure out what kind of player they need to be to succeed are more likely to do so than those who are convinced they already have what it takes.
The vast majority of players taken in the first round of any given draft will never equal their College successes in the NBA. Those who do, do so because they’re able to adapt to the NBA game. I bet Darwin would’ve loved the NBA; it’s like evolution sped up.
