Today's "Why you stay in school" hard lesson, brought to you by 2002

Thanx to the Boombox post, 2002 feels so close, and yet eternities ago.

First, this is the list of all the players considered "early entry" for the 2002 draft. In that list are few recognizable names. (Who's surprised Qyntel Woods came from JUCO?)

Lebron James would be on this list just the following year. And finally after 2005, no more high schoolers. No more lives recklessly baited and switched. Well, less lives, and less recklessly.

Looking up the "other" names on the 2002 list reveals little, and frequent references to volatility. Then there's ill guided arrows like Lee Benson, Jr. He's from Dayton, Ohio's roller-rink of urban trash and rural soot — also the intersection of two of the greatest highways in this country, I-75 and I-70, which incidentally made Dayton a huge truck-stop hooker paradise for the big mob years of the 50s-80s. It's like halved Akron. What does that have to do with Lee Benson, Jr.? Read this 2003 "from Prison to the Pros" article by Tom Worgo.

The unknown LBJ somehow was playing at a Kansas community college? At 28? To his credit, he was killing it.

Where is he now? From prison to the pros, to Europe, to prison?

What about this cat Kei Madison, fellow preemy? Let me give you a lil' treat. The Google image results for Kei+Madison.

I especially like it in redacted form: eight black guys who hate you, four queer whites, this:



, two fairies, two equal but opposite Asian women, Oscar Madison, two crazed Euro cyclers, and two kitties.

Wow, Google, you are the best fucking free ride around.

Type in Cincinnati+Chili, go in deep.

Taking a tangent, I looked up Scottie Pippen, to see if he was on one or both Dream Teams. He is on both. But also:

• Derrick Coleman and Shawn Kemp were on the '96 Dream Team.

Let me reiterate:

• Derrick Coleman and Shawn Kemp were on the '96 Dream Team.

Those Olympics were in Atlanta. How much cocaine did those two do and how many strip clubs was it done in? All of it, and all of them.

Pip is their kind of guy too, but you know, I like Pip. He's not quite as Eazy E as those guys, and he was far superior at the actual game. Michael Jordan, legitimately, is a wizard (later a Wizard). Pip was his falcon. That's a special relationship.

Just sayin is all.



Back to the early declarers. Free Darko had talked about how warped and short-sighted announcers had become in calling college games, tunnel visioning on the potential of professional results rather than watching basketball for purity of basketball. Mike Connelly could be talking about winning a national championship this year, instead of playing in an arena where the lights are purposefully half-lit to keep costs down. And the only cheering is from the tourists they let in for free. Where would MJ be if he'd declared after a year at UNC? No '82 jumper over Georgetown.

But MJ would still be the frescoed chapel of basketball greatness, regardless. In the same way Lebron will be. All the other Wally Pipps could at least have taken a few classes, maybe discovered they like management or some other corporate drivel, something that could fulfill a life sans the ball court dribble. How does the love of the game and the economics of the game ever balance? The 2002 early-entrant list illustrates something so much realer; guys who aren't living the dream, but who had lived in dream and now are in a night-terror life playing semi-pro ball in Turkey, or one of the 'Stans. If you declare early or go for a one year carnival ride at the holiday college of your choice, does that mean you're in love with the wrong side of basketball, or are you just aware of your destiny? Are you an asshole for taking away someone else's chance at an education? Is high level basketball not superior knowledge of a physical discipline?

Anyone who really read this, and who is thinking ahead, might distill it and say something like, "For every Lebron, there's 100 Lee Bensons."

I look at it and say, since I'm degreed, I'm crafting a letter to declare eligibility for the 2008 draft.