Why players are skipping school
posted: Monday, May 29, 2006 | Feedback

With the revelations that underclassmen Cedric Simmons and Ronnie Brewer have hired agents and are staying in the draft, the pool of college underclassmen still pondering whether to stay or return to school is getting pretty shallow.

Patrick O'Bryant, Shawne Williams, Quincy Douby, Alexander Johnson, Will Blalock and P.J. Tucker also announced recently that they are in the draft for good.

Several other top underclassmen, including Shannon Brown, Kyle Lowry and Jordan Farmar, are leaning heavily toward staying in the draft and could announce their intentions shortly.

Daniel Gibson, Aaron Gray and Arron Afflalo are also leaning toward staying in.

Is anyone going back to school?

Why has there been such a rush to hire agents so early in the process?

A couple of reasons:

One, players are finding that the new NCAA rules on keeping your draft eligibility are too stringent.

Players are now forced to pay for any workout expenses up front. In the past, they could reimburse teams for expenses after the fact.

Players are also finding, in the wake of the Randolph Morris scandal last year, which arose over the question of whether he had hired an agent, that it's almost impossible to have an advisor for the draft anymore. The rules create a lot of chaos, because players need agents to gather information for them from teams on the draft, workouts, and the like -- and yet hiring an agent ends a player's college eligibility.

So, a player like Brewer or Simmons, before hiring an agent, had almost no ability to get the type of training and prep he needed to work out well, and he was cut off from getting detailed information from teams.

While college coaches can fill that role, they are often biased about wanting players to return.

Two, this is one of the weakest drafts in recent memory. Players will go 15 to 20 places higher in some cases than they normally would. That's a great incentive to be in the draft this year.

Next year's draft, on paper, looks like one of the best ever. We could name 10 guys who would be ranked ahead of the top four or five prospects in this draft.

No one wants to go back to school, have a great year, and slip 10 or so places in the draft.

And those 10 spots could be the difference between success and failure. So for some, it's literally now or never.

I hope we keep our picks. With this amount of diluted talent in this years draft there must be a few real diamonds. I hope Isiah can continue his good draft streak. If not, he is about worthless!

Next year's draft, on paper, looks like one of the best ever. We could name 10 guys who would be ranked ahead of the top four or five prospects in this draft.

this is a HUGE problem IMO. What if we traded Francis and both picks this year for the Hawk's #1 next year with say only #1 protection (Oden). Think they would sniff? Just once I would like a shot at franchise caliber talent going into a draft. A deal like that would give us that next year. We arent getting a franchise player in this draft. We are better off just resigning Jackie IMO than going for a guy like Milsap or whoever falls.

We missed our shot last draft by passing Gerald Green or Andrew Bynum, and thats OK, Frye is a good player. The other guy I would make a crazy offer for is Josh Smith. I would gladly give up Francis and both picks for Smith (if that even gets it done)