Ugonna Onyekwe, a 6-foot-8, Nigerian-born center, had a lot going for him in the National Basketball Association’s annual pre-draft camp just concluded in Chicago. Several scouts said they were impressed with his ability to play defense and rebound. If he showed a shortcoming, one scout said, he needed to extend his shooting range.
Left unsaid was an additional drawback: He played four years of college basketball at the University of Pennsylvania. These days, almost no NBA hopeful worth the big bucks remains that long on a campus — let alone one in the Ivy League.
This is the NBA’s new age, where precocious high school seniors, college dropouts and foreign players who never set foot on a U.S. campus get the most attention and those who actually complete a senior season in college are a vanishing breed.
“I hope there’s still room for a four-year player in the league,” said Fran Dunphy, Onyekwe’s coach at Penn.
The competition for NBA jobs has become a full-court press for seniors invited to the pre-draft camp at Moody Bible Institute’s Solheim Center. They represented a little over half the 66 players on hand for three days of tests, drills, measurements and a round-robin schedule of games that were vital to their pro basketball hopes.
Their note-taking audience is an all-star gathering. When players dived for balls they looked up to see NBA luminaries such as Jerry West, Phil Jackson, Larry Brown and Pat Riley staring at them from the bleachers. “You try not to get too caught up in everything and just play your normal game,” said Joel Cornette, a 6-foot-9 inch senior from Butler. “We all realize that the better your team does the better it is for everyone on it.”
The invitation to the pre-draft camp, which has been held in Chicago for nearly 25 years, is considered an absolute necessity for NBA hopefuls, but players projected to be among the top half-dozen or so picks later this month in the draft bypass the event. Their agents typically advise them they have nothing to gain from an appearance and among last week’s absentees were consensus No. 1 pick — and high school senior — LeBron James, 18; Syracuse freshman Carmelo Anthony, 19; Texas sophomore T.J. Ford, 20; and Darko Milic, 17, of Serbia-Montenegro.
“The NBA teams are in a tough situation,” said Georgetown coach Craig Esherick, who had two players, junior Mike Sweetney and senior Wesley Wilson, at the NBA tryouts here. “They might be better off in the long run selecting a more mature player who’s gone through the entire college experience, but they have to take the most talented players available regardless of age. If they don’t, someone else will.”
Senior numbers dwindling
Last year, only seven college seniors were picked in the first round of the NBA draft with the other 21 slots going to talented underclassmen, high school seniors or foreign players. This was an improvement over the 2001 draft, when a mere four college seniors were selected in the opening round, which was the same number of high school seniors picked.
In the last 10 drafts, only two No. 1 overall picks — Tim Duncan of Wake Forest and Kenyon Martin of Cincinnati — played four seasons of college basketball. Last year’s top choice, China’s Yao Ming, was a further example of how international players proliferate in the NBA and make college seniors more of an endangered species. Foreigners accounted for nearly 15 percent of last season’s roster spots.
“I don’t know that being a college senior is necessarily held against you, but the problem is that it also gives the scouts four years to nitpick what’s good and what’s bad about you,” said Indiana Pacers scout Al Menendez. “The new and younger kids, plus those from abroad, aren’t under the same microscope.
“It’s like evidence in a jury trial,” he added. “If you watch someone long enough, you’ll find something you don’t like about them. Potential is always a big thing, even if you’re a college All-American. You want players with an upside for growth basketball-wise.”
By most accounts, Onyekwe, 23, played well enough at the NBA camp here, as well as at an earlier camp in Virginia, to buck recent trends and get drafted possibly as high as the first round of the two-round process. He would become the first player since 1995 to get selected from the Ivy League, a conference that once regularly produced NBA stars such as Bill Bradley, Corky Calhoun, Geoff Petrie, Brian Taylor and Chris Dudley.
“In my case,” said Onyekwe, “I think it helped that I played four years in college because I didn’t start playing basketball until I was a little older than many. It is an individual thing in the end. If you come from a high school with unbelievable skills, or come from one of the European club systems, then college may not be a help.”
The Penn star got his degree this year from the university’s Wharton School of Business, specializing in management, and he knows that will be a valuable asset after basketball. For now, though, his dream is to pursue the sport as far as it will take him.
His agent, Andy Miller, also the agent for Kevin Garnett, who made the leap straight from Chicago’s Farragut Academy High School to the NBA in 1995, has lined up a number of individual tryouts for him with teams in the league.
“There’s no question there will be fewer college seniors coming into the league in the future,” said Dick Versace, general manager of the Memphis Grizzlies. “There’s just more competition for the jobs, especially with Asia opening up the way it has. We’re a talent league first. The only collegiate system we deal with is in the U.S.”
The camp has been held at Moody since 1993 after shifting from the University of Illinois at Chicago. St. Xavier University athletic director Bob Hallberg, who was the basketball coach at UIC when it was held there, said almost every player invited to the NBA camp used to be a senior.
“High school kids were unheard of, of course,” he said. “Sometimes you’d get a junior college player or someone who just didn’t play for four years for some other reason, and you thought something was wrong with them. The feeling is now that, if he played four years of college basketball, he can’t be that good.”
This doesn’t mean the seniors at last week’s NBA camp aren’t talented. College stars such as Arizona’s Luke Walton, Creighton’s Kyle Korver, Wisconsin’s Kirk Penney and Kentucky’s Keith Bogans have plenty of basketball ahead of them, whether or not it is in the NBA.
European Leagues and the minor league Continental Basketball Association in the U.S. have become attractive options. Players can make nice six-figure salaries at that level and use the competition as a springboard back to the NBA.
Older and wiser
Maturity helps. When he was in the front office with a CBA team in Rockford, Ill., Dan Bernstein, WSCR-AM 670 sports talk host, recalled the better adjusted players — thus, those generally with the best chance of getting to the NBA — often were those who had a senior season in college.
“Europe’s especially great for basketball players if they’re not there looking for a McDonald’s to eat,” he said. “It takes a certain poise and discipline to stay in college, no question, but that’s not saying it’s for everyone.”
The CBA and Europe may be options, but Onyekwe obviously has his sights set higher.
“I’ve been working out ever since the college season ended, and the feedback I’ve been getting at all the tryouts has been very positive,” he said.
“Right now basketball is all I want to do for a living. I want to take it to the highest level I can. When that stops, I’ll just see where I am and make new decisions.”
