California hoops sensation Jeremy Tyler announced this week that he will forego his senior year of school to enter the pro ranks. That alone shouldn’t be big news. We see college players leave well before graduation to hit the NBA
California hoops sensation Jeremy Tyler announced this week that he will forego his senior year of school to enter the pro ranks.
That alone shouldn’t be big news. We see college players leave well before graduation to hit the NBA hardwood all the time.
The difference here is that Tyler will be leaving high school after his junior year and crossing the Atlantic to play for the Maccabi Haifa Heat in Israel. Tyler, 18, from San Diego, will become the first American player to leave high school early to play pro ball overseas.
The reaction by some was that this will set some new trend of poor decisions by young hoopsters. There is a feeling that these kids are far too young to be thrust into professional sports and they need more time to mature and just live like a normal kid is supposed to.
That might be a valid argument if people said the same things when young gymnasts go train with their coaches at age 12. Or when tennis prodigies head to Florida to live with other phenoms and hone their craft every day. Or even when young actors and actresses land roles in major motion pictures.
For some reason, basketball players wanting to get paid just rubs people the wrong way.
Tyler signed a one-year contract and will make $140,000. So he’s covered for lunch money until he’s about 67.
I doubt many kids could walk away from that type of an offer. It isn’t as if he’s sold his rights and can never come home. He’ll be eligible for the NBA Draft in 2011. So he’ll likely play overseas for two years, pack some humus in a Tupperware container and bring his talents back to the bigger stage.
This is a move that is only recommended in extremely special circumstances. I can’t imagine leaving my hometown after my junior year of high school to move to a new country on a different continent. If Tyler is mature enough to handle that situation, more power to him.
I know I’d have probably been drooling throughout the entire plane ride and asking the flight attendant to turn the plane around.
OK, that might be an exaggeration — I hope.
But at 18, my biggest concerns were which flavor of slurpee to get after school and whose garage to hang out in that weekend.
A new country, none of my friends and $140,000 sitting in my bank account? I doubt I would have handled that too well. If Tyler comes back to this country with more than $500 and no serious addictions, that’s probably a win.
His rationale is quite solid, though. He’s one of the best players in the country and certainly the best in his region. He said that he was tired of having three guys guarding him every time down the court and constantly being hacked.
Even with that, he averaged 28.7 points a game last year. But he’s being used as a big man on his high school team and he has far more skills than that. If this is what it takes to make him a better player, the ends might justify the means.
Another good factor is that the team he’s heading to has a number of successful American players on it, so hopefully at least one of them will take him under their wing.
Even so, it’s still Israel. There are plenty of issues there that folks in San Diego don’t run into very often.
I wish him all the best in this experience and hope that he doesn’t end up longing for the days of detention and pop quizzes.
