Can Danny?

Every time ESPN ticks me off I find myself looking for new places to go for NBA news. More often than not, I just find more annoying articles and end up right back at ESPN. To paraphrase an old Winston Churchhill gem, it really does seem that ESPN is the worst source for NBA news... except for all of the other sites.

The latest article that got me was Steve Aschburner's CNN/SI article about The Aging of NBA Prodigies. It was one of those moments when I actually appreciated John Hollinger's stat fetish because he seems to have a handle on the numbers. Aschburner starts with a good question: do more minutes at a young age mean today's straight-from-high-school All-Stars will peak at an early age? But then he doesn't actually analyze anything. He throws out random names and stats about minutes and that's it. So I found his e-mail address and sent him a reaction to his article. Here it is.

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While your premise about the aging of the NBA's straight outta high school crowd is interesting, it's a bit disappointing that you didn't really investigate the concept at all. In your piece you cite a few names (including, oddly enough, Moses Malone who was himself an NBA prodigy) but then you only point out their minutes played. You don't actually look at their career arcs and compare them to the current NBA prodigies nor do you take an average NBA career span and compare it to the kids. Of course, if you had done that you'd probably have found no real cause for alarm.

The first new era high schooler was Kevin Garnett. You cite the fact that he missed 9 games last year and has been out some time this year as a harbinger of doom even though last year he had an MVP-type season and helped lead the Boston Celtics to an NBA championship. In your paragraph about KG, you cited a few names but then never really compared them to KG besides their minutes count. So let's take a look.

At age 32 and 33, Hakeem Olajuwon missed ten games in each season and his game started to slow down. At 35, he missed half a season and never really was the same. KG is basically on the same pace. His body might be breaking down a year earlier but I don't think it's that hard to imagine that he has four more solid years left in him.

When David Robinson was KG's age (32), he was coming off of a lost season and starting the second phase  of his career as Tim Duncan's #2. He had a couple of solid years left in him but his decline had started. Charles Barkley started missing games consistently at the age of 27. At the age of 32, he began his tenure in Houston and that didn't exactly work out all that well. Jerry West started missing games when he was 27. By the time he was 32 years old, Nate Thurmond was already a year into his decline. Larry Bird missed a full season at age 32 and was out of the league in three years.

So when you look at where KG is at the same age as the stars of yesteryear, he really doesn't seem to be off the mark. In some cases, he's actually looking better than his counterparts.

But perhaps the most telling comparison would be KG to his fellow McDonald's All-Americans. Does KG seem much worse off than: Paul Pierce, Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, Chauncey Billups or Shareef Abdur Raheem? Or how about Tim Duncan, who is a month younger than Garnett, and a player whose body started showing signs of wear when at 27 (missing 13 and 16 games in back-to-back seasons)? It really doesn't seem like those four years at Wake Forest have spared Tim Duncan any of wear-and-tear.

The same comparisons can be made with Kobe Bryant. Stephen Jackson was on Kobe's McDonald's squad. The following year's squad had recent nemesis Ron Artest. I wouldn't say that Kobe seems like he degenerating any faster than those two.

Also, it's a common belief that most shooting guard start their decline at age 32. Many guards, like Mitch Richmond, don't decline as much as they fall off a cliff. At age 29, Kobe won the MVP. At age 30, he's still the best player in the league and he's the main reason the Lakers are arguably the best team in the league. Despite coming out straight from high school, he seems to be on the same path as most NBA shooting guards. In fact, if he started to decline after this season and then, in a couple years, became Dwight Howard or Chris Bosh's second fiddle, his career path would mirror Clyde Drexler's.

But I think most people would agree that Kobe has more than two great years left in him. He might not last as long as Reggie Miller (who carried the Pacers to the Finals at age 34) but Elvin Hayes peaked at 31 and started to decline at 34, something which seems about right for Kobe. Magic Johnson had to retire early but he was already on the other side of his peak when he did and he was 31.

The Michael Jordan comparison is always a tricky one. First off, MJ is the best ever. Secondly, if Kobe was following MJ's blueprint he wouldn't even be making a run to an NBA title right now, he'd be at spring training.  Even without the hiatus though, I don't think it's hard to believe that Kobe has four more great years left in him, at which point he can take four years off, and then come back and put up points on a crappy Wizards team.

At the very least, Kobe is still on the standard career arc of NBA shooting guards. Someone who is deteriorating faster is Tracy McGrady, as well as Kobe's draft classmate Jermaine O'Neal.

But before you blame no college ball for those collapses, look back at the draft a decade before Jermaine O'Neal. Brad Daugherty went to college, was injury plagued, and out of the league by 28. Fellow Blazers draftee Kevin Duckworth peaked at 26 and was downhill from there so it's not like Jermaine O'Neal's decline is some recent phenomenon.

As for T-Mac, his career isn't really much different than his collegiate cousin, Vince Carter. T-Mac has been injury prone, just as his cousin has, but oddly enough both of them had their best scoring seasons at 23 and 24 years old. Carter fell from grace in Toronto and moved to New Jersey at age 29 where he's put up numbers but hasn't really helped the team to playoff success. I could see the same thing happening to T-Mac. He's 29 this year and will probably be shipped off this offseason to someplace where he can put up some numbers. Another comparison is Steve Smith, who moved over to Portland at age 29 and was never really heard from again. He retired at age 32, just as James Worthy did. Grant Hill's debilitating injury happened when he was 28, a year young than McGrady.

McGrady is injury prone (he's actually never played a full 82 games season) but he's not the first talented player to shine early and then fall apart before their time. And let's not forget that at this time last year, people were singing the Rockets praises as they were on a somewhat historic win streak.

So finally it comes to LeBron, whom you compare to Oscar Robertson. Now I never watched Oscar play but just looking at the stats, it doesn't seem like LeBron is that far off of Robertson's career path. The one season Robertson averaged a triple double was his second, at age 23. His rebounding numbers fell by age 27 and by 29 he wasn't averaging a double-double anymore. In fact, he wouldn't see the playoffs again until he was 32 and shipped off to Milwaukee where he would win an NBA title as Kareem Abdul Jabbar's #2. He was out of the league three years later.

So all LeBron has to do is be great for the duration of his next five or six year deal and then, for his next deal, settle in as a new superstar's wingman. That hardly seems like a tall order for The King.

In the end, your summation seems to miss the point of what an athlete's peak really is. It isn't when they are at the height of their athletic ability or physical prowess. Every athlete starts feeling beat up by their late 20's. By his late 20's Michael Jordan had already changed up his game because he wasn't the athlete he used to be. No, what the "peak" of an athlete is is when their maturity and wisdom catches up to their physical abilities. It's when they realize what it takes to win in the NBA and are still limber enough to make it happen. And for these young players, I believe the extra years in the NBA will help them mature faster and have more years to take advantage of their peak athleticism.

The old saying is "Smart too late, old too soon." And with these young stars of the NBA, the issue isn't that they are getting old sooner, it's that many of them are getting smart earlier.