Quarantine Means Next Season’s NBA Rookie Class Is Gonna Suuuck
The NBA's season is a mess and one that'll probably carry over into the following season. One small example is scheduling. If this years' Disney World NBA Finals series makes it to a game 7, the game would be held the same week the next NBA season would've likely started. Rookies are a bigger problem. Not a single team will have a clue exactly what kind of players they'll be drafting this year.
The pandemic has been going on so long that it's easy to forget that the NCAA college basketball tournament was canceled just as ESPN was about to set their March Madness advertising campaign to full-auto and tape down the trigger. These guys haven't played in months and missed out on the biggest showcase of their talents. NBA scouts have no recent game footage to gauge their potential selection. Gone are the days of players participating in multiple tournaments over years since now they leave for the NBA the second it seems like they might get drafted if they declare. This leaves teams with no idea how the top and mid-tier players handle the pressure of a high-stakes nationally broadcasted game.
On top of this, while NBA players can train on their own personal courts and gyms, college players are generally broke as shit. At best, they've been able to train their 2K game in between episodes of the Michael Jordan Last Dance doc. We're looking at an entire rookie class that hasn't played organized basketball or been able to workout for the better part of a year. They're all going to look like the Monstars broke into their room to steal their talent while took their second isolation nap of the day.
Every draft pick is little more than a guess. An educated guess, yes. One made after hundreds of hours of research, player meetings, arguments, and power struggles with the team owner's mistress. But it's still just a guess unless a team's GM goes on an ayahuasca trip where a wise coyote assures them that drafting So-and-So from Whatever University will be the beginning of their dynasty. This year, though, we're going to see something even less scientific than an educated guess. We're just going to see a bunch of plain old guesses.
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Top Image: NBA/Youtube
