For the last three months, Emmanuel Mudiay hasn’t been able to cross the Guangdong Tigers’ locker room without first passing the cubicle of the team’s starting small forward, Zhu Fangyu. Zhu is the Chinese Basketball Association’s all-time leading scorer and a fixture on China’s national team for over a decade. He is also known as the authority figure within the Guangdong roster that sizes up new arrivals and decides if they are serious enough about playing for China’s most successful team. The
I started on this mission to dig into One and Done with two main goals in mind. The first was to shed light on the issues in a fact-based way, free from rhetoric and bias. For years the entire policy has been discussed in a way that obscures the facts, not clarifies them. The second is to have the policy viewed as more than an argument over what age to draw the line restricting players from entering the league. While I
Are NBA players likely to be better if they stay in college longer? Do NBA executives know the difference between a stud and a dud based on how long the player stays in school? There is anecdotal data everywhere, from Kobe Bryant to Korleone Young. But former NBA player and current SheridanHoops columnist Danny Schayes works for Intensity Corporation, a firm that did its own exhaustive study on early entry candidates for the NBA draft. Schayes has written a three-part series explaining the
I get pretty tired of all of the complaining about One and Done. It’s time to do something about it. The current rule is a prime example of what happens when two sides are negotiating several major issues simultaneously and a point that deserves a fully thought-out plan becomes something to compromise over. A rule gets made that doesn’t address the actual issues very well, causing distress on all sides. So what’s the plan? How does one actually come up with a
“A good compromise is one where both sides are unhappy.” If you believe that quote, then you must be a fan of the current NBA early entry policy, one of the best compromises in sports history. The policy, informally known as “One and Done,” was reached as a “split the baby” compromise between the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association in 2005. As the flow of high school players entering the NBA grew, the league pushed hard for an age limit
Jarrett Jack is 31 years old and is in his first season with the Brooklyn Nets, his seventh team in 10 years. Most players would feel lucky playing for half as many seasons, but very few think about what they’re going to do with their lives once their NBA career is over. Jack’s parents made sure their son thought about his post-playing career right after he decided to leave Georgia Tech following his junior season to enter the NBA draft. “It’s something I
After enduring a 15-67 season, there was light at the end of the tunnel for the Milwaukee Bucks. There was a new face of the franchise with the ability to light up a scoreboard like a towering billboard in Times Square. There was Jabari Parker. The November Rookie of the Month spoke exclusively to SheridanHoops.com during coach Jason Kidd’s infamous return to Brooklyn. Parker discussed his transition to the league, his relationship with Kidd, improving his game and comparisons to Carmelo Anthony and
I’ve learned many things through my 25 years in the game evaluating players at every level. The first is that nothing basketball-related in this day and age is an exact science. There are high-tech methods to track a player’s every move statistically and analytically and, of course, there are countless strength coaches, player development and workout gurus and top training methods available to players now like never before. But sometimes, as many old-school basketball people will tell you, whether or not a