The teen dreamers.(drafting teens into NBA has moral implications)(Brief Article)

It would be convenient to brand me a racist. Why else would I condemn the prom-to-pros, corsage-to-Cadillac exodus of America's hoops youth unless I was a small-minded, fortyish white guy who is lost in Midwestern suburbia and simply doesn't get it?

Don't tennis players turn pro before puberty? Didn't Tiger Woods bolt Stanford and do OK for himself? Haven't baseball players been signing deals right out of high school forever? Why be so hard on the sneaker kids when Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady have revolutionized the path of the 18-year-old quantum leaper?

This isn't about race. It's about a dangerous illusion, which basketball is selling to increasingly alarming numbers of dreamers. The Invasion of the Stubble-Chinned Projects is headed for a major crash, opening the floodgates for too many unrealistic fantasies and encouraging every lad who can tie his laces that he, too, can enter the draft and get rich. The Kevin-Kobe-Tracy superhighway remains an aberration, yet it hasn't stopped waves of teen wannabes from dropping everything--including any semblance of an education--and dedicating their lives to making sure their team caps are on tight when David Stern introduces them on TV.

The vast majority of them will flop, if drafted at all. And then what? They can't go back to age 13 and try something else. They're out in real life without a clue. For every Garnett, there are stragglers like Ronnie Fields, Kevin's equally hyped teammate at Chicago's Farragut Academy seven winters ago, who has bounced around the minor leagues because he's an ordinary 6-3 guard. For every Bryant or McGrady, there are tragicomic tales like that of Taj McDavid, who thought the NBA made a huge mistake when no one drafted him out of high school, only to realize he wasn't even good enough to play in Division II. The mechanism isn't in place to save these kids, advise them to try another profession before it's too late. They find out the hard way.

But no one wants to hear those sad tales. They just want to gaze at Kwame Brown, 19, who was drafted by a legend twice his age and guaranteed $12 million. They just want to look at Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry, who'll become Twin Toddlers in Chicago. No one can ...