THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 1, 1996 TAG: 9605010573
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Bob Molinaro
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
It's inevitable that Kobe Bryant would be linked with the five other high school students - Moses Malone, Kevin Garnett and the rest - who jumped directly to the NBA.
For journalists, the easy comparison is irresistible.
This one, though, is so neat and superficial it all but misses the point.
Comparisons aside, Bryant is not following in the footsteps of Malone, Garnett, Darryl Dawkins, Bill Willoughby or Shawn Kemp; he is leaving his own individual sneaker prints - big ones, at that - on the landscape of basketball.
Because Bryant is a good student with no financial worries, he breaks the comforting stereotypes.
He is not Garnett or Kemp, who, for one reason or another, weren't academically suited for college.
He's not Malone or Dawkins trying to pull himself and his family out of poverty with the stroke of his pen on a contract.
Kobe Bryant is a bright 17-year-old with a strong family and no apparent worries. He is a young man who would look right at home on any college campus - as an athlete or student.
But Bryant is one All-American teenager who doesn't care that he'll never be an All-American.
This is precisely what makes him so dangerous to the status quo.
You could argue - and many did - that Malone, Kemp and Garnett didn't belong in college anyway.
But Bryant is different. He's got BMOC written all over him.
And as Bryant follows Garnett, two more coveted high school players in this year's recruiting class are weighing their options - college or pro?
For these players - and the ones to follow - no longer is there a stigma attached to skipping college, or leaving a university before you've received directions to the library.
It's been years since anyone blinked when a top junior took the money. We expect it. Michael Jordan, remember, left North Carolina after three seasons.
Attitudes, though, have changed radically since 1984 - or '94, for that matter. Stephon Marbury's one-year-and-out plan at Georgia Tech was the season's worst-kept secret. Meanwhile, Georgetown sophomore Allen Iverson has people wondering what's taking him so long to announce for the NBA.
Maybe he's been too busy getting his Mercedes serviced.
At the rate things are going, it is possible to envision a world 10 years hence in which any playground legend would consider college basketball to be a huge letdown.
Peer pressure being what it is, you wonder if a message hasn't already reached campus: If you're still playing as a junior, you must stink.
Naturally, none of this would be an issue if the NBA didn't rely on the NCAA for its minor-league system.
If the NBA paid for its own farm clubs the way baseball does, all the college coaches who say they want nothing more than to educate their players would be free to do just that. Because, for the most part, the kids they would bring in would need an education to get along in life.
The best players, meanwhile, would be spared the charade of attending classes.
You wonder if college administrators and TV executives, people with a big stake in the current system, aren't secretly hoping for Bryant to stumble.
If Bryant bombs, it could stem the tide, and scare some other prodigies into attending college.
It may happen. The trend in basketball may reverse itself.
But for now, it doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. by CNB