Mo Bamba is fully convinced that he’s ready for the NBA.
He also believes that was the case a year ago.
If Bamba – the massive Texas center who will likely be taking his 7-foot-10 wingspan to a lottery team at the NBA draft next month – was a high school senior in 2020
Tre'Davious White Jersey Youth , he probably would have bypassed college and made the jump straight to the league. The expectation around the NBA is that will be the year where so-called ”one-and-done” rule will come off the books and players will no longer have to wait a season before going to the pro ranks.
So Bamba went to college and waited his turn, though he’s not sure it was needed.
”I thought about it a lot,” Bamba said. ”It’s an area I probably would have explored.”
Out of the 30 first-round picks that will be made at the draft, it’s entirely possible that as many as 25 will have played no more than one season of college basketball. Some didn’t even play in college – there are a couple of European players likely to be first-rounders, and intriguing combo guard Anfernee Simons did a year of postgraduate work at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida.
Simons tested off the charts at the draft combine this week, with a 41 1/2-inch vertical. He’s a former Louisville commit, who decided to hold off on college after the scandal that ultimately led to the dismissal of coach Rick Pitino.
”I’ve just been working hard on all aspects of my game, trying to get better every day,” Simons said.
The NBA makes no secret of the fact that one-and-done doesn’t work ideally for any party involved – the pro ones or the college ones. The league has talked about making 20 the minimum age where a player can enter the NBA; the players’ union has said it would prefer it going back to 18. And now with the college game on the cusp of massive changes amid an ongoing federal investigation, it seems quite likely that the one-and-done policy will be scrubbed soon.
Bamba’s reaction to that: About time.
”It’s only right by the athletes,” Bamba said. ”Some kids have lifelong dreams of wanting to play in the NBA. Not manipulating, but changing the rules so we have more of an option as players is what’s most beneficial to us.”
There were 38 freshmen who applied to be early entry candidates in this draft. Some will go back to college, but the majority of those should get picked.
Some guys simply needed the year.
Kentucky’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander played his way onto NBA draft boards and decided to leave after one season, with Wildcats coach John Calipari raving about how hard he worked and how much better he got in his one college season.
And Duke’s Trevon Duval, who had 207 assists in his lone college year
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”My whole thought process and training process would have been a little bit different if the rule was in effect,” Duval said. ”I think it’s a good rule. There are definitely kids who can go straight from college to the NBA.”
Sometimes, the perceived one-and-dones get to college and realize they’re not ready.
Miami guard Bruce Brown Jr. came to the Hurricanes with that one-and-done label. He wound up staying for two seasons, and knows that was the better move for his development. Same goes for Michigan State’s Miles Bridges, who insists he’s better for having stayed.
”I’m more ready now,” Bridges said.
In his interviews with teams this week at the combine, Bridges was often asked about why he didn’t come out as a freshman. His sense was that they liked his answer.
”They were kind of impressed with that,” Bridges said. ”So, me staying was a good thing. I stayed so I could mature and they respect that about me.”
Bamba sees a similar payoff in himself as well.
As much as he would have liked to be in the NBA already, he’s not resentful about having to wait. And he does concede that the college experience made him better than he was when he exited high school.
”I got everything I wanted out of Texas,” Bamba said. ”Obviously, you’d love to win more. You’d love to win a national championship and compete at that level. But as far as relationships and development, I couldn’t be happier.”
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Philadelphia’s six leading average scorers so far in the playoffs, in order are: Ben Simmons, Dario Saric, Joel Embiid
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Their homelands: Australia, Croatia, Cameroon, the United States, Italy and Turkey.
Philadelphia – a melting pot of humanity for more than 300 years – has a basketball team probably as diverse as the city itself. The 76ers, 19-1 in their last 20 games and suddenly looking very much like an NBA Finals contender, will try to close out the Miami Heat and clinch their Eastern Conference opening series when they play host to Game 5 on Tuesday night.
About a dozen languages and dialects can be spoken in the 76ers locker room at any time, but clearly, winning is a universal language.
”It’s all basketball, but the true side of how people coach, speak, say, play the game is different,” 76ers coach Brett Brown said. ”And that collection now that I have with everybody is like is a melting pot of all peoples experiences. That equals a team. I mean, I love it. I love the geo-political conversations. I love that diversity on the court
Leighton Vander Esch Jersey Elite , off the court. I enjoy it.”
There might be no coach better-suited for this particular gig that Brown, too.
He spent nearly two decades living overseas, spending most of that time coaching in Australia before getting hired by the San Antonio Spurs – another franchise that has found championship ingredients from all over the world – back in 2002. Brown went to Philadelphia in 2013, took loss after loss after loss for his first four seasons when The Process was playing itself out, and now is reaping the rewards.
The 76ers are young. They’re brash. They’re fearless. And they’re legit.
”A lot of the guys growing up overseas, we have that European style of play,” Simmons said. ”It’s a lot different than the U.S. style.”
Simmons is still a kid, in the NBA sense. He’s 21. But he’s already seen the world with a basketball in hand: He’s played all over Australia, represented his country in Lithuania at the FIBA World U17 Championships as a 15-year-old, ended up going to high school in Florida and spent his lone year of college at LSU.
”I’ve seen a lot,” Simmons said. ”I’ve played everywhere.”
The poise shows, with the rookie shining in his first playoffs.
Embiid, also in his first playoffs and with a mask protecting his surgically repaired face, has handled playing injured with ease. Belinelli has been a steadying force since he got to Philadelphia two months ago. Saric has been doing things in these playoffs that can draw comparisons to what that countrymen Drazen Petrovic and Peja Stojakovic did before him. Ilyasova has been a key player for Philadelphia since getting rescued from Atlanta in February.
They all think differently, many learned the game differently, and the backgrounds are wildly different.
But it works.
A record 62 players from 33 countries were on playoff rosters across the NBA this season
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”My English isn’t that good, Dario’s isn’t that good, but we try to be a great group,” Belinelli said. ”And we are. We go to dinner all together, we spend a lot of time together in the locker room after practice. It’s just part of the work, I think. Having all these guys from different parts of the world, it’s a good thing.”
Brown, a coach in three Olympics, couldn’t agree more.
”This global instinct and sort of global feeling that we have in Philadelphia interests me very much,” Brown said. ”I embrace it. For me, it’s another layer of why I enjoy coaching this team.”
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