California basketball player going from preps to pros. This move has Elk Grove roots
Sometimes you see a guy and you just know.
Elite. Special. Just a matter of time before he lands in the NBA. That’s what I thought when I saw Tracy McGrady play a high school game. Others include Matt Barnes, Tyson Chandler, Russell Westbrook and Aaron Gordon.
And Jalen Green, the 6-foot-5 leaper out of Fresno and Prolific Prep in Napa big on hops, personality and potential. He opened a CIF NorCal playoff game at Sheldon in 2018 with three NBA-range 3-pointers and looked the part of big time, though the Huskies won.
Green on Thursday announced his high step into history as a pioneering sort.
The 18-year-old guard will bypass college and any fortune to be found overseas to play in the NBA’s G League development program. Green will play for a created “Select Team” in a city yet to be announced. He will be on a roster heavy on veteran players with elite prep addition. Green reportedly will earn $500,000 in the G League. He is also about to sign a seven-figure shoe contract. The perks of being athletically elite. Green is projected to be the top pick of the 2021 NBA Draft.
Another five-star prospect on Thursday announced his intent to go the G League route. Isaiah Todd is a 6-9 forward from prep school Word of God Christian Academy in Virginia.
Will these sorts of moves send ripples across the basketball landscape? It already has. For those who have no desire to go to college, even on the one-and-done model, this is a good route to go. If you’re elite, that is.
The NBA G League president is one-time Cal and Kings player Shareef Abdur-Rahim. He told ESPN on Thursday that the NBA and the G League want to keep top prospects in this country, in their leagues, not overseas.
“That’s a real program that the NBL has,” Abdur-Rahim told ESPN of Australia’s National Basketball League. “It’s appealing. We have kids leaving the United States – Texas and California and Georgia – to go around the world to play, and our NBA community has to travel there to scout them. That’s counter-intuitive. The NBA is the best development system in the world, and those players shouldn’t have to go somewhere else to develop for a year. They should be in our development system.”
Flashback eras
Green isn’t the first prep-to-pro entry. That origin has roots to Elk Grove, and then it became trendy in the 1990s with Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant, and then the next decade with LeBron James and Dwight Howard. Green’s agent is Aaron Goodwin, who represented James and Howard.
Two high school centers caught the eye of NBA scouts in 1975 when the game was played inside out. They were Bill Cartwright of Elk Grove High, the nation’s top player that season, and Darryl Dawkins of Maynard Evans High in Orlando, a jovial sort already blessed with a man’s body.
The 7-1 Cartwright was intent on playing in college to study and to graduate. He did at USF, en route to being the No. 3 pick of the 1979 NBA draft to the New York Knicks, the start of a 16-year career. Cartwright won three NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls and later coached the franchise. Now working at USF as a special assistant, Cartwright has told me that his path was the right one for him out of high school. “I wasn’t in a hurry,” he said.
Cartwright learned to work with his father on a sugar-beet field on a family farm in Sacramento. Both were chest deep in weeds, hands blistering and feet tender to the touch under the scorching sun. Agents dangled a $100,000 contract to Cartwright then, a value of some $480,000 in today’s economy. Cartwright’s prep coach Dan Risley told me awhile back, “Bill had everyone after him (in 1975). Agents went to Bill’s house to try to convince his parents to go.”
The 6-11 Dawkins didn’t want to go to college. He eyed the NBA. He grew up in a house without indoor plumbing and vowed to never be poor again. He built up his body by stacking boxes of oranges and throwing around tires at a junkyard. In games, Dawkins caught the eye of Philadelphia 76ers general manager Pat Williams.
Dawkins became the first prep to make the leap directly to the NBA (Moses Malone went from high school to the American Basketball Association in 1974). In 1975, Sacramento’s Memorial Auditorium held a national All-Star basketball event. Cartwright played. Dawkins declined the invitation under the urging of the 76ers, who didn’t want anyone to see the big guy compete because Dawkins was their target.
Dawkins went No. 5 overall in that draft to the 76ers. Cartwright would have been that selection, Williams hinted to me years ago when he added, “Drafting high school players was my master plan. I wanted to find stars before anyone else, but it was a risk. ... We needed a Moses Malone type, and Bill Cartwright had our attention. You can’t teach big and big talent.”
While running the Orlando Magic in 2004, Williams drafted Howard No. 1 overall. That was a risk that paid off. Howard will land in the Hall of Fame.
Dawkins’ shattering legacy
Dawkins was a solid pro, but not elite. He played 14 NBA seasons, averaging nearly 13 points and six rebounds. He died in 2015 at 58, a lovable guy who claimed to have been from “Planet Lovetron.”
He famously named his dunks, including the first NBA shattering effort against the Kansas City Kings in 1979, witnessed by longtime Kings broadcaster Jerry Reynolds. He splattered a backboard over Kings forward Bill Robinzine, days later describing it this way, “From this day forth, you shall kindly refer to that historic tribute to interplanetary strength as: ‘The Chocolate-Thunder flying, Robinzine crying, teeth-shaking, glass-breaking, rump-roasting, bun-toasting, wham-bam-glass-breaker-I-am jam.’”
Dawkins in 2010 was adamant in his support of the NBA’s decision to stop drafting prep players. Too many, Dawkins argued then, were not ready for the task and flushed out. Some wound up broke and homeless. Dawkins also endorsed the NBA dress code, saying once, “A guy making $14 million shouldn’t be wearing a Snoopy T-shirt with jeans hanging down around his butt.”
Dawkins was proud to be the first high schooler to jump to the NBA, saying years ago, “I don’t regret anything. I helped my family, and I had a great time in the league.”