Anyway, I don’t have a strong opinion yet, as I haven’t seen him play this season.  I’m going to try to get a Miami game into my schedule on the East Coast.  I love watching Wade, of course, and I really want a look at Michael Beasley, who seems a lot more impressive to me than he does to a lot of other people.  I’ll get back to that in a sec.

As I’ve previously written, I’m a big fan of O’Neal, not just for the play, but because of the way he backed up the prep-to-pro kids, when almost no one else did.  Barring high schoolers going directly to the NBA was terribly wrong, violated their rights to work, and O’Neal said just that in various interviews the NBA and Players Association colluded to prevent high school basketball players from jumping directly to the NBA.

The issue is simple enough for me.  If teams are willing to draft players that means those players are ready to go pro ipso facto.  It’s age descrimination to prevent players from competing for employment in the NBA, and it’s done partially to protect owners’ investments.  High school players may take a while to develop and owners don’t want to spend the players’ rookie-scale contracts developing them just in time to see them hit free agency when they ripen.  Tough sh*t.  Owner coddling has always pissed me off; condescendy nonsense about players getting an education in college pisses me off; holding high school players resposible for the NCAA’s deterioration is absurd.  And the most ludicrous argument that you still hear sometimes, “Sure, there’s Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant, but what about all of those players who don’t succeed?  What about them?” Players who have gone directly from high school to the NBA have been phenomenally successful.

Consider: Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Jermaine O’Neal, Tracy McGrady, Al Harrington, Rashard Lewis, Darius Miles, LeBron James, Josh Smith, Dwight Howard, Amare Stoudemire, J.R. Smith, Andrew Bynum,  Al Jefferson, Monta Ellis, Louis Williams, Amir Johnson, C.J. Miles, Kendrick Perkins, Shaun Livingston, Tyson Chandler, Travis Outlaw, Martell Webster, DeShawn Stevenson, Desagana Diop.  Are you kidding me?  25 out of 39 high school draftees, since 1995, are/were major contributors, according to my quick look judgement (which is impeccable).  These successful players include a plethora of Allstar-caliber players, a few perennial MVP candidates, a bunch of rotation players (some still young enough to make big strides), and Shaun Livingston and Miles, who were promising until severely injured.  Sure, Eddy Curry and Kwame Brown were huge busts.  Tough sh*t.  There are too many college players for me to calculate their success rate, but I’ll bet they don’t come close to matching the high schoolers’ 64% success rate.  Considering the upside you also find in high school players, there’s no question which group gives you favorable odds, on draft day.

Finally, what happens if a high school player gets injured in his mandated year away from the NBA?  It’s going to happen someday, and I hope the player/players sue the NBA and Players Association for a max contract.  The MLB has an Anti-Trust exemption.  The NBA doesn’t, and I look forward to the day they get rudely spanked, in court.

Look, I’m as big a fan of the game as you’ll find, but I’m not going to let my principles go to sh*t (after all, I have so few) because Leon Smith was nuts and Kevin McHale drafted an undersized high school point-guard who can’t pass, shoot, or defend.

There, I’ve said my piece, how’s your mother?