Boys Among Men: How the Prep-to-Pro Generation Redefined the NBA and Sparked a Basketball Revolution

by Jonathan Abrams

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  All along, Jerry Krause believed that skillful organizations obtained championships, not individual players. He had watched as the Celtics sat idly by as Larry Bird and the rest of Boston’s core aged and the organization slipped into mediocrity. It was better, Krause thought, to rebuild on the fly and anticipate the inevitable need to overhaul. Twice now, Tracy McGrady had evaded him. But smart franchises possessed alternative blueprints for success. The Bulls suffered through another miserable season in 2000–2001 and finished with just 15 wins. Michael Jordan’s Wizards had won the 2001 draft lottery. Krause’s Bulls landed the fourth pick. He still judged that draft as one that could change his organization’s fortunes. He had spent much of the season evaluating and scouting a quartet of talented high school seniors: Kwame Brown, Tyson Chandler, Eddy Curry, and DeSagana Diop, an unpolished teenager from Senegal with potential.

  NBA executives anticipated that as many as six prep players could be taken at the 2001 draft, in New York’s Madison Square Garden. The teenagers had spent so much time together that they had come to respect one another. This was a journey that they would start together. On the day before the draft, they talked among themselves, wondering who among them would be Michael Jordan’s chosen heir. For weeks, Jordan entertained the notion of trading the pick and landing an established player or additional draft picks. Most of the teams picking immediately after Washington, including Jerry Krause’s Bulls, made trade offers to Jordan for the top selection. In the end, he kept the pick, homing in on one player. Jordan made NBA history in taking Kwame Brown, who became the first player out of high school drafted first overall. Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, and other future All-Stars had to wait to be picked on their draft days. Brown stood up slowly from his seat after hearing his name and hugged his mother before smiling and shaking David Stern’s hand. He had expected the announcement. Still, the moment moved him. “I’ve never been so overwhelmed and nervous in my life,” Brown told reporters. “I’m now the representative of all high school seniors, and I have to show it wasn’t a mistake.”

  “My big dream is to beat [Michael Jordan] one day,” Brown would say at his introductory press conference in Washington, D.C. “That is a dream,” Jordan concurred. He added in the conference: “We feel like we have a quality kid and his potential is unbelievable. We don’t know what this kid is capable of doing—that’s the beauty of why we drafted him. We don’t know. In a couple of years, he may be a star.”

  The Clippers picked second. A year earlier, they had selected Darius Miles from East Saint Louis third overall, previously the highest a prep player had been chosen. It had been a learning experience for both him and the organization. The Clippers were awful. Miles did not have to earn his minutes. He was handed them. Miles became the first high schooler to be named to the NBA All-Rookie first team. He was amazingly athletic, but also immature. Miles declined to invest in his game over the summer through training. He told his coach, Alvin Gentry, that he wanted to act in a movie. The gig, Miles claimed, would net him $900,000. “Darius, do you understand that if you work on your game, you could get eighty-five million one day?” Gentry asked. The discrepancy did not seem to sink in. In 2001, the Clippers took an elated Tyson Chandler after the Wizards drafted Brown. Chandler was happy to stay near home, even if the Clippers had historically struggled. But the Clippers were hesitant about introducing consecutive high schoolers into the NBA and turning a young team younger. Unbeknownst to Chandler, they had a deal in place to send him to the Bulls if the draft unraveled the way Krause had hoped. It all depended on what the Hawks did with the third pick. Word had filtered back to him that the Hawks were interested in the big kid from Spain, Pau Gasol. Neither the Bulls nor the Wizards had spent much effort evaluating Gasol, but they would realize their mistake later. Herb Rudoy, who had represented Darryl Dawkins, became Gasol’s agent. He asked Washington’s Rod Higgins to take another look at Gasol in the days leading up to the draft. But Washington was set on Brown. “That was before the [international] scouting aspect really blew up,” Higgins said. “We weren’t prepared for it, I’ll say it like that. He snuck under the radar big-time.” Krause said he had been advised by others in his organization that Gasol was not worth scouting. Gasol later developed into a multidimensional interior player, and finally joined the Bulls in 2014 after winning two championships with the Lakers. “This is not to demean anybody, but we were told not to see Gasol,” Krause said. “Whoever was in charge of that thing kept saying, ‘Don’t see him.’ We said ‘OK.’ Was that a mistake? Probably, yes. We should have seen him. We didn’t.” The Hawks indeed selected Gasol with the third pick and traded his draft rights to the Memphis Grizzlies.

  Jerry Krause felt a surge of adrenaline. Gasol’s selection had facilitated his plan. Krause played the greatest all-in hand with high schoolers the NBA would ever witness. He took Eddy Curry with the fourth pick and agreed to trade Elton Brand to the Clippers for the rights to Chandler. He had decided earlier that he would only make the trade if Curry was still on the board for Chicago’s pick. Krause specifically wanted to pair the two in his frontcourt. Brand had been one of Chicago’s few bright spots after Jordan’s departure. He had earned co–Rookie of the Year honors with Steve Francis and appeared destined to average 20 points and 10 rebounds throughout his career. He was established and dependable. But he was short and the organization reached the conclusion that Brand had already maximized his talent at a young age. Curry and Chandler were new, the promise of their potential limitless. Krause believed that Chandler and Curry could co-dominate the NBA. Even Brand did not argue with the logic. “You’ve got these two young guys, one’s a seven-foot pogo stick and the other’s a six-foot-ten-inch three-hundred-pounder that can do back flips,” Brand said. The Bulls had judged the big men in college and high school who would likely matriculate into the league over the next few years. None of the prospects on the horizon matched up to Chandler and Curry. Krause felt as if he had cornered the future market of interior players. He had not felt such elation since landing Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant in the same draft 14 years earlier. “There were a lot of people who said we were nuts, and we took those kids in the same year,” Krause recalled. Chandler, Krause thought, was the better defender. Curry, he decided, needed the shortest time to develop an NBA offensive game. Krause filled out the rest of the roster with veteran players like Charles Oakley and Greg Anthony. “We knew taking two of them was a risk,” Krause said. “But we also felt they were the two best players available at that point. Obviously, we didn’t think it was enough of a risk to stop us.”

  Jamal Crawford had hosted Chandler on his unofficial visit to the University of Michigan a few months earlier. The pair laughed when Crawford informed Chandler that he had been the subject of one of Crawford’s class discussions about the ethics of showering a high school basketball player with attention and adulation. Crawford had also become fast friends with Curry when Curry visited the Bulls before a game during his senior year of high school. Now the trio were teammates, known as the “Baby Bulls.” Crawford already wore number 1 on his jersey. Chandler asked to wear number 2, but John Ligmanowski, the equipment manager, cautioned against it. Every recent player who had worn that number had been traded, cut, or injured. Chandler opted to wear number 3. An undaunted Curry requested number 2. “Gonna break the curse,” he declared.

  Just a few months later, tiny bolts of electricity coursed through Eddy Curry’s body during the pregame layup line. This was it. He was here, in the NBA, with the Bulls, about to open a season of renewed expectations at the United Center against the Indiana Pacers. Curry gazed into the crowd. His family and friends sat in the stands. He had bought an extra 26 tickets to accommodate them all. He wanted to do so much. He did not know how much he would play. When he did, he hoped to quickly find the game’s rhythm and settle down. Bulls coach Tim Floyd summoned Curry into the game’s first half in place of Brad Miller. When Krause had hired Floyd to replace
Phil Jackson, the former Iowa State coach held on to the fading hope that Jordan would still return to play for the Bulls. Now, Floyd was entering the fourth year of a rebuilding plan with no expiration date in sight. His team’s fortunes hinged on the development of two teenagers. Floyd doubted that he had ever depended on two freshman as heavily when he was a college coach.

  Unfortunately for Curry, the game did not slow down. If anything, the pace quickened faster than he had ever imagined basketball could be played. Curry air-balled his first shot as Chandler sat idling on the bench. The teams played closely in the first half and the Bulls pulled to within 65–64 with a little over a minute remaining in the fourth quarter. The Bulls switched to a zone defense. Jermaine O’Neal, long and wiry, found the gaps inside it. O’Neal, who had entered the NBA five years earlier, had finally found a home and a fit in Indiana. He had been good enough to play in Portland, but was buried within a talented, veteran roster. While in Portland, the birth of his daughter, Asjia, accelerated his maturation. He had first met Mesha Roper at the Adidas headquarters when she was still a student at Portland State University. The two began dating, and it wasn’t long before O’Neal told Roper the same thing he had once told his mother: he wanted to be a father as a young man. As with his early entry to the NBA, he knew he was not prepared, but he was ready to throw everything he had into parenthood. “I knew I was going to be the best father that I could possibly be,” O’Neal recalled. “I just felt like that was one way for me to get out all the hurt, anger, and pain that I had toward my father—because he wasn’t around, because he didn’t care enough to support me and treat me like a kid’s supposed to be treated.” Because he was unhappy with his lack of playing time in Portland, the Trail Blazers had traded O’Neal and Joe Kleine to Indiana for Dale Davis, an All-Star. Indiana executive Donnie Walsh and Isiah Thomas, who had become Indiana’s coach after a power struggle in Toronto, agreed to take a gamble on the little-used O’Neal. They traded Davis—an Indiana staple who had led the Pacers in rebounding for seven straight seasons—for O’Neal, an unknown quantity. For the first time in his career, O’Neal was far from the team’s youngest player. Indiana had drafted high schoolers Al Harrington and Jonathan Bender in successive years to pair with veterans like Reggie Miller, Rik Smits, and Travis Best. Thomas had followed O’Neal since his high school career in Indiana. He compared granting O’Neal an opportunity to a teacher spotting potential in a troubled student. They lived near each other in Indiana and O’Neal spent many hours at Thomas’s home. O’Neal’s minutes skyrocketed in Indiana, from 12.3 per game in his final season in Portland to 32.6 per game in his first year with the Pacers.

  Against Chicago, O’Neal scored 20 of his 25 points in the second half, giving Indiana a healthy lead. He also dunked over Curry, who missed five of his six shots, securing a layup in the meaningless final minute of Indiana’s 98–73 victory. Chandler did not fare much better and hardly played, ending with one free throw and two missed shots in six minutes.

  The season quickly worsened for the Bulls. They never stood much of a chance. The team’s makeup was ill conceived with a coach who had tired of projects. Instead of developing Chandler and Curry through playing time, Floyd elected to play the team’s elder veterans. The rookies played erratically, sporadically. The Bulls lost 12 of their first 13 games. After one early-season defeat, a loss by nearly 30 points in Orlando, a dejected Chandler cried in the locker room. He had been used to winning throughout his life and the constant losing started weighing on him. Fans, Chandler believed, did not judge him as being a finished product, but he was still expected to be a contributor, one worthy of his high draft slot. At that time, he was neither. “What’s your problem?” Floyd asked Chandler.

  “What do you mean what’s my problem?” Chandler asked. Floyd repeated his question.

  “Losing’s my problem,” Chandler responded.

  “If you can’t handle losing in the NBA, you won’t have a long career,” Floyd said.

  “I don’t want to be able to handle it,” Chandler responded through his tears.

  Floyd resigned 25 games into the season. He was replaced by Bill Cartwright, who had once been considered to have enough talent to jump to the NBA from high school in the days of Bill Willoughby and Darryl Dawkins. Cartwright had been one of the league’s most respected and feared big men. He sought to teach Curry and Chandler the fundamentals of the game. He soon realized that the commitment extended beyond the basketball court. Krause had hired a cook for the organization, essentially charged with preparing the two teenagers breakfast and lunch. Curry had two Rottweiler puppies and wondered who would take care of them when the team traveled for road games. When a police officer informed Curry that he could not drive his new all-terrain vehicle in the city, he simply parked it at the Bulls’ training center, abandoning it there for weeks. “Even though they are two separate people, each of them has their own challenges,” Cartwright said. “They were the same challenges of being away from home. Even though Eddy lived here, he was still on his own. And they were both dealing with family and friends, getting around, everything that a kid would go through their freshman year of college, except now they’re dealing with it in real life.” Krause scheduled regular meetings to gauge the progress of the pair on and off the court. He decided, soon after, to meet with them one-on-one instead. Chandler, he found, was much more mature. “They were two different kinds of kids,” Krause recalled. “They were both real good kids. That’s why we took them. We had faith in the fact they would both mature.” On advice from those in the Bulls organization, both bypassed living downtown and rented condominiums near the team’s suburban practice facility. Tom Lewis moved in with Chandler, and the two kept busy during downtime by playing video games and pool. Lewis came to feel pity for Curry, who seemed to have everyone around him with their hand out but nobody to pat his back or offer guidance. Donnie Kirksey, a former mentor to Curry, routinely witnessed that behavior from those close to NBA players. “You’re fighting things from parents who want to get things, you have friends who have their agendas, you have girls and baby mamas,” Kirksey said. “It was just so much. It was just so much distraction for him, and if he looks back over it, he would do it different.”

  To Chandler, it was as if the organization had drafted the pair, hitching its future with theirs, without a strategy to develop them. “The toughest thing for me was there wasn’t much of a plan, now looking back at it, for myself and Eddy,” Chandler said. That the fate of the franchise was on his shoulders eluded Curry. “I didn’t really realize it until later on,” Curry said. “We were young. We were having fun, working hard. We didn’t realize we were the ones supposed to turn the whole thing around.” In 2003, Jerry Krause retired from the Bulls, citing health issues. He still believed that he had left a core in place that would reel the Bulls back into competitiveness. Chicago had just missed the playoffs for the fifth straight season. Jay Williams, a point guard who had joined the team by then, had quickly noticed the difference between Chandler and Curry. “When Tyson would make a big-time play, he would come off the court and he would be so pumped up that you could see the emotion on his face,” Williams recalled. “He had that kind of passion about the game. When Eddy would make a big play, he wouldn’t have any emotion. It was kind of like a stone-cold killer. He had that look, but maybe not that mentality of a killer.”

  16.

  A familiar stage and setting awaited Michael Jordan. He only needed a flick of his wrist and a wag of his tongue to seal the accustomed ending. The game had tightened at Madison Square Garden and the time had dwindled. The ball found Jordan’s capable hands. He was 38, his frame bulkier now than the lithe one that had once flown around arenas across the country. His jersey was altogether foreign, that of the Wizards and no longer the Bulls. He had again returned as an NBA player after three years in retirement. The announcement surprised few and seemed inevitable after weeks of leaked whispers concerning his clandestine workouts. Some fans had left t
he NBA when Jordan did, a departure reflected in slipping television ratings, and hoped he could recapture his previous feats or, even better, add to them. Others worried that he would tarnish the last impression he’d left as a player, an image time-capsuled with his picturesque jumper over Bryon Russell and the Jazz in the 1998 finals. Washington had been a failing franchise for years. Suddenly, Jordan breathed life and dollars into the organization. Nike, likewise, could count on a spike in sales through Jordan’s personal shoe and clothing line, Air Jordan. The brand alone represented about $300 million of the company’s annual sales.

  The Wizards trailed the Knicks by three points in his first game back in late 2001, with about 16 seconds remaining. Jordan rose, releasing a three-point shot from the right wing. He had tendinitis in his shooting hand. His knees were already bothering him from his hurried attempt to rush back into playing shape. The ball fell short, kissed iron, and gently careened into the hands of the Knicks’ Kurt Thomas. Jordan was mostly un-Jordan-like. He managed 19 points, but missed 14 of his 21 shots. “The biggest difference is I’m a little bit older than the last time I shot the ball,” Jordan said in a news conference after the game. “My game’s a little bit different, my teammates are a little bit different.”

  Kwame Brown was one of those new teammates. Originally, Brown had enjoyed being drafted by Jordan and handpicked by the best man to ever play the game. On one of those hot and humid Georgia days, Brunswick held Kwame Brown Day the July after he had been drafted. Brown traveled by motorcade to a parade at the city’s old city hall. Brad Brown, Brunswick’s mayor, had never felt short in his life until he handed Brown the city’s key and a proclamation. Slowly, Brown felt confident about this new step in his life. He had left behind the doubt he had expressed with Billy Donovan. In Brunswick, he could not escape his newfound celebrity. He wanted a place where he could be himself and not constantly be pestered for autographs, to pose for pictures, or to dispense advice. He thought he could evade some of the spotlight in Gainesville. But one night he engaged in a scuffle at a bar and injured his shooting hand.