Boys Among Men

by Jonathan Abrams

  After half his life spent as an NBA player, Jermaine O’Neal retired from the league after the 2013–2014 season as a member of the Golden State Warriors. His brittle knees no longer allowed him to run up and down the court as he had as a spry youth. Toward the end of his career, he plopped an ice machine in the middle of his living room. He sat sullenly next to the machine for hours, with his long legs propped up, in search of relief from the constant pain.

  His post-basketball career is already in motion. As a member of the Warriors, O’Neal wisely made contacts in Silicon Valley, meeting the movers and shakers of the region. He believes his future was achieved because of the tests he endured early in his career in Portland and Indiana in maturing from a teenager into a man. O’Neal agreed with Bryant’s assessment. “We live in a country where [you] have the freedom to choose your occupation,” he said. “You have the right to choose an occupation to take care of yourself and your family and build a way of living. I’ve been hearing people point out the [failures], but there are a lot of failures in corporate America with guys that went to four-year schools, graduate school, and failed at whatever they’re doing. You got some of the brightest people in this world that did not attend college. So to me, it’s something that’s unfair. I think the biggest question is—and the focal point should be—what are the teams doing to do what Portland did, to understand what their investment is? You invest millions of dollars into these players. Why aren’t you doing a better job at positioning these players to be successful? Rather than just drafting them and saying, ‘Hey, I’m paying you, so you’ve got to get it.’ There’s no blueprint for the NBA. There’s nothing like this. The only way you succeed in this is when you live it and understand what it is. That’s why I’m against that. It’s just not right.”

  Perhaps most striking about the age-minimum debate is how extreme the viewpoints can be of players who have lived the transition from high school into the NBA. Bryant and O’Neal are on one side of the argument and can make sense. Then again, Tracy McGrady can offer another rational stance and viewpoint. “You had Jordan and those guys still in the game,” McGrady said of when he entered the NBA in 1997. “You had a lot of men. Now, it’s a bunch of boys in the league.” Back and knee pains dimmed McGrady’s bright career. He played in China in 2012 as a fan favorite before returning to the NBA and finishing his career as a backup role player with the San Antonio Spurs. He later pursued a short stint chasing his first love—baseball—as a pitcher in an independent league. McGrady seldom felt that he had missed much by skipping college. Yet, he felt left out every time March rolled around. The rest of the players would boast about how far their teams would travel in the NCAA tournament. McGrady remained quiet. “College basketball is a place to mature, to prepare you for life after college,” McGrady said. “You do a lot of maturing. You go through a maturation process from your freshman year to your sophomore year. It’s amazing how much you can grow in that span in college. When these guys go one year and come to the league, that’s still young. They’re nineteen and twenty years old and a lot of them just aren’t ready for it. I just think at the rate that they’re going now, the talent is being watered down and college is being watered down. Imagine if you had to go to college for two or three years. Imagine the talent that would be in college basketball. Just go a couple years back. If you look at that Kentucky team, all those guys Calipari put in the league—oh my gosh. College basketball would be awesome to watch.”

  The only thing all parties agree on is that no one is completely satisfied with the current rule—not the players it affects, not the NCAA, not the NBA. The debate will span the careers of Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett. The duo’s generation largely defined the NBA for nearly two decades, leading its resurgence in the post-Jordan years and helping the game grow and gain financial stability. The reasons for allowing that type of player directly into the NBA are many. The potential earning career of an NBA player is short. Why should others be able to profit from their talent while they themselves cannot? The success stories outweigh those who did not make it and players are not really developing by spending a couple of semesters at college. Adam Silver replaced David Stern as the NBA’s commissioner. Silver is well respected throughout the league, having been at Stern’s side for decades, a Duke graduate who grew up in New York as a Knicks fan. He has made tacking another year onto the age minimum—boosting the minimum from 19 years of age to 20—one of his key objectives. His arguments mirror Stern’s reasoning in originally implementing the age minimum. “I think that if the players had more of an opportunity to mature, both as people and in terms of their basketball skills, we would have a better league,” Silver said. “We would have a better draft because there would be more of an opportunity for our teams to see them playing against top competition and I know firsthand that those years, at that point in a young man’s life, make an enormous difference.”

  Like Stern, Silver said he was well aware of why players want to enter the NBA as young as possible. “We always shared the concern of this coded language of, ‘These young men need college,’ ” Silver said. “You never hear that coming from us. There’s a recognition always from the league [that] the college programs are far from perfect. They’re not necessarily safe harbors. Plenty of bad things have happened on college campuses as well and there are benefits, true benefits, truly from a league standpoint and for our teams, to getting these players younger. The fact is, their ultimate goal is to be the best possible basketball players and they have a relatively short window in their lives to ply their trade. There is an argument that getting them to a professional level at a younger age will ultimately be beneficial for them and the league. Where I come out on the benefits of moving from nineteen to twenty, it’s one of those issues where in my mind, on balance, I think it would be better.” Silver will likely have the support of many of the league’s owners when he argues his stance. “I can’t speculate on what will happen in the future, but I’m a believer that the old straight out of [high school] and the current one-and-done [rule] creates a horrible culture of exploitation of teenage basketball players,” Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, wrote in an email. “Too many are sold a dream of NBA riches. The longer a student-athlete stays in school, the better for the NBA. They have better skills, are more mature, have better life skills, and in some cases bring an established brand. I would love to see kids have to stay in school four years or play in the D-League, where we can focus on supporting their needs without worrying about wins and losses.” The age minimum can only be altered through an amendment to the current collective bargaining agreement, which the sides agreed to in December 2011. The 10-year agreement contains opt-out clauses that can be employed by both sides after six years. Silver will find opposition from the players union in raising the age minimum. Michele A. Roberts replaced the deposed Billy Hunter as the union’s head. In an interview with Sports Illustrated, she left no doubt on where she stood on the issue. “I’m adamantly opposed to [raising the age minimum],” she said. “I’ve been practicing law for thirty years. One of the beauties of being in that job is that I can practice until I lose my mind or die. That is not the case with athletes. You have a limited life to make money as a basketball player. Anything that limits those opportunities is distressing to me. I view [the age minimum] as just another device that serves to limit a player’s ability to make a living.”

  And round and round they go, with the career and the future of the next phenom swaying in the balance.

  They will certainly come around to replace this generation of NBA superstars. The careers of one of the NBA’s greatest classes of players, those who entered a man’s league directly from high school, are drawing to a close.

  Time caught them all. They had entered the NBA as young teenagers with nothing but bright futures ahead of them. Gravity eventually pulled their games back to earth. It became harder and harder to free themselves up for open looks at the basket. Kevin Garnett still howls, but his bite—
and shot—are not the same. Even LeBron James has spoken more often of late about his own athletic mortality.

  They are forever linked with the few who took a big leap and fell short. Those are the names lost beyond serving as footnotes to a debate that has long passed them by. Time claimed them as well, although in a different manner. Their dreams of stardom, fame, and money have mostly faded. But their lives continue, those of onetime prodigies like Korleone Young, Lenny Cooke, and Tony Key.

  24.

  The waiter stood head and shoulders above everyone else at the chain restaurant deep inside the Bible Belt. The 6-foot-11-inch Tony Key had his hair in dreads and still looked as if he could bring backboards to a glorious death, as he had done in high school through the brute force of his dunks. His shift had started a couple hours earlier at Rafferty’s in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It was a humid day in the summer of 2013, just a few months after LeBron James had captured a second consecutive championship with the Miami Heat. Key had watched the finals in passing. He once imagined himself playing in the NBA, making millions and crashing rims. Now, he had a few moments to spare before serving the next appetizer. Key had been at the job for about seven months, “which is actually surprising,” said Otis Key, his older brother by eight years. “Me and my mom were thinking about it. This is the longest job that he’s ever kept. But he gets unfocused, one thing leads to one bad decision and then another.”

  Otis Key tried talking to his younger brother when things started going awry. He argued until he felt the blood rushing to his head—the emotions boiling over. In nearby Russellville, Tony Key was a legend in 2000 when he guided his high school team to the state semifinals and shattered a backboard with a reverse alley-oop dunk in the process. College coaches frequented the high school to recruit Key. He had moldable potential, but few true basketball skills other than genetic gifts, his soft hands, and the ability to simply dunk on his shorter competition. Whenever his coach, Phillip Todd, tried to get Key to develop his game, to rebound and advance the ball, Key failed to listen. He regarded himself as just a big man and racing the ball up court was the work of a guard. He never allowed himself to know what it was like to push himself—to gain a second wind, to dig deeper and reach another level. Complacency settled in and the problems began.

  Basketball coursed through the family. The sport had only become an option for Tony Key until he outgrew other ones. He had quit his middle school basketball team, preferring to play football and baseball. As Key made his run through the playoffs, Otis Key traveled the world as a member of the Harlem Globetrotters. Another brother, Thaddaeus Key, soon departed to play at Kentucky Wesleyan. Brenda Key, their mother, had to find work after splitting with her husband. The job kept her away most evenings. New people started popping up, Brenda Key noticed. Some tried to keep her away from her own son. The school informed Tony Key that he needed to make up half a credit in summer school in order to be eligible for his senior year. From afar, Otis Key pleaded with him over the phone. “Do the work,” he said. “Tony, if you do this, you’ll be able to accomplish anything you want to in life. If you don’t, you’ll fail at everything. Yes, you have a choice to do it or not, but it shows that you want to do something more. If you don’t, you’re just content with the status quo. You’re content with just getting by.”

  Tony Key admitted his hardheadedness back then. He did not want to do the schoolwork. He did not want to listen to advice from his brother. His brother had forged his path. He wanted to make his own. “I know what I’m doing,” Tony Key would constantly reply to the advice of his family. “I know what I’m doing.”

  He decided against putting the work in and having to either attend summer school or to repeat a grade. Instead, out of the blue and on the advice of a coach he had met over the summer, Key transferred first to a prep school and then to a high school all the way out in California, Compton Centennial. There, he measured himself against some of the top competition—players headed to the pros, like Tyson Chandler—and believed he was of the same caliber. In 14 games, he averaged team highs in points (23 per game) and rebounds (11). The federation that oversaw high schools in the area soon deemed Key ineligible. He said he had moved in with an aunt, although school officials never notified the federation to clear the transfer. That mattered little anyway. Key never had an aunt in California. He lived with the family of one of his teammates. Compton Centennial forfeited 11 of its victories.

  College, if it had ever been an option, became even less of a viable one now. Tony Key estimated he attended about two classes in California. He spent his time hanging out and chain-smoking. An acquaintance introduced Key to Ron Delpit, an agent. Delpit had once been big in the game, a mover and shaker who had worked with Julius Erving. He was attempting a comeback and Tony Key said Delpit convinced him to sign with his agency and turn professional. “The way they explained it was, without them, I couldn’t declare for the draft,” Key recalled. “They said, ‘You’re gonna need an agent to declare for the draft, that’s why you should sign with us, go ahead and get the ball rolling.’ ” Key left Los Angeles to work out in Las Vegas. For a kid from a small city in Kentucky, Los Angeles had been eye-opening. Las Vegas overloaded the senses. He partied more than he prepared for the draft. He bought a Cadillac. He had change in his pocket. He went on a shopping spree. He thought that it was something, just the beginning road to bigger, better, brighter things. He said he now realizes how little he had and how much more he could have worked.

  Otis Key debated asking the Globetrotters if he could sit out that summer’s tour, so he could take his younger brother in hand. He had played against professionals and knew his brother was still more boy than man. He was confident that he could get his brother focused and in shape, so that a team would at least take a flier on him. Once Tony Key got his foot in the door, he would see how hard he had to work and dedicate himself, Otis Key believed. He decided against it. He had a son and wanted to establish his own professional career. It is a decision he still thinks about today, wondering, Maybe I should have made that sacrifice, and things would have turned out differently.

  At the 2001 draft, Tony Key knew the Nuggets had expressed interest in him. They bypassed him in the second round and instead took Ousmane Cisse, another high schooler whose NBA career never panned out. Well, he didn’t get drafted, but there are training camps, Otis Key thought. It’s hard to pass up size and ability. Instead, with major colleges no longer an option, Key ended up back in California at Los Angeles City College, a two-year school. He was kicked off the team and left for another small school, this one in Indiana. He asked for a second chance at Los Angeles City College and the coach relented. Tony Key seemed to finally be back on track when tragedy struck. His two sisters, Hanna and Jessica Key, were murdered in late 2002 by Hanna’s boyfriend. The sisters had also both excelled in basketball at Russellville. The deaths devastated Tony Key. He was close to both, especially Hanna. “Don’t tell me what you are going to do,” she would tell him. “Show me.”

  “It seemed like for a while after that he was sort of lost,” Brenda Key said. The family will forever grieve, she added. Brenda Key was still not sure if Tony Key had been able to face visiting their gravesites.

  Key attended a small university in West Virginia before playing professionally in places like Mexico, Canada, and small domestic minor leagues. “He was determined to do it his way,” Otis Key said. “He didn’t want to come and ask for advice or seek out advice other than what people were telling him. When he was used and tossed to the side, it made him angry and led to more bad decisions.”

  LeBron James still stars in the NBA. Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett maintain, showing glimpses of their old selves through cemented legacies. Many others have secured their future while earning millions of dollars.

  Meanwhile, Key returned to his high school nearly 15 years later, the same one in Russellville where he had once dazzled, and tried fast-tracking his way to stardom. Otis Key had left the Globetrotters to tr
y out coaching. He headed the semiprofessional Bowling Green Hornets of the Central Basketball Association and added his younger brother to the roster. The league was mostly composed of former college players from the region. The players performed before a few hundred people for a couple of hundred dollars a game. On most nights, Otis Key could be seen alternately delivering praise and scolding Tony Key.

  It could be his last chance, Otis Key said. Tony Key was 31 with two teenage daughters. He was still spry enough to make a living from the game—at least for a couple more years. All he needed was to be serious and someone, somewhere would give him a chance. Still, it remained difficult for Tony Key to accept the constant harangues from Otis.

  “Tony, you’re young enough where you legitimately have a shot left,” Otis Key said. “You have two, possibly three, really good years left. If you take this seriously, you can turn this into something bigger. You have way more ability than I ever did. The only thing that I had was the wisdom to listen to people, to make good decisions, and then the discipline to put the work in. You’re old enough now where you’ve made enough mistakes. You know which path is the right path and the steps you need to do. You’ve had enough experiences, good and bad, that you know if you put in the work, what’s going to come.”