The shocking youth of NBA Rookies – Deseret News

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Every year in the NBA Combine I am reminded that I get older and somehow get NBA player. No.

But even without diving in my own battles with mortality, it is important to point out how young these people are. It does not do justice to only say things like “18-year-old Duke-Star Cooper Flagg” or “a 19-year-old from Alabama”.

A Western Conference Team Executive told me this week: “I swear … You can actually see baby fat on your faces.”

Yes! I saw that too! I see that some of them have braces on their teeth. Some of them hardly grow their first facial hair and their voices when they talk.

These are the people where fans keep hopes and dreams. They are the people who receive contracts of several million dollars. They are the people who receive murder threats from players or angry fans or fans of opposing teams on social media.

They are literal teenagers and are joined into a world in which they are expected to do so much. It is expected that you behave like men who have had more life experience for years and that do things with grace and humility and act under immense pressure.

In the meantime, other teenagers may get their first job and their only responsibility to mow lawn or wait and take the garbage out before mom or dad ask that he is finished.

It is interesting because they also give the NBA teams a feeling for who they are as humans and what things are important for them as humans. If they had asked me at 6 p.m. who I was, I would have said that I love punk music and the most important thing to hang around with my friends, even if I have to sneak out of my house to do it. I was a real risk against reward.

I think part of the reason that it is so difficult to have a permanent NBA career is that the work of these early years with all the pressure, commitment and expectations requires tribute.

While we go through the next month of the evaluation of players who are hardly old enough to vote, it is important to remember how it was actually a teenager.

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Quote of the week

“In view of the team we have, this is the best route at this moment. And I am proud of our group that we did so much this year to evaluate our young players and know that we have to be able to make good decisions to add them, and we have given each other the best shot what they can do.” – Jazz General Manager Justin Zanik after the NBA design truck

From the archives

Additional points

• EGOR Demin hopes to have a long NBA career and then maybe withdraw to Utah (Deseret News)
• This year's NBA design truck is further proof that system is an error (Deseret News)
• Carlos Boozer competes with the Jazz front -Office -Office staff (Deseret News)
• Utah jazz you get the 5th choice in NBA Draft Lottery (Deseret News)

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