Texas guard Kevin Durant (35) dunks against Oklahoma State during the first quarter of their semifinal basketball game at the Big 12 Conference Tournament in Oklahoma City, Saturday, March 10, 2007. Durant scored 26.
NBA's Age Minimum Puts Texas Freshman in College Spotlight
By Sally Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 15, 2007; A01
AUSTIN -- Kevin Durant makes a dual impression on the basketball court. The first impression is one of sheer talent -- here is the bounding, net-ripping, honest-to-God real thing, unmistakably a potential great. The second impression is one of youth. Durant, a University of Texas freshman from Suitland, only turned 18 in September and doesn't even have his driver's license. He's so young he has only had time to get one tattoo. It's over his heart, and it's his mother's name.
The juxtaposition of weedy youngness and capacious talent in a 6-foot-9 frame has made Durant at once the most celebrated and argued-over college player in the country. Previously, a savant like Durant would have already gone to the NBA. Instead, he has become a test case of the league's controversial new age minimum.
With the initiation this season of a league policy restricting entry to players 19 or older and a year removed from high school, Durant was forced to delay the call of professionalism and enroll at Texas, where he has discovered something interesting: He likes being an undergraduate.
"I mean, in a couple more years I'll be grown up," he says, "but right now I'm glad I'm a kid and I'm going through this college thing, and I don't have to deal with those pressures or anything like that."
For at least one paradisiacal spring, Durant will test himself against his peers in the NCAA tournament, which begins on Thursday, instead of against his elders in the pros. The age limit was intended get the NBA out of the child-rearing business, to see that prodigies aren't ruined psychologically by too-early entry to a league in which "playing" entails a grind of 82 games, 41 of them on the road. Although some of the league's greatest young stars successfully leapt straight from high school -- Cleveland's LeBron James was named rookie of the year in 2004 -- there are countless anonymous failures. The league has found that professionalism doesn't necessarily accelerate adolescent growth, but can retard it. The hope is that an age restriction will make for more skilled and mature players.
Texas forward Kevin Durant (35) drives the ball around Kansas center Sasha Kaun (24) in the first half at the Big 12 Conference championship basketball game in Oklahoma City, Sunday, March 11, 2007.
The NBA's motive isn't altruistic: While Durant and a handful of other precocious freshmen such as center Greg Oden of Ohio State play out their supercharged collegiate season, NBA teams have had a chance to judge their abilities. Drafting them will be less of a guessing game, and lessen the chances of wasting a top pick on a spectacular failure.
"I think it's working," NBA Commissioner David Stern says. "I'm not one of our scouts but I would gather that by the end of the NCAAs our teams will have seen some extraordinary young men play against accelerated talent and be able to make good judgments. And that the youngsters will have grown in confidence both on and off court, and acquired skills that will make them better able to do their jobs."
But critics charge that while the rule might be good for the NBA, it has unpalatable consequences at the collegiate level. Texas Tech Coach Bobby Knight has flatly called it one of the "worst" rules he has ever seen, arguing that it puts coaches in the position of recruiting players they know won't be in school for more than a year, and that NBA aspirants have small incentive to go to class, especially in the spring semester.
Although Durant claims he is undecided whether to leave school this spring, the widely held assumption is that he will be a "one-and-done" collegian, because with a single declaration he can command a multimillion-dollar NBA contract and even larger shoe endorsement deal. According to Knight, the presence of such players warps the mission of universities, which is to provide higher education, not a lily pad to the pros. "That, I think, has a tremendous effect on the integrity of college sports," Knight said earlier this season.
But supporters of the rule believe rerouting players to college for at least one year is beneficial. NCAA President Myles Brand says that while it's not perfect, it's preferable to no restriction. He argues that forcing high schoolers to focus on admission to college instead of the NBA will have a trickle-down effect and reemphasize academics at the prep level. "You can't get in unless you prepare," he says, "So I think this will lead many more young men to prepare."
Brand also believes the attention devoted to Durant is misplaced. The rule is really aimed at players who won't make it to the pros. "I'm looking at it quite differently, I'm looking at it from the points of view of the vast majority of those who play Division I basketball, who won't ever go to the NBA," Brand says. "Hundreds, maybe thousands, would be better off preparing for college."
It's too early to say who is right, or to calculate what the real effects of the age limit will be. But there is one person for whom the rule seems to be an unqualified success: Durant. Instead of languishing on an NBA bench, the college audience has watched as he has steadily bloomed and is a candidate to be the first freshman ever named NCAA player of the year. He is a shooter of breathtaking suppleness, a slasher with tomahawking power and a defender with a formidable 7-4 wingspan. His averages of 25.6 points and 11.3 rebounds per game are mere suggestions of what he's capable. Ten performances of 30-plus points per game and are probably truer gauges.
"He's just getting started," says Texas Coach Rick Barnes. "When you look at him you say, 'My gosh, does he know what he's got here?' "
And the answer? "Not yet."
Durant is so obviously childlike that it's hard to view even a temporary stop in college as anything but good for him. At the free throw line, when he tilts his chin up to the basket, the gym lights shine on wide eyes in a narrow, baby face that a peach fuzz mustache fails to add years to. He is clearly comfortable at Texas, where he lives in an undergraduate dormitory, Jester Center, in the center of campus. He rides a bus across the sun-dappled and oak-studded college grounds to classes in which he carried a 3.5 grade point average his first semester. He's a familiar figure slouching across campus in a hoodie and billowing sweat pants, his size 18 sneakers slapping the pavement like clown spats.
Kansas forward Julian Wright (30) reaches to block Texas forward Kevin Durant (35) as he advances to the goal in the first half at the Big 12 Conference championship basketball game in Oklahoma City, Sunday, March 11, 2007.
His interests remain strictly undergraduate: he doesn't have a girlfriend, and when he's not in practice or study hall, he engages in marathon sessions of the video game "The Godfather" with a fellow freshman, point guard D.J. Augustin. (Durant made capo, before his machine froze.) He has only one other current passion: basketball in any form. He watches every brand played on campus, from women's games to intramurals, always visible in the bleachers.
For the moment, what's clear is that Durant is still playing for the sake of play. "That's all I want to do," he says. "Just play ball. Go to school, play ball. I try not to worry about the other stuff. Even though it's hard not to."
Durant has spent much of his first few months at Texas adjusting to being away from home, and from his mother, Wanda Pratt, who raised him alone and whom he still calls "Mommy" when he needs comforting. "Like most kids, he doesn't know how to take care of himself yet," Barnes says. "He's still the kind of kid that you got to call him to wake him up." The first thing Durant had to learn, he admits, was that "nobody was going to baby me anymore."
He arrived with a waif-like physique of less than 200 pounds, and drives the Texas coaching staff crazy by forgetting to eat. He put on 20 pounds of muscle with an intensive weight-training program, and repeated visits to Wendy's and Popeyes. But he tends to lose weight after every practice, and strength coach Todd Wright chases him around trying to make him bite into apples. "He can eat anything he wants and it's not going anywhere," sophomore guard A.J. Abrams says.
As far as Abrams can tell, mostly Durant eats Gummy Worms. "He's got a box at every study hall."
It is not a lock that Durant will leave school for the NBA. For one thing, Wanda and Wayne Pratt, Kevin's father who reconciled with Wanda five years ago, will have something to say on the subject. Durant's parents have stated that after the season, they will sit down with the Texas coaching staff and weigh the decision. Among the factors they will consider: If this is what one year of college can do for Durant, what would another? Is the risk of injury too great to stay in school? Or does he need another 20 pounds to be truly ready? Is it worth it to come out, only to be drafted by one of the worst teams in the league, with pressure to reverse the fortunes of a franchise and put spectators in the seats?
"Everyone thinks it's a foregone conclusion that he will leave, but because of them, it's not," Barnes says. "One thing I can tell you is this: They have his best interest at heart and they always have."
Ultimately, whether Durant is physically capable of playing pro ball may not be the real question. It's whether he is ready emotionally. For instance, he is reluctant to go to the NBA if it means living alone. "I don't think I'm grown at all," he says. "I know that without my parents, some things I can't do on my own. For example, if I would go to the NBA right now I wouldn't be able to live by myself."
Leapfrogging to the pros may seem like a fast route to self-assured adulthood, but in fact, it can be just a shortcut to massive insecurity and unhappiness. Durant is, for the moment, still a boy, a very large one, but a boy nonetheless. For the moment, he is happy right where he is, playing for the sake of play.
"Whenever I'm not smiling, something is wrong," he says.
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