'Shames on You' Gets Launched

Everyone check out www.s39online.com, an online sports and entertainment magazine in the mold of Maxim, as my column, 'Shames on You: Where Sports Meets Cynicism' debuts today. Here's my latest article, entitled, "Do You Want Fries With That?"

Shame(s) on You, personal advisers and family friends of potential NBA players.

It was your advice and counsel that flooded the NBA draft earlier this week with prepubescent high school kids who didn't even get drafted! Let me repeat that in case you didnt' hear me the first time. THEY DIDN'T EVEN GET DRAFTED!

It's not like they got taken late in the first round. It's not like they fell to the second round. THEY WEREN'T EVEN DRAFTED. Some of them probably weren't even on some team's draft boards. Weren't even being considered. Now, they'll be lucky to even get invited to training camp. Good going. Way to ruin the rest of their lives, you know nothing know it alls, with worse connections than my cell phone. Your actions are shameful, just absolutely shameful.

I think that you, the guy who recommended to President Bush that we go to war with Iraq, and the guy at Sony Pictures who thought that Gigli was a good idea, should all be locked in a room, so that we can throw away the key and be done with you ass clowns.

But chances are that's never going to happen. Come next year you'll be up to your old tricks again, misinforming somebody else, projecting them higher than they realistically have a shot of going. But why stop there? I'm sure the year after that you'll do it again. And the year after that. And the year after that. And for what? For your measly 5%? So that you can get yourself a free escalade?

You should be ashamed of yourself. You were supposed to have their best interests in mind. Not your own. Now you've lost your meal ticket. Now it's back to living off of your parents. And the worst part is that it didn't have to be this way. After all, this was supposed to be a free year.

With the new collective bargaining agreement taking effective on July 1st, incoming players will now have to be 19 years old before they can be drafted. That means that next year's draft will be incredibly thin since there won't be 10-20 high schoolers flooding it again. So, if you were projected to be a last first round pick or even a second rounder there was absolutely no reason to come out this year. You had a free pass. You should have stayed in school for another year, banged the cheerleading squad, polished your game, improved your draft status, and then come out as a lottery pick next year.

Case in point, Kentucky freshman forward, Randolph Morris, who averaged 9 points per game last year. He could have gone back to Tubby Smith in Lexington, been on a very good Wildcats team, with a chance to win it all and then come out next year. (I say chance to win it all because every year that Kentucky wins it all, [1996 and 2000 for example] the Yankees win the World Series and with the way they're playing I don't see that happening, which means no national championship for Kentucky). Nonetheless, Morris could have been on a Final Four team and been a top ten pick next year.

Now, he's got nothing going for him unless he can cash in on his new found fame and fortune as a cautionary tale and go on a public speaking tour to tell kids to stay in school. Otherwise it's burger flipping time.

And while I enjoy a burger as much as the next guy, I prefer to have mine flipped by high school dropouts, immigrants, and senior citizens and not by the Randolph Morris' of the world. So, to all you wanna be sports agents out there, the next time someone tears it up in the McDonald's All Star Classic and asks you if they should come out early, please do us all a favor, and say, "son, I think you should stay in school. That way you can dish out assists and not McFlurry's. Clean the glass and not the floor. Fill the basket and not some 32 oz. cup."

Until then, Shame(s) on You.