I can’t get anywhere near the level of excitement I have for the NFL draft when it comes to the NBA draft. Wednesday’s 2025 NBA draft did not change my comparative positions between the two events.
The NFL draft is more compelling because there are draft picks as deep as rounds 3 or 4 who could make an immediate impact on the NFL franchise who drafts them (not always as grand a scale as the top picks, of course).
The NBA draft, with the exception of a handful of athletes, is something you’d have to watch and jot names in your notebook now because it will be a few years until you see them contribute notably to a team’s success.
Wednesday’s number one overall pick, however, looks like he is ready to go. The Dallas Mavericks drafted Duke’s Cooper Flagg, and he is surrounded by some talent and experience to help him successfully break into the association.
I’m especially interested in seeing how Flagg does because his age makes him an outlier. He’s a great athlete who isn’t a red shirt. I’ll get back to this in a minute.
Flagg, in chronological terms, could have very well been crossing his high school’s graduation platform earlier this month in Maine instead of being the first pick to meet and greet NBA Commissioner Adam Silver at the draft podium.
Folks, Flagg entered college early to play basketball at Duke University. Another Duke great, Mike Gminski (who also had a decent 14-year NBA career) entered the Duke program early, and he was part of the Duke Blue Devils’ NCAA men’s runner-up squad in his sophomore season.
Gminski should have graduated high school in 1977 instead of 1976. Furthermore, Gminski still would have been a 17-year-old high school graduate because his 18th birthday was in August 1959.
I have a very favorable personal bias toward kids who graduate high school at 17 years of age or younger.
Gminski was accepted to a prestigious academic institution when he was still 16, too. He was a kid who played in an environment where – until the trend began to slowly shift around 1979 and the early 1980s – most athletes played four years in their college sport of choice.
I’m rooting for Cooper Flagg, who was born in December 2006, enrolled at Duke before he turned 18. He will begin his first NBA season before completing his 19th orbit around the sun.
This is exciting to see, and even more impressive as schools around the country have changed curriculum that would have made kids like me, like Gminski, and like Flagg stay stuck in preschool an additional year. I have, for the record, no basketball talent, only a comparatively late birthday.
My parents would have gone nuts with me around the house another year, and preschools weren’t as abundant in the late 1960s. Additionally, even kindergarten was not compulsory in Ohio when I was old enough to attend, but my parents made doggone sure I went there anyway.
It is with exception when a kid born in Indiana after August 1 in the same year as his or her contemporaries is permitted to attend kindergarten. Elementary educators have noted to me through the years if they let kids enroll with my birth date, there would be significant changes required to the current kindergarten curriculum to suit this shift in allowable birthdates. I had classmates born as late as November in the same year.
O.K. I get it; I especially get the physical and emotional maturity part (regardless of my academic readiness) because I was probably a poster child for these changes.
I can see the poster in my mind’s eye right now.
“Are stellar standardized test scores worth YOUR 180-day headache? See ya’ NEXT year August birthday boy!” If you went to Catholic elementary school, this really hits close to home.
Present day IHSAA (and likely numerous other states) rules permit a student to participate in high school athletics as long as their 20th birthday lands after the state finals date(s) of their sport.
Even with the current shift of birthdate minimums to later in the year, parents redshirt into the next school year’s kindergarten class so the result is – especially among male athletes – a notable number of 19-year-olds playing high school sports.
Boys do have some inherent maturity issues, though, as I mentioned using myself as an example.
Ironically, some of these (legally) young men graduating high school have been moved further back in the recruiting queue thanks to the more fluent and very relaxed transfer portal governance.
Women’s sports are seeing it, too, but it’s not as pervasive as it is among men’s college football and college basketball recruits. There are, in fact, a greater number of early commitments these days in women’s college basketball, specifically.
In a world where coaches have fewer obstacles between them and a pool of “grown” prospects, it’s even more impressive to see what Cooper Flagg accomplished so far. It’s a pretty safe bet to keep watching this youngster.