Originally Posted by cqsallie
WTFCAM?!
This argument can rage forever, but the fact remains that players recruited straight from college (or high school) more easily fit into a team than do players who have been with other NBA teams for a number of years (especially an NBA team whose coach's system is tremendously dissimilar).
For the sake of argument, pretend that you're 30 years old and you have been working in sales for a communications company for the past nine years - straight out of college. For nine years, you've been doing everything that particular company's way. Not only have you been adequate, but you've become a super-salesman.
Your company either buys out, or is sold to, another company. Nothing is the same - your comfortable niche is gone, many of your co-workers are gone. The rules aren't quite the same; the sales quotas are raised; you have more super-salesmen to compete against with the inclusion of the merger company's high-rollers; you have a new sales manager that has a totally different outlook on your job.
You think of yourself as a professional, but for a while, you find it hard to adjust to the new methods, the additional competition, the new products, the new manager... :rolleyes