Box Score Beat

Jeremy Tyler: the 6’11″ David

Posted on 06. May, 2009 by Collin Orcutt in Grass Roots Basketball, NBA, Sports Journalism

The story of David and Goliath is a tired sports cliche. We’ve all read stories about small teams doing big things. If you’re a sports journalist, you’ve probably written one. Call the team or player an underdog, a Cinderella, a David — whatever. Point is, the biblical story of overachieving lends itself to sports’ Team A versus Team B structure.

Malcolm Gladwell’s excellent piece in the latest issue of The New Yorker, “How David Beats Goliath,” is the exception. Gladwell’s story explores the idea of what makes a successful David. In it, he gives a few different examples of winning Davids, the main being a 12-year-old girls’ basketball team from Redwood City, Calif., their first-time coach, and his strategy of using a continuous full court press to mask their lack of “basketball” skills.

The idea of the full court press helps Gladwell reach an interesting conclusion: Davids beat Goliath when they shift the rules of the fight away from the norm.

And it happened as the Philistine arose and was drawing near David that David hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine,” the Bible says. “And he reached his hand into the pouch and took from there a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead.” The second sentence—the slingshot part—is what made David famous. But the first sentence matters just as much. David broke the rhythm of the encounter. He speeded it up.

Changes. Playing outside of the assumed boundaries. The Redwood City team’s press would frustrate more skilled opponents to the point that they got angry, claiming the practice was unfair. Of course, there is no rule against pressing all the time, it’s just not how most teams play.

That’s when it dawned on me. Jeremy Tyler has all the makings of a David. The 6’11″ 17-year-old from San Diego recently announced his decision to forgeo his senior year of high school to play in Europe. There, he will play professionally for two years before being eligible to enter the NBA, bettering himself against grown men. There’s no rule against making that choice, he’s just the first to do so.

His decision was cause for a variety of reactions. Many have said it’s wrong for a high school junior to place academics second to pursuing their athletic dreams. According to Gladwell, that’s exactly the reaction most people have to Davids:

But their advantage is that [Davids] will do what is ‘socially horrifying’ — they will challenge the conventions about how battles are supposed to be fought.

And later:

The price that the outsider [David] pays for being so heedless of custom is, of course, the disapproval of the insider.

Tyler’s choice isn’t quite socially horrifying, but it certainly is challenging the convention, and it has been met with some disapproval.

Following this model, if Tyler is David, first instinct is to name the NBA Goliath. The NBA is the giant that instituted the rule requiring US players to be 19 and a year out of high school before becoming draft eligible.

For the athlete, the rule is unfair at best. Education-wise there is little difference between one semester in college (if they’re turning pro after a year, second semester grades don’t matter) and no semester. All the rule accomplishes is making players wait to make the money their skill has potentially earned them while increasing their chance of an injury.

But for the league, the rule (obviously) makes perfect sense. It’s a marketing boon. It gives players a year of mainstream exposure in college that acts as marketing for the league. It also improves the on court product the league will eventually obtain. As Greg Couch wrote for Fanhouse a few weeks ago:

… Stern’s real reason for the rule was that NBA teams didn’t want to fork over millions to young players who weren’t ready. Teams can’t help themselves but to draft high school jumpers for some reason. With the rule, players develop on someone else’s dime.

In actuality, Tyler’s Goliath is the conglomerate of the NBA’s age restriction rule and the education model that assumes young players should go from high school t0 college to testing the NBA waters. It can’t be reduced to just one or the other, as the college to NBA system has been in place and unquestioned for many years. Again, to quote Gladwell:

Goliath does not simply dwarf David. He brings the full force of social convention against him; he has contempt for David.

…

But let’s remember who made that rule: Goliath. And let’s remember why Goliath made that rule: when the world has to play on Goliath’s terms, Goliath wins.

Tyler is confronting a huge trend. Last year’s David, Brandon Jennings, started the process by choosing to spend a year in Europe instead of college. Tyler is going well beyond that. He’s not just skipping the college rung on the ladder, he’s attempting to take an adjacent elevator. And while the NBA doesn’t care where Tyler bides his time before entering the league, there’s no doubt that it created the boundaries Tyler’s acting within. The boundaries are there for the sole purpose helping the league as a business. More experienced players mean a better product. Better products are more marketable.

There is one divergence in the Jeremy Tyler as David model, though. Tyler doesn’t want to slay Goliath, he wants to work for him. The NBA doesn’t need defeating. What needs to be overcome are the limited avenues that can get players there. On The Plank, a blog run by The New Republic, Jason Zengerle wrote that while Tyler may not be the David that slings the final stone in defeat of the NBA’s system, he could be the one who makes the first chink in the armor:

Will Tyler’s move trigger a paradigm shift, in which it becomes routine for the very best schoolboy players in the States to drop out of high school and play in Europe before going to the NBA? And if [other] players do that, is it possible that one day, the quality of play–not to mention pay–will be high enough in Europe that some of them might just stay there rather than come back to play in the NBA?

Zengerle’s point is an interesting one. If enough players follow Tyler’s path, Goliath the NBA will become markedly less powerful, perhaps to the point where they would be the David fighting the new norm of players heading straight to the money overseas.

Regardless of your stance on Tyler’s decision, it’s hard not to root for his success. He is taking a huge risk (with a huge pay-off, sure). Although some are opposed to his decision, new ways often are met with resistance. Complacency is easier, but complacency inevitably favors Goliath.

Beside, pulling for Tyler just feels right. It’s hard not to root for the underdog.