NBA Veterans: Is It the Years or the Mileage?

One of the most memorable lines in movie history comes from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Marion, says to Indiana Jones, "You're not the man I knew ten years ago."

Indy replies, "It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."

In 1995, Kevin Garnett became the first high school senior in 20 years to bypass college and jump directly to the NBA. It hadn't happened since 1975, when Darryl Dawkins and Bill Willoughby were drafted by the 76ers and Hawks, respectively.

There were a few players, like Shawn Kemp and Lloyd Daniels, who had enrolled in college but never played collegiate basketball before being drafted, but Garnett was the first since '75 to make the immediate jump.

Garnett's currently in his 12th season in the NBA and has shown very little drop-off in how effective he is on the basketball court. Even though his averages in points and rebounds are a little off from last season, that can be attributed more to the talent that now surrounds him in Boston more so than the fact that he's a year older.

A year after Garnett's historical leap, Kobe Bryant and Jermaine O'Neal followed him to the NBA. Although O'Neal's career has been sidetracked the last two seasons because of various injuries, it's safe to say that Bryant is still in the prime of his career.

While Garnett won the MVP award for the 2003-2004 season, both he and Bryant are considered leading candidates to win the award this season since both have led their teams to the best record in their respective conferences up to this point in the season.

It will be interesting to see, in the next couple of years, if it's the years or the mileage that determines when those NBA players who made the jump straight from high school start to show a dramatic decrease in production.

Tim Duncan, for example, played four years at Wake Forest before entering the NBA. Even though he's been in the NBA for two fewer years than Garnett and one fewer year than Bryant, he's a month older than Garnett and more than two years older than Bryant.

Has Duncan's production decreased at all? I don't think so, considering he won his fourth championship ring this past season and finished fourth in the MVP voting.

To date, Garnett has played 177 more regular season games in his career than Duncan has but Duncan has played in 91 more playoff games than Garnett.

Since both men are very similar in size and both are in optimum shape, the two will serve as the perfect comparison for which is more telling, the years or the mileage.

Hakeem Olajuwon, although heavier, was similar in size to both Garnett and Duncan. He came into the NBA in 1984 at the age of 22. He left the University of Houston after his junior season but he redshirted his freshman year so he'd been there for four years.

Olajuwon played 18 seasons in the NBA, retiring at the age of 39. If you take a close look at Olajuwon's career numbers, you'll notice the steep drop-off in his numbers that occurred from the 1996-1997 to the 1997-1998 season. He missed 35 games due to injury. Even though he was playing only two fewer minutes per game that season, his averages in rebounding stayed the same but his points per game went from 23 to 16.

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