01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, June 29, 2005

The first player taken just finished his sophomore year at Utah, a Croatian who grew up in Australia.

The second player taken just finished his freshman year at North Carolina.

The fourth player taken just finished two years at Wake Forest.

The sixth player just finished high school in Seattle.

The 10th player just finished high school in New Jersey, doesn't turn 18 until October.

In fact, in the first 15 picks last night in the NBA Draft, there was only one player taken who spent four years in college.

Remember when the NBA Draft was full of familiar names, many of which had seemingly grown up on ESPN? Remember when the NBA Draft was a reward for college careers, the reward at the end of the journey?

No more.

Now it's all about upside.

That's the new euphemism for potential, the word that's always rolling off the tongues of NBA scouts like smooth syrup, the word that now defines the NBA Draft. Upside.

Or do you really know who Andrew Bynum is?

How about Fran Vazquez?

I thought not.

Not to worry, though. No one knows who they are. Not really. A lot of NBA scouts included. But ever since Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant made the jump from high school to superstardom, ever since T-Mac and Jermaine O'Neal went from anonymity to NBA bling-bling, no team wants to miss out on the next superstar. No one wants to miss out on the next wunderkind while they're drafting some college kid with limited upside, some kid they've spent the last four years watching play in college who never seemed to get any better, a victim of a college game that's too much about team and not enough about individual development.

Let's not kid ourselves here. Many NBA people have a certain disdain for college basketball, view it as watered down, not as good as it used to be, an inexact barometer of future NBA success. Or if a kid was truly good what's he doing still playing college basketball?

This is one of the legacies of so many kids jumping to the NBA the last few years, this feeling that the kids who are ready to be in the league are the ones going, leaving college basketball with all the wannabes, all the undersized power forwards, all the guys just a little flawed, too slow, too small, too something. This feeling that if you're a junior in college you're already suspect. This feeling that what you did in college is essentially irrelevant, that the college game and the pro game are apples and oranges.

PC star Ryan Gomes is a textbook example of this. The negative that's been hanging over him for for two seasons now is the sense that he is the classic "tweener," caught between being a small forward and a power forward. That's essentially been the only real knock on Gomes, the one thing he couldn't overcome no matter how well he played, how many postseason awards he won.

Right or wrong, this is the new pervading philosophy.

Take last night, for example.

Hakim Warrick, the Big East player of the year and a first team All-American, went 19th. Charlie Villanueva, the UConn sophomore who was more of a tease in his first two years than anything else, went seventh. Chris Taft, the Pitt sophomore who was a much more effective player than Villanueva was in the Big East for the last two years doesn't go in the first round. And Gomes, one of the elite college players in the country the last two years, the leading scorer in the history of Providence College, doesn't either.

Any of this make any sense?

Once upon a time it didn't, back when the overriding question was "Can he play?" That was the prerequisite, the given. You got picked by the pros on what you did in college.

No more.

Now you hear that the young Russian kid Yaroslav Korolev is a young Toni Kukoc. You hear that Bynum can one day be a legitmiate NBA center. You hear about tomorrow, about upside and promises. You hear about what can happen two or three years down the road. You hear about the future.

That's what this is about.

How players are projected to be in the NBA, not what they did in college.

Where the key word is upside.