Originally Posted by
ChillinDuke
I'm not going to get majorly involved in this discussion between you fine folks. But I will cite one reason that would, it seem, amount to evidence of "change": media and social media.
12 years ago was nowhere like it was today in regards to media, social media, and the ability to share and find information. You couldn't even join Facebook in 2005 unless you had a recognized, university-sanctioned (.edu) email account. I would know, because I matriculated at Duke that year. Youtube was a relative unknown and wasn't even owned by Google at that time. And the first iPhone hadn't even come out. I don't know for certain, but I can only imagine it was much, much harder to gain access to these 16-year old kids as they rose up the basketball ranks.
I would hazard a guess that professional basketball franchises would rely on regional talent evaluators to get localized scoops on kids in certain areas in order to try to glean as much information as they could before making a reasoned judgment call (that probably amounted to little more than an educated guess) before drafting a kid out of high school. Such a construct would require a lot of legwork, connections, timing, interviews, etc. Where "etc" in this example means money.
In 2017, it's dramatically easier to get to know a potential high school draft pick. They are more available, you are more available, data is more available - Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Wikipedia, iPhones, FaceTime, 4K videos via text message, the list goes on and on. I just can't imagine that the math (money-wise as well as logistics-wise) hasn't changed immensely in the past 12 years. And that's not even considering the fact that the NBA is more flush with cash than it has ever been.
So, while I'm not sure why Adam Silver would say what he said, and I'm not sure what exactly would change his (or NBA owners') view on the matter, I do believe that there has been an unquestionable shift in availability of data in the past decade+. That much seems certain, at least to me.
- Chillin