Griffin Decision to Attend College a Complex One

Deliver This: Kevin Garnett takes it to the hole. (photo courtesyESPN.com)

Allow me to present a hypothetical situation: Your senior year of high school is winding down and someone offers you the option to be in the national spotlight while making a couple million dollars. OrŠ you could go to college. Even as an Obie who thoroughly enjoys learning, I have to say the materialistic trends in our society make it increasingly more tempting to choose the money. Hell, what am I talking about, I would have picked the money any day if I had been offered.

Well, Eddie Griffin didn't. He chose going to Seton Hall University over going straight into the NBA. Griffin is a college first-year player in every sense. He's not polished. He's not a pro, but he could have been. He nearly took the gamble that would have likely made him a first-round pick and a millionaire, but what you can see on the practice courts of Seton Hall shows that he probably wouldn't have been ready for a career as a pro player.

Griffin is not physically strong enough yet to avoid getting his shot blocked, or at least altered, by 6-11 teammate Samuel Dalembert. He has been grounded from the moment he stepped on campus. His teammates don't see a potential pro on the court. They see a first-year trying to earn playing time. Griffin is razzed like everyone else, praised when he does well and is spent when Head Coach Tommy Amaker gets the team running full court.

"I'm glad I'm here," said Griffin in an interview with ESPN.com. "I know playing against Sam, he's probably going to be an NBA player, and he's not that physically stronger than me. But he's so long and tough for me to get my shot off. Imagine if I went to the next level?"

I can imagine. He probably would have suffered a fate similar to that which befell Jermaine O'Neal (averaging 12.4 minutes and 3.9 points in 70 games) and Jonathan Bender (averaging 5.4 minutes and 2.7 points in 24 games) over the course of their first seasons in the NBA.

Griffin, like every other top-five prep player over the past three years, was thought to be considering a jump to the NBA right out of high school. It has become a right of passage for the top five players each spring. Like Griffin, Alabama's Gerald Wallace and Michigan State's Zach Randolph made the decision to try college first.

"Everyone expects you to enter the draft if you're top five," Griffin said. "All the NBA scouts are looking for the next Kevin Garnett. There's a lot of pressure on all of us. I went through it."

Everyone is looking for the next Garnett, and why not? Garnett averaged 10.4 points a game in his first season and is continually getting better. This past season he averaged 22.9 points a game. With such an explosive career without any college ball, who would want to go to college? Not only is everyone looking for the next Garnett, everyone wants to be the next Garnett (who now has a $126 million contract and an Olympic gold medal).

At least Griffin didn't get it in his head that he was some NBA-worthy athlete stuck in college for a little while. He was humble and had no lack of respect for the opponents he would be facing. During the first few weeks of school, Griffin sought out junior guard Darius Lane, asking him questions about the Big East.

"Deep down inside, Eddie knew he wasn't ready for the league," said teammate Marcus Toney-El in the same ESPN.com interview. "Ed knew that he had to take care of the little things more. Coming to Seton Hall is a good situation for him. It will only help him."

"There's a lot of pressure on all of us. I went through it. I would have had the money, but I want to play. I would have been miserable on the bench. I'm enjoying this so far, " Griffin said. Griffin is in the place where he can make mistakes that he wouldn't be able to in the NBA when people are paying him to perform.

Well, kudos to Griffin for not going straight to the NBA and a life of money. He opted for a good education instead. Or did he? Actually, he probably didn't opt for the good education. There is the possibility that he will leave after just one year and it is highly unlikely that he will stay for all four years and graduate.

He's not hurting anyone there, he's just playing ball. But there are the people who might have gotten in or might have gotten financial aid or more playing time if he didn't jump into the scene as the big shot. Regardless of how humble he may be, he is still taking the places of those who aren't so talented.

What is really disappointing is those players in junior high and lower schools who see the Garnetts and the Griffins ­ that is if it he does indeed skip out on the diploma ­ who stake their future on playing basketball and not on education. The unfortunate ones are those kids who place all their time and interest in developing their game on the courts and skipping out on their studies.

Griffin went to college instead of the NBA but for the wrong reasons. He is trivializing the college arena as a place to simply hone his skills before he moves to bigger and better worlds. I wonder if he even notices that the people around him are spending lots of time earnestly trying to learn in addition to playing basketball.