With each sucessive year, Division I college basketball players seem to value a college degree less and less. Sixteen of the first 20 athletes selected in this year’s NBA draft did not complete their college eligibility, and this trend is likely to continue.
The lack of incentives to graduate have precipitated this change. Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady and LeBron James have all managed to be very successful without ever going to college. Players like Bryant have such extreme natural gifts and such an a priori obsession with the game that the maturity gained from the college experience is almost unnecessary. But Garnett and company are freaks of nature, and the majority of drafted players are not overwhelmingly gifted. How can coaches and fans persuade these more grounded players to complete their education?
An obvious group of role models is the Duke players who graduated in the 1980s. Johnny Dawkins and Mike Gminski are the only members of this group with any substantial professional basketball success. Now that this group has had its bachelor degrees for more than 15 years, however, many of the players have had lasting, and in some ways more rewarding, success off the court.
• Billy King, a 1988 graduate, was a defensive master who played on two Duke Final Four squads. He won the Henry Iba Corinthian National Defensive Player of the Year award while earning a degree in political science.
In addition to hosting his own movie review show on WBNQ-Radio in Bloomington, Ill., King— without his name ever on an NBA roster—worked his way into a front office position for the Philadelphia 76ers. He currently is the president and general manager of the organization and has won numerous awards. These honors include the 2000 Sports Executive of the Year at the Rainbow Sports Awards, Street and Smith’s Business Journal’s “Forty under 40” list in 2001 and Sports Illustrated’s “101 Most Influential Minorities in Sports” 2003 list, a group that included “men and women that are reshaping the sports industry and opening doors through which others will follow.” Although King’s jump shot never was good enough to make NBA execs drool, he now says the life lessons he learned by staying in college allowed him to rise to his current position of power.
“The best four years of my life were spent at Duke,” King said on a recent trip to Duke. “Being at Duke made me what I am today.”
King’s 76ers will practice in Cameron Indoor Stadium this year for their training camp session.
• Tommy Amaker, ’87, has had similar success since obtaining his degree in economics. Amaker, too, was a national defensive player of the year before spending his early post-grad years at the Fuqua School of Business. Amaker then began coaching as an assistant to Mike Krzyzewski. Seton Hall eventually hired Amaker as its head coach, and he compiled a 68-55 record. Promoted once again, Amaker is now at the helm of one of the most storied programs in the country at the University of Michigan.
• Johnny Dawkins, ’86, had a dominating career at Duke, leaving the school as its all-time leading scorer. Dawkins played in nine NBA seasons for the Spurs, 76ers and the Pistons. He has been at Duke for seven seasons and is Krzyzewski’s associate head coach.
• Mike Gminski, ’80, has used his talents in the media world. Gminski, whose number 43 is retired in Cameron’s rafters, played in the NBA for 14 seasons after graduating with a degree in history. He is currently a color commentator for a number of stations carrying college basketball games.
King, Amaker, Dawkins and Gminski are not the only accomplished former players. Jay Bilas, Quinn Snyder, David Henderson and many others fill out a long list of people with success stories from their post-playing days. If a college player questions why he should finish his degree, he only has to look at the players who graduated from Duke in the 1980s. Many of these men became leaders at some of the most respected universities and organizations in the country. This success shows exactly why it pays to couple basketball talent with a complete education.
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