Kevin Brooks
TNT wasn't fair to USL's Brooks after he was picked
LOUISIANA La. -- Kevin Brooks defied all the odds and was drafted in the first round in the annual NBA draft Wednesday.
Brooks, 6-foot-8 and 200 pounds, will be a shooting guard or small forward in the NBA. The lad who went from Dorseville Junior High to White Castle High School was taken 18th overall by the Milwaukee Bucks.
TNT (Turner Network Television) carried the draft live from Madison Square Garden in New York City. The network used one announcer and two so-called "experts" to try to anticipate each pick and to then tell the audience how each selected future star would fit in with the picking team.
That went along quite well until Brooks was selected by Milwaukee. The experts had not even mentioned the name of the University of Southwestern Louisisiana star for four seasons.
NBA commissioner David Stern got flabbergasted and said Brooks was from "Southwest" Louisiana. I guess the czar was just reading what the Bucks had sent to the podium on the famed selection sheet.
Of course, I cannot believe that Bucks vice-president of basketball operations and head coach Del Harris would make such a mistake, since he is familiar with former Ragin' Cajuns star Dwight Lamar.
Talk about another reason to get the school's name changed! How much good can it do to get mentioned on national TV and have the name pronounced wrong?
But that was just the start. On every player picked before and after Brooks, the experts discussed the "strengths" and "weaknesses" of the player.
Unless my eyes deceived me, and I do not believe they did, I believe I saw written under one of the weaknesses listed were the words "weak schedule."
Now that line was only half visible on my television and I was not going to write anything about it, but I got a call from some viewers in California and they had seen the same thing.
But as I noted above, the experts never got around to analyzing Brooks' attributes. They cut to Oakland, Calif., to talk to Don Nelson of the Golden State Warriors out in the Bay Area, their guest "picker." Golden State had taken the 16th and 17th players in the draft and TNT seemed more interested in that than they did about Brooks.
That weak schedule notation means simply that Brooks had to go to the various camps and demonstrate he had enough ability to go in the two rounds of selections. One must keep in mind that the NBA only goes two rounds in its draft because there are not many rookies past the first 54 picks making the rosters in October.
The NBA has various camps for "on the border" players to show their worth and apparently Brooks was able to do this. Nonetheless, the Bucks have announced that they will trade Brooks. He may end up in Denver soon.
Brooks, while performing at USL for four seasons, played every position but point guard and probably could have played a little of that had he been asked to do so. He averaged around 20 points a game and 8 rebounds and was deadly on his jump shots from the 10-foot to 20-foot range.
Brooks went to all the camps and was impressive. At a recent camp in Indianapolis, he was ranked first out of 64 "tryouts." Most everyone knew he would go in the top 54, but few expected him to be among the 27 taken in the first round.
While USL's run-and-gun offense is sometimes a yolk around the Cajuns' necks in collegiate games, it does get the players ready for the NBA, if they have the other skills, that is. And Brooks has those abilities to have a long career in the NBA. He needs to put on a little weight and get some overall body strength and he will be ready.
But he knows how to run the lanes and shoot the jump shot and that is something that is hard to teach in the pros.
Brooks was robbed out of player-of-the-year honors in the American South Conference after last season but he has his destiny in his own hands as far as making it in the NBA is concerned.
If weak schedule was one of the "knocks" against Brooks in this draft, it will not be able to be used against the Cajuns who will be seniors next year.
Eric Mouton, Marcus Stokes and company will go out against an excellent schedule put together by coach Marty Fletcher and staff, under the guidance of athletic director Nelson Stokley.
Fletcher got rid of the Southwestern Athletic Conference opponents on his schedule and will be playing a very formidable card during the upcoming season.
The Ragin' Cajuns will play the obligatory exhibition games against the Arkansas Express (Nov. 4) and Newcastle, Falcons of Australia (Nov. 14).
USL has changed the format of the Louisiana Classics Tournament. USL will play Ole Miss on Nov. 29 and Southeastern Conference regular-season co-champion Mississippi State on Nov. 30. he fourth team in the tournament has not been announced as of yet, but will play the Mississippi schools on the nights USL does not. Ole Miss will not play Mississippi State and the Cajuns will not meet the team that has not been announced as of yet.
In addition, USL will meet always tough Northern Iowa, Memphis State and McNeese State in home-and-home non-conference encounters.
The "American Sun Belt Conference" becomes a reality Tuesday, so USL will have a 16-game conference schedule. The home-and-home series will be with Arkansas State, Louisiana Tech, Central Florida, Lamar, South Alabama and New Orleans.
The Acadiana school will have single league home games against Western Kentucky and Texas-Pan American and will have conference road games with Jacksonville and Little Rock.
USL will also play Florida International and Nicholls State at home and Southern Mississippi on the road.
No one can accuse USL of playing a weak schedule this year.
J.C. HATCHER
THE BATON ROUGE MORNING ADVOCATE
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1991 NBA Draft
