Feeling the draft

The NBA Draft might be the main symbol of how the Information Age affects modern professional sports. As the talent pool increases to include more foreign and high school players, we seem to know less and less about them.\nThat makes it more of a crapshoot. Fans get tongue-tied, as if finally getting their courage to approach their secret admiree.\nThe expected top-three picks have divergent backgrounds that emphasize this shooting of crap. LeBron James is straight out of high school. Darko Milicic is 17 and European, which means he has played pro basketball for about 12 years now. Carmelo Anthony, a small forward from Syracuse, was Most Outstanding Player in the Final Four, arguably the highest honor an amateur basketball player can receive in this country.\nHowever, my eye is on another fellow. The Web site www.nbadraft.net has projected the Phoenix Suns to take 6-foot-11-inch swing forward Zarko Cabarkapa from Serbia-Montenegro with the 17th overall pick. People don't know this, but my apartment is a shrine to Zarko Cabarkapa, and no, I don't let others borrow my Air Zarkos. And let me tell you it was hard getting a sculptor to make a statue of a basketball player with whom that sculptor is unfamiliar, but I told the sculptor, "Zarko Cabarkapa is who you think he is." The sculptor gave me a blank stare and left never having started, but that goes to show that some works are too challenging for even the most willing of artists.\nSure, it was strange telling my parents that instead of Florida or Cancun I intended to go to Serbia-Montenegro for spring break and hang with Zarko. But I think everybody in the NBA needs a support system, and I want to be part of Zarko's. I thought up the name Cabarkaposse myself. He seemed a little confused when I told him about it.\nWhen Zarko gets drafted, the ESPN broadcasters will stare at each other in confusion just as Suns fans will, before somebody like Bill Walton will interrupt and say that Zarko is the next Alvan Adams. And that will warm the cockles of my heart.\nOf course, Cabarkapa, 22, will have to face the barbs of those who want to remind him that he is one of the oldest players in the draft. "Methuselah" Cabarkapa they will call him, but Zarko understands the meaning of patience. They criticized his rebounding, but he came up with 11 boards for Buducnost against Panathanaikos. What were they saying then besides, "What in the world are you talking about, dude?"\nNo, there won't be a TV show on Comedy Central called "I'm with Zarko," but what we find entertaining in this society is so arbitrary. After all, what if he winds up with the Jazz? The environmental changes for Zarko will be natural. From the urban landscape and inescapable culture of Serbia-Montenegro to the urban landscape and inescapable culture of Salt Lake City, I don't figure Zarko getting bored too easily. Plus, the large number of Serbians in Utah will ease his transition.\nAnd that's what the NBA Draft is all about. For every player you have heard of, there is going to be a guy like Zarko or Aleksandar Pavlovic or Zaur Pachulia picked. Fans of that team will criticize the pick because they didn't take (insert the name of famous local college player here). Some Pacers fan will be irate -- irate, I tell you -- because they didn't take Tom Coverdale, and what kind of future do they have with Jamaal Tinsley anyway (Okay, that last part is a valid point, especially since they could have had Tony Parker instead with the 27th pick in the 2001 Draft)?\nBut the 2003 Draft will be known for how James pans out. Only the jealous wouldn't notice that James' game is an amalgam of Michael Jordan's athleticism, Magic Johnson's flair and passion and Oscar Robertson's ability to make triple-doubles look easy.\nAnthony is a nice player but not in James' league, and any notion that Anthony is better than James because he played a year in college while James didn't is silly. Anthony's proponents view Anthony's year at Syracuse like getting a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne while James spent the year dunking on pimply-faced Verne Troyer clones.\nGive me a break. How many Kevin Garnetts, Kobe Bryants, Tracy McGradys and Jermaine O'Neals have to succeed in the league to show that high school players are not that risky? (Watch out for Ndubi Ebi too late in the first round.)\nHeck, James might even be as good as Zarko.