TORONTO — Players jumping straight from high school to the NBA has been a thing of the past for some time now. Kobe Bryant was one of the most famous people to make the move, and he said it was the best choice of his career.
Bryant has been in the media spotlight this week as the NBA hosts its annual All-Star Weekend festivities in Toronto. It’s no secret that this season is the last for the Los Angeles Lakers guard, and many of the questions he’s forced to address are those of reflection.
With his 20th and final NBA season starting down the backstretch, Bryant was asked following Saturday’s All-Star team practices about the best choice he made during that 20-year period. The answer was something that came before he ever put on an NBA uniform.
“The best decision (I ever made was) coming straight to the NBA and skipping college,” Bryant said. “That’s it – the best one.”
When Bryant entered the league in 1996 he was the first guard ever taken straight out high school. Bryant was named the American Family Insurance ALL-USA Player of the Year in the 1995-96 season at Lower Merion in Ardmore, Pa., in the Philadelphia suburbs.
RELATED: What was Kobe Bryant like in high school?
Many have made the decision to declare for the draft from high school before and after Bryant, but he is among the most successful players to do so.
Bryant said his path was the appropriate one for him, but that’s not the case for everyone. As of the 2006 season players are no longer allowed to make the high school-to-NBA jump. The league put in a requirement of at least one year of college before crossing over to the highest level of the sport.
RELATED: IMG’s Jonathan Isaac opts against using new prep to pros rule
Is that fair? Not really, Bryant said. Every player has traits individual to themselves and Bryant said he believes every circumstance should be treated differently.
“You have high school players that go to college, stay for four years and come out and they’re not ready; you got certain high school players that skip college and they’re ready,” Bryant said. “So I think it depends on the mentors that you have, it depends on the internal motivation or spirit of the kid himself. Ultimately it depends on the teachers that you have and the mentors that you have. You can go to college for four years and get horrible mentorship and be worse off than a kid who came to the league at 17.”
“I met him in the eighth grade and I knew then that he was going to be a pro, but as time went on, how good of a pro started to unravel,” Downer said. “When he was heading into his senior year he was scrimmaging with Jerry Stackhouse and Shawn Bradley (with the 76ers) and all the reports were that he was holding his own in those settings, if not getting the best of some of those settings.
“Then he exploded into his senior year and become the Naismith Player of the Year, the top ranked high school player and became a McDonald’s All American. Some of the stuff he was doing at that time made me realize we had something really special going on.”
Contributing: Jason Jordan, USA TODAY High School Sports