The Right Shot

Sebastian Telfair was a member of one of the last classes of high school homecoming kings allowed to enter the NBA draft. Two years later, now 21, he arrives in Boston as half the player he could have been. Had he attended the University of Louisville as planned, Telfair would've majored in the point-guard trade. Hard as it might be for Boston fans to fathom, he would have elevated his game under Rick Pitino, sage Louisville coach and epic Celtics fl op, learning that quarterbacks in his sport are meant to pass and that 6-footers can't thrive in a sport dominated by larger men without developing the proper means to shoot over them.

But Telfair bypassed that education - and had every right to make that choice. After graduating from Brooklyn's Lincoln High, he joined the Portland Trail Blazers, who over two seasons grew disenchanted with his wayward perimeter shooting and Charmin-soft defense, suspended him for bringing a loaded gun onto a team plane parked at Logan, and ultimately decided that the 13th pick in the draft wasn't worth the price.

Now it's the Celtics who are banking on the frayed prodigy after trading for him in June. As training camp approaches, both parties enter this marriage a little desperate and a lot fl awed, but only the Celtics run the risk of emerging racked by regret. Telfair? No matter how he plays in Boston, he can't be blamed for trading the Coney Island projects for a lifestyle of the rich and semi-famous. It's a choice all high school prospects should still be allowed to make.

But David Stern, National Basketball Association commissioner, terminated that option last summer in an attempt to ease the disconnect between his product and his customers. Stern figured an older, more mature league would be an easier sell to a public turned off by boorish jock conduct, by the images of players brawling with fans. Never mind that many of the off ending players went to college; the high school kids who jumped straight to the pros would pay the bill.

By convincing the players union that too many teenagers were committing flagrant fouls against the league's bottom line (the union didn't need much convincing; it wanted to protect veteran members from losing jobs to the teens), Stern installed a rule requiring draftees to be at least 19 years old and one year removed from high school.

The commissioner wanted to protect his de facto minor league system, college basketball, which had marketed young talent free of charge. It was just another business decision that ignored the human fallout.

High schoolers don't have a right to NBA employment, but they should have the right to apply for it. Who is Stern to decree that some fast-breaking Mozart needs to spend a year in college and risk (through injury, disappointing play, poor coaching, etc.) all the life-altering money that shoe companies and NBA teams would've offered in the immediate wake of the senior prom?

During a year I spent with Telfair while working on a book, he told me he knew more friends shot and killed than he could count, and that drug dealers bought him food and drink when he had no money of his own. Telfair's father did hard time for manslaughter. Telfair's final high school season was interrupted by the killings of two acquaintances 25 feet outside his apartment door.

The Trail Blazers and Adidas guaranteed him more than $20 million, so it doesn't matter that Telfair would've sharpened his shooting at Louisville or that he would've learned how to penetrate and pass instead of simply lofting shots over tall defenders that were high on degree of difficulty and low on redeeming value.

In Boston, Telfair doesn't have to end up the way Pitino once envisioned him - as a right-handed "Tiny" Archibald - to validate his decision. He was a poor kid who chose to be a wealthy man, and no high school prospect should be denied the right to chase the same pot of gold.

Ian O'Connor is a columnist for The Journal News of Westchester County, New York, and the author of The Jump: Sebastian Telfair and the High Stakes Business of High School Ball. E-mail comments to magazine@globe.com.