Coming into a draft full of high school kids as the veteran college player, Jameer Nelson believes staying four years at Saint Joseph’s hurt his draft stock (2004 #20 pick by DEN and traded to ORL).
(via Knuckleheads with Quentin Richardson & Darius Miles):
“I know out of 19 of those dudes, they all got drafted, kudos to them; but I could tell like, ‘Yo, this dude is not gonna be better than me.’ And most of them, they was from high school. That was the year I think it might have been like 9 or 10 dudes from high school that went in front of me. Some of them were good, but most of them wasn’t; and it showed you sometimes you gotta take the talent. I was told like, ‘You’re too old. You’re maxed out. You can’t get better.’ I was like, ‘I don’t understand that. I ain’t 40, 50.’”
