SI story about the D-League including comment that Cs have had prelim discussion about buying own team

[Kim Malo]

Saw this posted on JB's celticsstuffgroup (props)  and was reading it 
on out of curiosity, but when I saw the comment that the Cs are 
definitely looking at buying their own D-league team, thought it 
worth passing on. Also prominently features G-Money throughout the 
article (picture of him on it's page on SI), and has a reference to 
the Cs mgmt being Stern's target audience with the D-League because 
of so many young players. BTW, I've wondered before - does anyone 
know if SI's Chris Mannix is a son of Bostonherald's Kevin Mannix?

http://tinyurl.com/p9wnl

Life in the D-League
NBADL catching on as a farm system for the NBA
Posted: Friday June 2, 2006 10:30AM; Updated: Friday June 2, 2006 3:14PM
By Chris Mannix, SI.com

Gerald Green remembers the bus. Or more specifically, the bus 
ride.  That five-hour mission he took as a member of the Fayetteville 
Patriots  to Roanoke, Va., to hone his skills in a game against a 
team called the  Dazzle.

He remembers the planes. No, not the charter jets with their catered 
meals and plush leather seats that spoiled him during his first three
months with the Boston Celtics. We're talking about the aircrafts 
with cramped quarters and the stale peanuts that are so often found on
commercial airlines, flights Green and his fellow Patriots -- 
sometimes sitting in middle seats -- took on a regular basis. Say 
goodbye to that
posh Boston bachelor pad, too. In Fayetteville, his home was the  Holiday Inn.

"Riding that bus was tough," says Green, the 18th pick in the 2005 
NBA draft after graduating from Gulf Shores Academy outside of 
Houston. "I  felt like I was in high school again. And the planes? 
Man, Boston is a first-class organization that flies private planes. 
Down there we were  flying coach in small planes that made your legs 
all cramped up!"

Down there is where the Celtics rookie forward spent more than a 
month of his inaugural NBA season, a guinea pig in the experiment the 
NBA  likes to call the D-League. The brainchild of NBA commissioner 
David Stern in 2001, the D-League began as a six-team pseudo farm 
system that  was a refugee camp for mediocre talent.

In its first four years, the D-League was little more than the NBA's 
version of Gatorade, a way for teams with injury-riddled rosters 
to  temporarily replenish themselves, with disposable talent. Sure, 
there were the occasional success stories. Bobby Simmons was a Mobile 
Reveler  in 2003 before he was the NBA's Most Improved Player with 
the Clippers two years later. One of Simmons' teammates in Mobile was 
Rafer Alston, the hyperactive streetballer who averaged 14.2 points 
with the Toronto Raptors in 2005 and started 63 games for the Houston 
Rockets last season. Simmons and Alston were exceptional, but they 
certainly were exceptions; the talent in the D-League in its first 
few seasons was  marginal, and the league was bleeding financially.

That all changed last summer, when one of the byproducts of the NBA's 
new collective bargaining agreement was the provision that each NBA 
team had the right to send down any of its players with less than two 
years' experience to the NBADL. It was the minor league system Stern 
had dreamed of, a place where high school and inexperienced college 
players could go to fine-tune their games while at the same time 
developing the maturity needed to compete at the next level. It was a 
way to rid the league of the Korleone Youngs. The early results have 
been positive. Stern says he expects the NBADL, which is financed by 
the NBA (each team puts up $350,000 and all player salaries are 
paid  for by the league), to break even next season.

"The quality of play was extraordinary," says Stern. "These teams 
are  better than college teams. They are enormously improved, and I think
the NBA players populating the rosters lifted everyone's effort."

Says Green, "I won't lie, when I went down there I thought it was 
going  to be easy. But those guys play hard every night. I've got nothing but
respect for them; they made me a better player."

The level of play in the D-League has steadily improved, in part 
because NBA teams are much less reluctant to send their inexperienced
bench-warmers down. In addition to Green, first-round picks Martell 
Webster, Julius Hodge, Pavel Podkolzine and Sergei Monia were all
shuttled to the D-League this season. Bracey Wright, the 
Timberwolves' second-round pick in '05 and the D-League's leading 
scorer this season, even expressed disappointment at being recalled 
while the Florida Flame  were in the thick of the playoff hunt.

"I was looking forward to winning something," says Wright.

Adds Timberwolves coach Dwane Casey, "You feel bad about that, but 
that's what the D-League is there for. It's almost like a badge of
honor for those teams to have a player called up."

Green and Wright are two of the D-League's biggest success stories, 
but they're far from the only ones. In addition to the 29 players 
assigned by NBA clubs, 18 more -- or half of all the players called 
up in the  league's first four seasons -- contributed to their teams, 
most notably  Chicago Bulls center Luke Schenser.

The improved play in the D-League is a sentiment echoed 
frequently.  "The quality of play is the highest of any minor league, 
hands down,"
says NBADL Vice President of Player Development Michael Curry.

Curry knows what he's talking about. The former Pistons forward spent 
time in the CBA, USBL and Global Basketball League before going on 
to  play 11 seasons in the NBA. "I've got a pretty good gauge of 
talent level," says Curry, who estimates he witnessed 10 D-League games a
month this season. "I constantly heard remarks from players and 
coaches that this league was the toughest [outside of the NBA]. And a 
lot of  top European players decided to stay here and play with us 
because they thought the competition was so good."

Work in progress

A league without problems? An unqualified success? Not exactly. 
Despite having the ability to farm out its younger players, many NBA 
teams chose to ignore the D-League early on and keep their 
not-ready-for-prime-time players on the bench. One reason was that 
players sent to the D-League would effectively be subject to the 
whims of an independent ownership (all but two NBADL teams last year were
owned independently) and a coaching staff that was not beholden to 
run the system used by an NBA club.

"It was an issue," admits Stern.

Said Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, "You just don't know what will 
happen to [the players you send] down there."

One of the people who expressed the biggest concerns, according to 
Stern, was Celtics general manager Danny Ainge. Ainge was Stern's
target audience; the Celtics' roster this season was littered with 
young talent, including Green, a promising but exceedingly raw 
prospect. Green rode the Boston bench for three months without 
playing a minute; his only contribution was being a frequent example 
of the NBA's new and improved dress code. Finally, in January, Ainge 
made a decision: It was time to give the D-League a try.

After informing Green of his demotion -- "I thought it was a terrible 
idea," Green says -- Ainge boarded a plane and accompanied his prized
pupil to Fayetteville, where he observed practices and had an 
opportunity to talk to Patriots coach Mike Brown.

"I don't think it was reluctance [to send Green down] as much as it 
was the uncertainties," says Ainge. "You just didn't know what was 
going to happen. But I was impressed with what I saw down there and 
with what I saw of Gerald when he came back. His work ethic was 
better, and you could tell his game had really improved."

Several NBADL teams have taken steps to alleviate the concerns felt 
by their NBA counterparts. In addition to Brown, Fort Worth coach Sam
Vincent made a point of instituting plays from every NBA team that 
sent a player down, incorporating the styles of Avery Johnson 
(Dallas), Nate McMillan (Portland) and Phil Jackson (Lakers).

"Sam did a fantastic job," says Curry, who says every NBADL coach 
will be required to attend the NBA predraft camp in Orlando later this
month. "Whenever an NBA player came to him, he made it a priority to 
put a little bit of their team into his."

The Lakers took it a step further when they purchased their own NBADL 
team in April, meaning they hold the right to manage and coach the 
team whatever way they see fit. Stern says a number of other NBA 
teams are considering doing the same. Boston held preliminary 
discussions recently about buying a D-League team and according to 
Ainge are watching the Lakers situation "with great interest."

Stern doesn't believe it's necessary for NBA teams to own their own 
D-League franchises but doesn't oppose the idea, either. "It's an 
option," says Stern, who says the D-League will expand to 15 teams by 
the 2007-08 season. "We are just looking for great independent 
ownership. It's a model that works for us." (Stern has a point: 
Though the D-League will expand from eight to 12 teams next season, 
three have been shut down, including Fayetteville and Roanoke, the 
two remaining NBA-owned teams. Says Stern, "You just can't run a team 
from New York.")

The D-League continues to grow. Former CBA teams are joining the 
fold. The quality of play continues to rise, and more and more NBA 
teams are embracing the concept of a minor league system. The 
D-League is even considering adding an All-Star Game, one that the 
Celtics' Green most likely won't be a part of.

After returning from his second stint in the D-League in February, 
Green became a regular in the Celtics' rotation, finishing the season 
averaging 5.2 points in 11.7 minutes. He drew praise from his coaches 
and teammates and improved by playing and learning rather than 
sitting on the bench.

Green came away with a new appreciation for the D-League. "Nothing 
but positives came from that," he says.

So, would Green mind going back? "No, I don't want to go back!" says 
Green. "But maybe guys will look at me as a warning: be ready to play 
at the NBA level or they just might send you to the D-League."

Find this article at:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/the_bonus/06/01/d.league/index.html