Latavious Williams Ready to Make History in the NBA Draft

Filed under: NBA Draft, NBA D-League

Latavious Williams, finally eligible for Thursday's NBA Draft, is a ground breaker, though that's probably not what he originally set out to do.



Williams left high school last year, and instead of going the Brandon Jennings route of heading to Europe for the big bucks, he became the first player ever to jump directly from high school to the NBA D-League when he wasn't able to make the academic requirements to enroll at Memphis. He spent a year with the Tulsa 66ers, owned by the Oklahoma City Thunder. And if ever there was a story of what the D-League could do for a kid, Williams has it.



Williams came into Tulsa as the embodiment of the term "raw." He simply wasn't ready to contribute at an NBA level. While the denial of players into the NBA from high school is a stone's throw away from disenfranchisement, there's still something to be said for players like Williams, who, had they entered at the level they were at, would have suffered, been marginalized and likely fallen out of the league.



And that's where the D-League came in.

 

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Full story at http://nba.fanhouse.com/2010/06/23/latavious-williams-ready-to-make-history-in-the-nba-draft/