Life in the D-League Not as Arduous as Young Raptors Suggest

Filed under: Raptors, NBA D-League, Erie BayHawks

The NBA D-League has received a bad rap more than once in its 10-year history, though the recent recalls of Solomon Alabi and Ed Davis from the D-League's Erie BayHawks back to the Toronto Raptors has been looked at with a particularly harsh eye.



Davis was recalled early last week after a two-game stint with the BayHawks and, upon his return, he told Raptors media that he never wanted to go back to the D-League again. Alabi, who played seven games with the BayHawks, was also recently recalled by the Raptors after averaging 8.6 points, 6.7 rebounds and 3.0 blocks with the BayHawks, though he made less than 42 percent of his field goal attempts.



Doug Smith, the Toronto Star's Raptors beat writer since the team's inception, wrote when Alabi returned to the Raptors -- in a post titled "Alabi freed from the shackles of Erie" -- that the D-League "seems to be a colossal waste of time."



"Kids go down there and there's no real support system for them," Smith wrote. "Coaches are more worried about their own fates than truly developing players, the kids live in hotels by themselves, they eat who knows what instead of getting some solid nutrition -- Thanksgiving at IHOP? Please! -- they don't have a lot of friends to hang with and life, according to a lot of people, kind of sucks."



According to a lot of other people, particularly BayHawks team president Matt Bresee, Smith's opinion is dead wrong.

 

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Full story at http://nba.fanhouse.com/2010/12/15/life-in-the-d-league-not-as-difficult-as-young-raptors-suggest/