The Handwringing Over Jeremy Tyler's Foreign Adventure Has Begun

Jeremy Tyler left high school to play professionally in the Holy Land, where the plan was to do a credible Kevin Garnett impression and expose the folly of the minimum-age rule. The plan was not to play like Oliver Miller. Alas, as The New York Times' Pete Thamel reports, after just three months in Haifa, Israel, Tyler is being turned into your standard American basketball bogeyman: listless, undisciplined, money-obsessed and supremely self-entitled. His coach calls him lazy and out of shape. The team captain says he is soft. His teammates say he needs to learn to shut up and show up on time. He has no friends on the team. In extensive interviews with Tyler, his teammates, coaches, his father and advisers, the consensus is that he is so naïve and immature that he has no idea how naïve and immature he is. So enamored with his vast potential, Tyler has not developed the work ethic necessary to tap it. The 6-foot-10 Tyler scored a single point in his first two games, and his seas...