We’ve already had one peak into the fun world of the Rookie Transition Program, but looking behind those closed doors is almost entertaining.
The New York Times’ Sarah Lyall, whose tweets provided our previous glimpse into the sessions, now has a full article out about them:
Meanwhile, in the section on financial planning, the players were told to recite the words “I don’t want to go broke” aloud; soon it became a chant, with some of them clapping along. And in a session on how to make good decisions, they were shown clips from familiar movies and asked to vote, using handheld devices, on what the characters should do next. After a scene from “Blue Jasmine” in which a character gets into a fight with her boyfriend after she sleeps with another man, the players voted on what they would have done, with options including “hit the girlfriend” and “leave and go get high and drunk.” (No one chose those.) Sixty-two percent of the rookies said they would “call another girl and hang out with her.”
To deter the rookies from partaking, there was a slide show juxtaposing photographs of beautiful semi-clad women with photographs of hideously diseased genitalia. There was also a handout listing how much child support the rookies would be required to pay in various states, should they find themselves in sudden possession of a child after a one-night stand. “It was disturbing,” said Tyler Ennis, 20, a freshman star at Syracuse University who was drafted to play for the Phoenix Suns.