As far as the formal record is concerned, Thon Maker was born on Feb. 25, 1997 in what is now South Sudan. That was 19 years ago.
But some NBA teams are not so sure.
This sort of thing does happen sometimes with players born in parts of Africa where birth certificates are not necessarily generated for everybody, and age is sometimes more of an estimate. When Maker was (presumably) 5, he and some family members escaped a civil war at home and moved to Uganda before eventually settling as refugees in Australia.
Maker than had the very familiar path of being discovered on a soccer field by a helpful stranger (in this case, Canadian basketball coach Edward Smith) known for finding tall, athletic African kids and bringing them to the United States.
Although there are often questions of age for players of Maker’s background, he may have dodged those questions had he not fiddled around so much with his high school classification. Originally a member of the class of 2016, Maker last year announced his intent to re-classify as a member of the 2015 class.
Then he changed his mind.
Then he decided to enter the NBA draft. But 2016 kids aren’t eligible for the NBA draft, so Maker had to convince the NBA he actually had graduated from high school in 2015, after all.
He was successful at that. Maybe too successful.
In any case he’s 7-foot-1, so he won’t have trouble finding work as a basketball player, but in a league that is all about potential, there is an ocean of difference between drafting a 19-year old and a 23-year old.
from The Big Lead http://ift.tt/28P8t1s
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