It's no longer just about talent

After Wednesday night's NBA Draft, I realized teams are opening their eyes and seeing that talent isn't all what really takes to a championship.

Teams are finding out that to win you have to acquire players with both talent and knowledge of the game.

It's no coincidence Jay Williams and Mike Dunleavy, Jr. were drafted second and third, as both have high basketball IQ's.

In his three years at Duke, Williams learned how to combine his physical talent with his mental talent. He learned when to penetrate, when to shoot the jump shot and when to take over the game.

Dunleavy did it in a different way. He found out defense was as important as offence -- to get the ball you had to defend the ball.

Dunleavy played as hard on defense as anyone in the NCAA last year, and this talent has made him into the most complete player to come out of the NCAA since Tim Duncan in 1997.

Just because they have the talent, however, young kids try to come straight out of high school, or after spending only one or two years in college, but teams are looking past that.

Teams are watching kids enter the league still immature, knowing it will take them about three years to evolve into what was expected of them.

The problem is that they leave after three years and go to other teams that will give them more minutes.

To make sure this doesn't happen, they select players that can become immediate impacts for the team.

Both Chicago and Golden State expect leadership out their top two picks. They want these players to take over the team and make a difference, and they will.

A lot of players were promised, and guaranteed, they would be selected in this year's draft, and given what happened in past drafts, I couldn't say they were wrong.

This year things changed. Players like DeAngelo Collins and Udonis Haslem were not selected and now they will try to make it as rookie free agents.

These players will be picked up by a team and play in the Summer League where they have a slim-to-none chance at making a roster.

This will be a struggle and probably not what they expected. They should've stayed in school and worked on their game to better their chances at being selected another year.

Kids should realize one thing -- talent can make them an All-Star, but combine talent with knowledge of the game and they might become a Hall-of-Famer.