One month into their NBA careers, the teens drafted in June are starting to get accustomed to the pro basketball drill: airport, plane, hotel, arena ? a routine repeated day after day, week after week.
Watching how they adjust to that grind are Tom "Satch" Sanders and Mike Bantom, who played a combined 22 years in the NBA and now occupy a couple of corner offices, helping the next generation of players fit into the fast and furious life of pro basketball.
Bantom and Sanders operate the league's player program and basketball development departments, fancy corporate titles for making sure the corps of teens don't get swallowed up by the lifestyle.
Three of the first four players selected in June's draft were high school seniors, each of them equipped with huge basketball talent. Sanders and Bantom get to work on the other part of their game, the part that doesn't include dribbling and dunking.
Every so often, the safety net springs a leak and someone like Lamar Odom, now serving a second suspension for marijuana, falls through.
"Rookies have a difficult adjustment to make, even for the best players," Bantom said. "It takes awhile on the job. We're there to hold their hands. We don't let them get too down.