"The structure of elite amateur basketball, right up through college ball, points a few players toward a personal payday, and tracking them as they advance toward the promised land is a mini-industry unto itself, part of the sports-entertainment machine. A drumbeat builds. A player is elevated to the status of future millionaire. The announcers who work N.C.A.A. games, including the bombastic Dick Vitale, who coined the phrase “diaper dandies” for talented freshmen, echo and amplify the hype on the online N.B.A. draft boards. It is all fused together into one great futures market."