And that's the risk you take. To be honest, an 18-year-old NBA prospect being sent to Europe seems like a crazier idea than the Russian kids who play junior hockey over here at 16, but the point is that the avenue is open for those who think they can take advantage of it in basketball.
The better example would be…

Hockey and baseball, the two sports with the best-developed minor
leagues, have a pretty good system: you're allowed to draft kids at 18,
but it then becomes their choice to sign a contract or continue in the
college stream. Hockey actually streams kids before that, via the various junior leagues around the world and…

"…but required to go through four years at college…"

It's important to stratify that. Tyson was, admittedly, the biggest PPV draw in boxing history (he has the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 8th-biggest drawing PPVs of all time to his credit*). But even when Tyson was still active, De La Hoya was doing excellent numbers against Felix Trinidad in 1999, when Tyson was still a…

"But even more specifically, it harkens back to a time when the United
States was captivated by a weight class below heavyweight, the
welterweight title bout between Sugar Ray Leonard and Panama’s Armando
Durán."

They function as effective dramatic shorthand, and fodder for daytime talk shows.  That's about it.

… except when you take the comedy away from White Collar, you're left with a dull show.  Which is exactly what this looks to be.

At least Garner wasn't a black hole of charisma like the female lead here, though. Every time she opens her mouth I think the ratings drop by 2%.

That was what I meant - it makes no sense that USA can just churn these out on an assembly line and NBC can't do it.  At this point, the average Monday Night Raw storyline has better long-term potential than NBC's drama stable.

"Asked if he has a first name, Harry Lennix says, no, just Denke, “like Prince, or Madonna.”"

It'd be interesting to see what The Voice's ratings were hour-to-hour.  Just judging by the remaining shows around that time, it looks like SHIELD beat it out, which would be very good news.

Even Once Upon A Time probably wouldn't have been a great pairing, but it would've been better than what they came up with.  I'd have moved Castle there, but Castle's audience is so freaking weird (very old, very female) that it probably wouldn't have worked.

Part of me thinks that they want the comedies around to eventually move to shore up Wednesdays.

Dancing With the Stars (and the Bachelor) kept Castle going long enough to get to a syndication order, so it's not as though that series didn't have positive effects on its follow-up.

How soon we forget Dirty Sexy Money. tsk, tsk.

South Central Ukraine.  Get it right.

There's plenty room for procedurals.

Once again: even if they had all of those vehicles, and even if they somehow managed to divine the FBI's route (they were presumably taking the kid back to the black ops location) they still staged a chemical leak that apparently got cleared by the federal government.  It's Washington DC - don't you think that if…

After Spader's character TOLD THEM that there'd be a distraction!

I'm normally pretty good (and, shit, I just got done watching a c-section on video in labour prep classes without problems, so it's not like I'm sensitive), but there was a LOT of blood.  Blood sprays for every shooting victim, the boyfriend being covered in a frankly ridiculous amount, and then Spader's blood when he…