When Denis Awtry former NBA player recently told me, “In the NBA we have children playing with children.” With the aid of Mr. Research, we have broken down the last two lottery drafts and they show the trend is obviously to younger – and younger — players. “There were seven teen-agers, including three 18-year-olds — the kid from Arizona (Aaron Gordon), the Australian (Dante Exum) and the kid from Indiana (Noah Vonieh),” began Mr. Research’s study of this June’s lottery picks. Additional highlights follow … Of the 12 U.S. collegians, seven had just completed their freshman seasons, three more (including Phoenix pick T.J. Warren of North Carolina State) were sophs, one a junior and only Doug McDermott, the 6-8 scorer from Creighton, was a four-year senior. The other foreigner, aside from Exum, was Dario Saric, the 20-year-old Croatian shooting forward who plays in the Turkish league. A year ago, in the 2013 draft, all 14 lottery picks were U.S. collegians. Only two of them were teenagers, and they were both 19. Five had just finished their freshman season, five were sophomores, three were juniors and there was one four-year senior (C.J. McCollom of Lehigh), drafted by Portland, and who missed the first half of season with a foot injury, and then averaged some 12 minutes a game for the second half of the 2013-14 season . Interestingly, new commish Adam Silver’s proposed 20-year-old limit would have been sorely tested by this draft, with seven teenagers among the 14 lottery picks.####