Maybe there's a reason why their night comes after the season has ended, when the real men are home for the summer. The NBA draft makes for good theater -- the Green Room scenes alone can be worth watching -- but the palpable excitement of that night has long subsided by the time the kids with the new suits and the unfamiliar hats have to show up for real in sneakers and shorts.

	Clips rookie Darius Miles went No. 3 in the draft, but will he play like he deserves it this season?

By then, the coaches are trying to teach them to play something called defense, generally a foreign concept to most, while teammates are making them carry bags, sing fight songs and generally making life uncomfortable to the point of humiliation.

Tuesday night, the NBA opened yet another season with an increasingly younger group of rookies. The Clippers had three No. 1 picks on their roster with a total of four years of college combined. The injury-ravaged Nets paraded No. 1 pick Kenyon Martin out before the usual folding-chair-only crowd at the Meadowlands. Looking at the empty seats and his new teammates, Martin might have wondered why he didn't pursue a P.G. year at Cincinnati. Especially when the Nets lost to, ahem, Cleveland, whose own celebrated rookie, Chris Mihm, played 3 minutes.

There was good news and not-so-good news in Vancouver. The Grizzlies held off Seattle to open the much-awaited Sidney Lowe era with a rare victory. The not-so-good news? Much-hyped draft pick Stromile Swift of LSU, the No. 2 pick overall, couldn't unseat journeyman Othella Harrington from the Grizzlies' starting five and ended up playing 9 minutes. The Grizzlies want to bring the kid along slowly; he also played behind journeyman Grant Long in the season opener.

Of all the rookies who played Opening Night, perhaps the most astonishing debut came in Dallas from the unheralded Eduardo Najera. He wasn't even a first-round pick, yet he ended up earning a starting spot for the reloading, playoff-hopeful Mavericks. He had 10 points in 23 minutes. Second-rounder Khalid El-Amin started for Chicago over lottery pick Jamal Crawford. Lottery pick DerMarr Johnson, the No. 6 overall pick, played 6 minutes for what may be the worst team in the league, Atlanta. Courtney Alexander and Joel Przybilla, the 13th and 9th picks respectively, never got off the pine in the Dallas-Milwaukee game.

		But while the league keeps inviting and encouraging younger players to join its elite membership, the more that inevitably benefits teams that rely on veterans.

You cannot, of course, make any kind of judgment on one game, particularly in the cases of Martin and Swift. They were the consensus 1-2 picks in the draft and they bring a lot of the same delicacies to the table. All signs point to them as being keepers. But Martin already has discovered what it's like to join a cursed franchise and Swift was all over the map during the exhibition season, so much so that Lowe had no choice but to reign in the kid. Lowe even had to remind Swift to curtail the celebration after dunking, another sign that 'we're not in Baton Rouge anymore, kid.'

The Nets had no choice but to start Martin, given their enormous injury woes. He went 4-of-16 from the field and fouled out in 30 minutes. He said he felt comfortable, but just couldn't get his shot to drop. Latrell Sprewell (1-of-9), Antonio Davis (2-of-12) and Shawn Kemp (2-of-9) could have said the same thing. "He's going to be OK," said Nets GM John Nash. Translated: he's a rookie. What do you expect?

Martin, himself, entered the league as somewhat of an anomaly: a senior being the No. 1 pick in the draft. He joins Tim Duncan (1997) as the only true senior to be the top pick in the last 11 years. In a league that is know for eating its young, the harsh realities of NBA life, conveniently overlooked or even forgotten on Draft Night, surface with a vengeance when the season starts. Swift, for goodness sakes, is learning dietary tips from Isaac Austin, which recently might have been akin to taking drinking tips from Boris Yeltsen. (Austin, however, apparently has seen the light and has his own personal chef.)

But while the league keeps inviting and encouraging younger players to join its elite membership, the more that inevitably benefits teams that rely on veterans. Pat Riley would rather get a buzzcut than use rookies. Portland turned down three No. 1 picks for Jermaine O'Neal, preferring the grizzled Dale Davis. The only teams that seem to trumpet their rookies are the ones that end up drafting them year after year with little to show for it: New Jersey, Boston, the Clippers, Vancouver, Golden State all come to mind. Such is the conundrum that rookies present. The good ones invariably land on the bad teams, further stunting their growth. And the idea that you can build through the draft these days has been, for the most part, destroyed by the indisputable fact that rookies, like home computers, can be obsolete or moot before a new one comes along.

Last year, the Lakers became the first team in years to win a title with its main marquee players -- OK, they had two, which wouldn't cut it a decade ago -- 28 years or younger. Shaq, in fact, played most of last season at the tender age of 27. Kobe Bryant was 21 when the Lakers defeated the Pacers.

The Lakers displaced the Spurs who, despite having a young Tim Duncan (23), were loaded with thirty-somethings everywhere else. Ditto for the Jordan-led Bulls, the Magic/Kareem-led Lakers and the Isiah Thomas-led Pistons.

None of the putative NBA powerhouses this season is relying on rookies. The Lakers have added Mark Madsen to pal around with new best friend, Shaq. Portland? Erick Barkley will do a lot of watching. San Antonio? None to be seen. Whoever comes out of the East is unlikely to have any rookie of note unless Indiana surprises a lot of people with its group of barely able-to-vote players.

When all is dissected, analyzed, scrutinized and examined, the following quote from Zen philosopher Shunryu Suzuki (no, not Phil Jackson) perhaps sums it up the best: "In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. But in the expert's mind, there are few."

Peter May, who covers the NBA for the Boston Globe, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.