The writer's done some serious spinning. He got a quote he liked from Evan Burns "hype went to my head" - and uses him as a cautionary tale with his "Burns played one year at San Diego State after failing to qualify for UCLA", and "Burns never played a day in the NBA".
Evan Burns DID qualify for UCLA. But the clearinghouse refused to certify him till after classes started at UCLA - and since UCLA has a rule against partial qualifiers, there was no scholie for Burns till the clearance came. San Diego State DID accept partial qualifiers on scholie, so Evan enrolled there. Two weeks later, he was given his clearance by the NCAA. (there was no problem with grades. The problem was the NCAA questioned one of the core classes - a history class - that he took during his junior year. That class had been used to qualify by 14 other past athletes at the school, and Burns class schedules had been prepared by the school guidance counselor. The class has subsequntly been used numerous times by qualifying atheletes from the school. There's never been an explanation from the NCAA as to why the class was questioned in this single instance).
But what the writer really fails to mention, in making Burns look like a total failure, is that during that one year at SD State, he was the Conference Freshman of Year. But after putting up a 27pt 14 reb performance in the next to the last regular season game, Evan shredded his knee (ligment and tendon). He spent a year off recovering - doing full-time rehab and unfortunately letting his schoolwork slide, so after that year, he put his name in the draft. Jerry West had him in for a workout with Memphis, and commented that it was a shame - if he'd declared straight out of high school, they'd likely have taken a shot on him, but he'd lost his lateral quickness to the injury - he'd be Dleauge at best now.