Likely First Round Pick Jake LaRavia Had To Convince NBA Front Office People That Google Was Lying About How Old He Is

[Source] - After declaring for the 2022 NBA Draft, LaRavia noticed that he was incorrectly listed as 22 years old by some prominent media outlets. In reality, LaRavia is only 20 years old, as he was born on Nov. 3, 2001. But after one site published this error, it spread around the internet. Eventually, even Google showed the wrong age for LaRavia.

“I was getting a bunch of people hitting me up like, 'Jake, you're 22?' So, I looked it up on Google, like, ‘How old is Jake LaRavia?’ and it said 22. I was like, ‘Alright, we gotta get this fixed.’

When NBA executives thought LaRavia was 22, he was being projected as a mid-to-late second-round pick (with some projecting him to go undrafted). Now, many mock drafts have LaRavia as a first-rounder (with some projecting him to go as high as No. 20 overall).

Some teams knew of LaRavia's real age (and obviously didn't say anything), but most thought he was 22 years old. Believe it or not, one team actually told LaRavia's camp that they were disappointed to learn he was only 20 years old and subsequently showed less interest, for some reason.

Alright, what is this fake news bullshit? How do you just not have the right age? I know it's pretty simple for someone to mess it up by 2 years but after the Buddy Hield saga, you'd think they'd make sure that everything was right. I also know that this is part of his stock rising which isn't necessarily true: 

LaRavia is damn good and will have a spot in the NBA because of his ability to shoot. Also sort of crazy that he just spent 1 year at Wake after transferring from Indiana State. Almost like transferring is good for players! But that's not the point. I'm on the soapbox of how do you have an entire scouting department, an entire agency, whatever on both sides and not have his age right. 

If he's actually not 20 this is just job interviewing 101. Lie about what you can do. Everyone is proficient in Excel, Word and PowerPoint until you actually have to be. Everyone hypes up how much responsibility they had at their old job. It's always like 'procured, sealed and planned shipping for 100s of units a day' when the previous job was a delivery driver. Part of me wants it to go the other way where he's actually 22 and convinced everyone Google was wrong.