Alright, to put it another way, people *in this game* will pay for rookies what they will be worth once they're trained since they can see the maximum potential in a player. If in the NBA team owners could see that Kobe was going to be a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame and able to easily lead his team to championships after a few seasons of training would he have been signed for more? I'd argue that any team that possibly could have would have taken the loss during training years and signed the man for 10s of millions a year to lock that kind of talent on their team. Since in BB you *can* see that potential, players go for what they will be worth.
Eddy Curry has potential,but he didn't lived up the expectation,and the same happens for a lot of other players.So while it's normal that a rookie with all the possibilites to became a top player worth a lot of money,it's not normal that they worth as the top existent players,because it can happen that for wrong training,or bad injuries,the player fail to reach the top level
In 1996 Kobe worth as Vlade Divac,that was a very good player at the time,but he didn't worth as Micheal Jordan,because while the Lakers could see Kobe potential,they weren't sure that he would have developed to reach the level of the strongest player in the NBA at time
Then Kobe almost reached Jordan's level,but it takes time and training and also loss to do that