I’m with Stern, Phil Jackson and countless other NBA old heads on this one. Make it a two-and-done minimum. Force kids to stay in school for at least two years before they can go pro.
It would be infinitely better for the college game to have two years of certainty with every recruit and would likewise send players to the big leagues when they’re in a better place developmentally to handle it. Kobe and Rashard and Bynum undoubtedly learned the nuances of the pro game at a faster rate by getting to the NBA so quickly, but spending two years on a campus somewhere is almost always going to be a handy bonus when it comes to stepping into adulthood.
I know this is where some of you will scream about how unconstitutional it is to tell an 18-year-old kid that he can’t earn a living if he so chooses, but businesses everywhere impose these kinds of restrictions. Just one example: I was fortunate enough to land my first paid newspaper position as a 16-year-old, but it was a (very modest) part-time gig. No newspaper in the country would have hired me full-time without a college degree, even though I had built up six years of supposed seasoning by the time I walked away from the hallowed halls of Cal State Fullerton.
The example Stern loves to give is that it doesn’t matter if you “know” how to drive a car at 13 or 14. You can’t score an actual driver’s license until you’re 16. Age limits and other prerequisites, however unfair they might seem, are enforced all over the place at every stage of our lives.
It put Greg Oden and Kevin Durant on campus and in college uniforms for one season, and that was fun. But it also pushed O.J. Mayo and Derrick Rose into situations they seemingly had no interest in, resulting in ongoing scandals at USC and Memphis.
It has forced non-students and pseudo-professionals to feign scholarship and amateurism for one season on campus, cheapening the college experience in general and college basketball specifically.
“The reality is, basketball is their career and their business,” said New York Panthers AAU coach Gary Charles, who has coached Stephenson on occasion and seen his rise through the ranks. “In the real world, if someone wants to work at 18, they can do it.
“All of us know which kids are only going to do a year [of college]. If they pass the first semester, they don’t really have to do anything in the second semester. I think 98 percent of kids should go to college, but the ones ready to go, let ‘em go. Let’s just stop the fallacy.”
The college game has a better product by having these guys for a season, but the collateral damage is significant. One-and-done college players are capable of more harm than good.
To believe otherwise is to steep yourself in denial.
June 24th, 2009 at 8:37 am
Mr. Stein needs to recognize is that the NBA age-limit is a convenient way for punk-ass NBA owners to save themselves from the bad decisions THEY make.
Here’s how the straight-to-the-NBA thing got started up again. Kevin Garnett was likely going to have to sit out a year for Prop 48 because his grades might not have allowed him to play big-time ball. So…..he went pro. Now, four NBA GM’s watched the kid’s HS tape, they got to work him out individually or have access to that tape, they got to interview him in person, and they saw him play against HS All-Stars. Those four GM’s passed on him probably because he WAS a high schooler.
The Timberwolves drafted Garnett and signed him. Got him on the court, and it turned out he was a hardworking guy with freakish athletic ability and some pretty good skills. Sure, the jumpshot needed work, but even Michael Jordan’s jumpshot needed work in the pros and he was coached by Dean Frickin’ Smith.
The four GM’s and teams that passed on Garnett? They got the gas face because, well, they were ignorant in the face of facts: they passed on a guy because he was a high school player and this is where the NBA got into trouble: every GM in the league that didn’t have a Kevin Garnett tried to get their own. So then you get Korleone Young, Leon Smith, Taj McDavid and Kwame Brown and they are supposed to be what “ruined the league.” PUH-LEASE.
A high school player with marginal talent that gets drafted can only do that if someone in a suit that poses as a basketball expert makes it so. These kids don’t draft themselves. If you were in business and you sold your wares for less than your production cost and you had an MBA from Harvard that makes you just as stupid as a huckster on a street corner selling fake Rolexes for less than what he paid for them. Hello?
I don’t blame the HS kids for being immature or not panning out. Because they are high school talents. I blame the jerk posing as a NBA front office official for his mistake and not knowing the difference between Kobe Bryant and Korleone Young. Because not everyone can be Kobe or LeBron. But if the guys that are NBA GM’s can’t figure that one out, that’s on them.