If you’re an 18-year-old American basketball player, you have freedom of expression, but not freedom of profession. You live in a country where you are old enough to vote, but too young to put on an NBA uniform. You can full-court press as the oppressed.
The NBA’s age limit — a player must be at least 19 years old and one year removed from high school — has come under scrutiny once again, after Everett’s Nerlens Noel, the starting center at the University of Kentucky and putative No. 1 pick in the 2013 NBA draft, tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee Tuesday in a loss to Florida.
Comments
It always bothered me there was an age limit in the NBA. I thought it was placed there to restrain the economic earning power of young men of color just like in the NFL. If young men can enter the professional sports of baseball, hockey, tennis, golf, and others right out of high school why not those two leagues. The differing factor is the NFL and NBA are disporportionately represented by people of color and the other sports are not. If a team determines that someone has the physical skills to be an asset then they should be able to make a business decision. There are enough successful examples where athletes have made that transition. How many have washed out on the tennis tour and in baseball and hockey? Why no hue and cry to put age limits int hose sports? Hmmmm!
*Everything* draft related -- in *every* sport -- is to restrain the earning power of the draftees. Not as an end in itself, of course, but to further enrich the owners. As for Noel, if reports are accurate, instead of being a No. 1 overall pick, he will fall to somewhere else in the top 5. This season, the 1st year salary difference between #1 and #5 was roughly $1.4 million. $1.4 million is what John Calipari's houseboy sweeps up from between the couch cushions. But I wonder why Mr. Gasper thinks it's pocket change?
By all means, allow college players to be paid by colleges. They should also allow younger than 19 to go straight to the NBADL. The reason for the age ban is not to make sure that the players have gotten mature through college, but to stop the arms race and speculation of NBA teams. We want the #1 pick to be the best player, not some 16 year old that Danny Ainge has been scouting since he was 12.
Pats 83,
You see racial discrimination where I do not. What sense does such bias make? What good would such a policy, based on skin color, do? The purpose of the age limit is to keep kids where they belong - in school.
The rule doesn't need repeal because of Nerlens Noel, it needs repeal because of Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, as well as Robert Swift and Kwame Brown. Their life goal was to play in the NBA. Why deny it? They all earned enough money, yes, even Robert Swift, to pay for college if their careers didn't work out. So why take one year of a college scholarship and put yourself at injury risk? Take a look at this list: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_high_school_draftees
You know what they have in common? All of them made more money in their career than the total cost of a 4-year ride to the most expensive college in the country. And the vast majority played more than 5 years in the NBA. Kwame Brown has had a 12-year (and still going) NBA career. And who knows what Robert Swift might have been if he wasn't injured? But he's surely better off for being in the NBA when he was injured rather than college.