NEWS: Sweaty Pursuits: Young Adults Just Wanna Ball Now

CULTURE: Sweaty Pursuits: Young Adults Just Wanna Ball Now

Once ladies turn 18, they can drop their drawers and get featured on this site. Conversely, guy basketball players the same age who are ready to be fitted for NBA uniforms must wait 12 months to pursue their partially-clothed dreams. Why can't they just go to work? The league currently mandates that potential draftees have to be 19-years old and out of high school for one year, a regulation which is wasting more young people's talent than the Nintendo Wii and glue huffing combined.



The Association's rule means 18-year olds are eligible for the military draft but not the basketball one. As for a more minor hypocrisy, it leads to a situation where passing up the sham of college basketball is no longer an option. That's despite everyone on earth knowing some exceptional competitors will bail before reaching sophomore status.



While the regulation is partly designed to ensure players are sufficiently trained for the pros, that's no help to those who can compete now. LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Garnett are just some of the players who whoop opponents' hides despite having zero combined college credits to their names. They were all lucky enough to bolt from high school before the decree went into effect after the 2005-06 season.



The league also fears that high schoolers would be enticed by money and fame -- would they prefer enticement by something else? Many may be deluded into thinking they're going to be one of few superstars, but in that regard they're no different than any tone-deaf douchebag who camps out for weeks to get an American Idol audition. More importantly, those who shouldn't have entered the draft after prom only hurt themselves. People have to be allowed to screw up their own lives.



Take Kwame Brown, the first first overall pick nabbed straight out of high school. He has been a slacker of a bum over eight seasons on four teams, and he could have undoubtedly used some study time to refine his technique. But that's his mistake to have made. Blame then-Washington Wizards team president Michael Jordan for seeing something worthwhile in Brown, even if only because it's fun to know that Nike's biggest bitch is capable of screwing up.



The statute is the work of condescending pricks who think they know what's best for talented kids. This league decided that players just old enough to buy cigarettes were ruining the game; sadly, the union went along, grudgingly accepting the rule in exchange for a few salary cap concessions. The players let themselves get bullied to the detriment of future players.



In fact, by forcing kids into college, the NBA just encouraged one kid to leave high school early. San Diego whippersnapper Jeremy Tyler is taking his 11th grade education abroad: the precocious basketballer recently made news by announcing he'll drop out of high school to spend two years in a European pro league. He'll get better while making money playing in a different hemisphere. Tyler is making the most of being forced to rot in purgatory. He's cleverly circumventing an ass-pain of an obstacle that needs obliterating.



For now, they're just postponing opportunity. One of basketball's chief virtues is its simplicity, which translates into affordability. In practice, that means kids without front lawns have easy access to the sport. It's the perfect game for phenomenal athletes starting off with limited resources.



The most exceptional of those used to be able to escape once they finished high school, but they're presently being kept poor for 12 months longer. Of course, the NBA has the right to push for rules it wants. And observers have the right to say the rules are garbage.



The age restriction is absurd. Teams previously had the power to stop the flow of unready 18-year-olds into the league: just don't draft unready 18-year-olds, dummies. Couldn't general managers just stop taking flyers on every over-hyped high school kid? They're big on promoting, and not executing, self-control.



The central purpose of college is to prepare for life after college. That includes finding a trade where one can make rent and hopefully buy nice things. But sometimes our young people can find gainful employment without mutually groping a fellow tipsy undergrad in a dorm room, puking on the quad, or participating in any other freshman year experience.



That's especially true for those capable of entering the field of pro athletics. Some elite, youthful athletes know that enrolling in 13th grade isn't necessarily necessary. But they're still basically forced to idle on campus just because others entered the game early in the past and sucked at it.



They're paying for the ineptitude of the world's Kwames. Besides, if the NBA thinks 18-year-olds are too dumb to decide what path they should choose, how would the same new adults be smart enough to do well at university?





Anthony Bialy is SG's no-jocks-required Sweaty Pursuits sports columnist. He follows sports religiously even though he's quite bad at them. He ran cross country and played rugby in college, and was horrid at both. He schedules his life around his favorite NHL team's games, and sadly lists his alma mater winning the NCAA basketball championship as his happiest moment. He likes other things besides sports, too, and requests a minute to think of them.

So you don't think a trade organization has the right to decide on their own employment standards?

The theory is that scholar-athletes are "scholar"-athletes and thus even if they lose their athletic skills, they'll still have a college degree to fall back on.

Where I went to school, the mens' football and basketball players were athletes first and not much of scholars, since they were coddled, babied, pampered, and spoiled. I doubt 80% of them did any of their actual work themselves, since graduate assistants usually were the ones who completed their assignments for class. And those who didn't play ball, like professors and other school officials were threatened with termination. College sports, particularly in Division I are big business. Why would they want to lose all that money from TV contacts, bowl games, and marketing revenue?

But what discourages me is that these kids are being told in all this is that it doesn't matter if they don't know anything, have no marketable skills whatsoever, and wasted four years learning nothing but how to play their position. This is when our insatiable desire for entertainment is to blame. Why do we pay so much to be entertained?

Enough is enough. There is no reason why a pro athlete should make millions of dollars a year to play a child's game. Whether they go to college or leave for the pros at high school is completely irrelevant. They're being treated like gladiators and deified so long as they can produce on game day. Assuming they ever get hurt or can't hack it, they are nothing. They're just a has-been.

It's a sad commentary on all of us.

Depends.

If they said the NBA was "whites only" I doubt you'd applaud.

Also, this is in the damned article!!

I agree with this article totally. If Bill Gates drops out of college to start his business, there's nothing wrong with that. If Lebron James leaves highschool for basically the same reason: where is the harm? He has already hit the pinnacle of his profession.

Shhhh... He is watching:

I did nothing for four years except learn how to do my stupid art, why is my college experience better or more valid than their's? why are sports less valid a career or life choice than being a sculptor? Should authors get paid less for writing because its "just entertainment"? that's a random judgment call to make to decide that a career in sports is somehow less valid than, say, a communications degree.

The reason they get paid millions of dollars is because the owners make millions off of their play. in a free market system, the market decides how much something like tickets cost and as long as they make money off of tickets and merch and tv deals and the like, the players deserve a large share of that since they are the product. the rest of that quote can be used to describe, say, journalists or authors or painters or anyone else who has a skill based job. its no different.

There's a difference here. the first is that bill gates wasnt being employed by anyone else, he was doing it for himself. lebron needs the permission of the players union to play in the league and if he doesnt meet their standards they can prevent him from playing.

now, personally, i think that the rule for basketball should be either two or three years (football is three) because it improves the product that both the NCAA and the NBA are putting forward by providing more training at the lower levels. i don't see it as any different from the minor leagues in baseball or hockey (except they dont get paid, which i also have issue with).

Maybe you don't follow basketball? I don't know why you'd bring up the baseball or hockey minor leagues here, since both of those take players who aren't even 18! Second, there is already a basketball minor league, and they aren't allowed draft to players under 19 (which the point of the whole article). There is also no "one year of college" rule, since the rule states that you only have to be 19 and out of high school for a year, hence the kid who is dropping out of high school to play hoops in Europe before going to the NBA (if he ever does).

Last, you seem to be arguing that the NBA has a right to do this. They very well might (I believe that there might be a legal way to challenge it, but I'm not a labor expert, so I'm not going to argue it, because that's not the point here), but I'm pointing out that it is a silly rule, and one that goes against the spirit of everything you said in your response to Carbaretic. I also don't think that it does little or nothing to improve the play in college or the pros.

actually, i follow basketball quite closely, and calling the d-league a minor league is pretty ridiculous. almost none of the players ever get called up to play in the bigs. the european leagues are much much much closer to a minor league except they pay a lot better than, say, a baseball or hockey minor league deal does. i was under the impression that there was no draft for d-league. in chicago there are open try-outs for the team and they take whoever makes it.

Well, pretty much every coach agrees that more college ball for the kids is better for both the ncaa and the nba because they get more experience, more practice, and you get a better idea of what kind of player they are the more they play. most of the nba coaches who have commented on it want there to be the same rule for the nba as there is for the nfl, but its not going to happen any time soon.

and there really isnt a way to challege it because the maurice claret case set a precedent for an athletic league and players union to set age requirements on entrants into the draft. at this point, i'm not sure what new evidence could be provided to over turn that ruling.

and it really doesnt matter if its a silly rule, the nba looked at the product they were putting out was inferior to what it used to be and took measures to improve what they were putting out. david stern talked at length about how drafting unproven high school players was hurting the quality of the nba and that he hoped this would improve the game.

the other thing they're talking about now is changing the rule to "you can get drafted out of high school, but if you decide to go to college you have to stay for 4 years," which would be interesting.

one question: Who are the 5 best players in the NBA?

Again, I 'm not saying that the league (really the union) doesn't have the right to set up these rules, I just find them ridiculous and almost totally arbitrary. why 19? Why not 20? Why any age limit? Should they force players to retire at 35?

The idea that the league has suffered because of high school players just isn't supported by a single fact. Nor has the NCAA improved as a result of the new rule.