There was a meeting of the minds in San Antonio that caused plenty of stirring Monday hours before Kansas hung on in overtime to beat Memphis for the NCAA title. When NBA commissioner David Stern and NCAA president Myles Brand convened to announce a joint attempt at sand-blasting the corruption from youth basketball, the obvious buzz took on legs afterward.
Can the NBA change the rule that just went into effect with the last Collective Bargaining Agreement – that players cannot enter the draft until their class has been in college two years instead of one?
Not without the consent of players association it can’t … and considering what happened during the last CBA negotiations, it isn’t likely to happen without a fight come the summer of 2011 when the present agreement ends.
Of course Brand would love to guarantee that the top drawer players would compete another year in the NCAA. But he has no say in the matter. It’s all up to Stern and the NBPA.
That’s not to say it doesn’t make sense to do and that Stern wouldn’t prefer that. Going into the last bargaining session, he did want to raise the age limit from 18 to 20 initially, but had to settle for 19 when the NBPA wouldn’t bite on it. They weren’t particularly thrilled with 19 either, but took it as a concession for an expanded salary cap. And why the NBPA won’t agree to it isn’t quite clear in the big picture if you look at what is best for the entire constituency.
Granted, giving a 19-year-old, or even an 18-year-old, the opportunity to earn a lucrative living in the NBA if he has the talent and is wanted is logical, legal and fits in with what goes on in every other professional sport except for the NFL. And because of the necessary physical development and the violence of the game, the NFL gets a free pass on this one. So the NBA players believe everyone should have the opportunity.
OK, we’ll buy that angle.
Being into geometry, let’s take another slant. Just consider the possibility of the six to 10 players a year who come out early and make a team are forced to play another year on the collegiate level. Not only would it give the players another year of physical and emotional development, it would create another six to 10 jobs for NBA veterans who otherwise are forced to play ball overseas, try one of the struggling U.S. minor leagues or find another means to make a living other than ballin’.
The latter seems far more logical in the big picture of the NBPA despite the overwhelming majority favoring no more than a 19-year-old limit.
Meanwhile, there are a lot reasons why so many young players entering the league had a negative impact, even dating to Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady, all of whom could have used a year or two in college. Obviously, that trio became superstars … but what about the early birds that didn’t?
It frustrated so many of the top basketball minds in the NBA. Men like Jerry West and Larry Brown continued to be distressed over how the NBA had become too much of a developmental league as opposed to getting young players who were finished products – at least with regard to the fundamentals of the game. There were too many young, super athletes coming into the league believing basketball was just about reverse dunks and chucking up 3-pointers instead of moving with the ball, moving without the ball, passing and defending.
As far-fetched as it may be, this is an admirable attempt by Stern and Brand to clean up the mess that now starts when kids are identified in middle school as special talents and showered with shoes and warmups and anything else that will help a particular ilk of salesman and booster get into the hearts of minds of kids and their parents.
It seems an impossible task for the NBA and NCAA, but nobody can fault them for trying. The problem is the same reason why the NBPA won’t agree to raising the age limit, and it has nothing to do with basketball.
Money.
It’s all about as many people making as much money from the game as possible. The odds of the age limit going up in the NBA are very slim at best. The probability of the NBA and NCAA eliminating the sleaze from youth basketball isn’t great either. But this is a great first step toward allowing the kids to focus on the game and not the ancilliary financial gains at least until they’re old enough to vote.
