After careful consideration and discussion with my roommate, I have decided that the NBA needs to instate minimum age requirements for players entering the draft.
While anyone can point out that some of the league’s superstars, like Rockets guard Tracy McGrady or Lakers guard Kobe Bryant, might not be where they are today had they not come straight from high school onto the professional scene, the majority of these still-maturing athletes are riding their egos to insignificant and reduced-length careers.
For the last four years, a high school sensation has taken the spotlight at the NBA draft, earning the No. 1 pick over proven collegiate veterans. Most recently, the Magic picked up power forward Dwight Howard, a high school prospect, over Connecticut All-American Emeka Okafor. In the 2004 NBA draft, eight of the first 19 picks made were high school graduates who had decided to bypass collegiate basketball in favor of professional seven-figure contracts.
What are most of these players really bringing to the game? They are told that they will be superstars like Kobe, and that if they go straight into the NBA, they will get shoe deals like Cavaliers forward LeBron James. But how many of these guys actually achieve that status? How many of the eight 2004 draft picks do you know by name?
The NFL has a 21-year-old minimum age requisite for entering the draft. This is more a result of the drastic differences in size between a big high school player and the average NFL player, but the policy benefits the sport beyond its rationale: It keeps college sports interesting.
NCAA men’s basketball is not what it was before the NBA draft started picking out the premiere athletes. This never seems to be a problem when collegiate football bowl games start being played, because the collegiate arena becomes a sort of proving ground for the next generation of potential superstars. It’s a much-needed middle step between playing on a court against the boys and being ready to challenge the men.
Without a mandatory minimum age to enter the NBA draft, more and more basketball players who see themselves playing professionally try to meet that challenge prematurely, thereby stunting their long-term achievements in favor of a short-term contract.
Even collegiate institutions with high-profile basketball programs, which are generally considered totally impressive for athletes to join, cannot offer anything close to a professional contract. A full-ride athletic scholarship to a top-ranked school just doesn’t match up against exorbitant sums of cash.
Take, for example, Clippers point guard Shaun Livingston, who was the first-round, No. 4 pick in the 2004 NBA draft. In November 2003, then-high school senior Livingston signed a national letter of intent to attend Duke and to play for head coach Mike Krzyzewski, only to go back on his resolution before the June 24 draft, signing an $8.1 million contract with the Clippers.
I don’t see a problem with allowing young talent to compete at the highest possible level, but I think that encouraging high school athletes to set their sights on an NBA career before they turn 19 is absurd. Even if only a handful of the draft picks are high school kids relative to the number of collegiate players who go professional, they are the top 1 percent. Everyone knows that they are the best of the best, so anything less doesn’t register as admirable.
Mandating a minimum age requirement, hypothetically 20 years old, would guarantee that collegiate basketball still have the privilege of playing host to the nation’s best young athletes before they become basketball legends. It would also allow players ample time to mature as adults before starting a professional career — while simultaneously bolstering NCAA basketball — thus capitalizing on publicity and producing a greater following for those players as they earn their fame.
