Jermaine O'Neal has thrown the volatile race card on a smoldering fire, and now the NBA age-limit issue is flaming more than it ever has. David Stern is pushing for a 20-year-old minimum in the NBA, and O'Neal called it a racist policy. Before the Pacers center opened his mouth, the main opposition to such a limit was the Players Association. The NBPA believes that owners want to pass this policy to avoid paying players for an extra two years. Basically this would threaten the players' earning potential, and when that happens, you know Union President Billy Hunter's Batphone goes off.
And since the "we want to make more money" argument is not too PR-friendly, the argument that the Players Association and O'Neal will offer you is that every other sport (except football) does not impose an age limit. Baseball and hockey players can be drafted right out of high school. Hell, some women tennis pros get their start at 14.
O'Neal sees this and his gears start turning, and concludes that since basketball has more black players than all the other sports, the age limit must have racial motivation. He even managed to throw the word "unconstitutional" in his rant. There is your case for college. Jermaine, if you don't get extra cheese on your Whopper, it's not unconstitutional.
Other than money (and some ridiculous accusations about race), there are some other factors that make imposing an age limit debatable. A lot of people believe that it would be unfair to underprivileged kids with a shot at making the league.
The NBA is not a public service though. It is not the league's responsibility to bail kids out of poverty. These players should feel very fortunate that they have an opportunity to make millions and improve their families' situations. Not only that, but basketball also gives them a chance to go to college to improve themselves and their families. Under the current policy, more kids have blown their college education for the chance of becoming instant millionaires. An age limit might at least slow down that process.
Then there is Leon Smith. Leon Smith was drafted straight from high school with the last pick of the 1999 Draft, and was signed by the Dallas Mavericks. After his first NBA practice, Smith refused to run sprints and stormed out of practice. Later that year in November, Smith was hospitalized after he was found half-conscious in his apartment with his face painted green. He had ingested more than 200 aspirin, and tried to convince authorities that he was "an Indian fighting Columbus."
Not every 18-year-old out of high school is mentally ready for the NBA, and Leon Smith is the poster child for that. It is an extreme case, but an age limit would at least allow for a few more years to allow these kids to mature emotionally.
In his diatribe, Jermaine O'Neal also pointed out that the last two Rookies-of-the-Year, LeBron James and Amare Stoudamire, came right out of high school. If Stern's age limit were in place, neither of those players would have even played a game in the league yet. O'Neal sees this as counterproductive to the league, but in all honesty, who cares if LeBron wins Rookie-of-the-Year in 2004 or in 2006? All it would do for the NBA is make the fans wait another two years. That would only heighten the anticipation for these young phenoms.
Its effect on the college game cannot be underestimated either. An age limit would return a lot of stability and star power that has been missing from the college level in the last 10 years. You would have a lot more Carolina-esque teams out there, and that makes for great basketball.
An age limit would also help out the perennial lottery teams (or as Craig Sager might call them, "the veterans of the lottery process"). With the best players coming out younger and younger, the draft has turned into a crap shoot. Instead of being about immediate help (like the NFL Draft), it has become a draft about potential. No one is really sure if Josh Smith is going to be Kobe Bryant or Jonathan Bender. A couple of bad guesses in a row, and a team like the Hawks could stay in the basement for a while.
Above all though, David Stern is a business man, and his motives are always to improve the overall product of basketball. Stern is not interested in giving poor kids a golden ticket, nor does he care about educating kids or improving the college game. His main concern with this issue is primarily about image.
While you can debate whether or not high school players have destroyed fundamentals and hurt the overall quality of play in the league, you cannot argue that the NBA's image has suffered. That is what Stern wants to change. The image of the NBA as being run by a bunch of self-entitled, uneducated brats who don't speak properly and don't exactly exude a lot of class is what Stern wants to affect. To paraphrase Dean Rooney in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," Stern is probably thinking, "The last thing I need is five hundred Ron Artest disciples running around these courts."
A lot of fans from the days of Bird and Magic have been turned off by the amount of dogging and hot-dogging by the young kids. You hear all the time about the death of the mid-range jumper. There has been a trade of fundamentals for raw-talent, and that has hurt the league's image, and thus its overall product.
So you can talk all you want about racism and trying to help out underprivileged kids. You could try to explain the Bill of Rights to Jermaine O'Neal. The age limit issue boils down to improving the league's declining image. If Stern is this interested, you know it is all about that bottom line.
Dennis Doyle is a senior majoring in engineering. He can be reached at Dennis.Doyle@tufts.edu.
