Last season, NBA commissioner David Stern finally got his age limit. A player now needs to be at least 19 years of age or a year out of high school before being eligible for the NBA Draft.
While this change has certainly been a disappointment to some of the top young players around the nation, it has been a boon to the quality of play at the college level, and the benefits are already evident in this young season. As exciting as college basketball is annually, the various defections by so many of the top high school recruits to the NBA Draft in recent years have lowered the quality of play.
However, the new rules should combat this trend. Although there will be a fair share of players who stay for one year before jumping to the NBA, as Carmelo Anthony did, the mere presence of these talented players will help the game.
For every Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, there are countless more draft busts like Jonathan Bender or high school players who declare for the draft and fail to even get selected. Those undrafted players will generally try to work their way up from the D-League or play overseas in an effort to grab the attention of an NBA squad. However, players who left high school straight for the draft rarely achieve this goal.
The lure of big bucks often pushes undecided high school players into the draft, and the financial opportunities for these players, who often come from disadvantaged backgrounds, stand as a major source of opposition to the age limit.
But this argument is fundamentally flawed. The nation's top high school recruits are courted by college basketball programs all over the country whose offers almost always come with a full scholarship. Full rides alleviate much of the burden from players with financial challenges.
And on a skills level, it gives these players at least one year of tutelage from some of the best minds in the game as well as a chance to hone their skills, add some muscle in state-of-the-art college weight rooms and play against top talent in preparation for the jump to the pros. This extra year may yield players that otherwise would have gone undrafted in NBA shape and may lead to an increase in the percentage of top high school recruits who are ultimately drafted.
While the age limit's effect on the quality of NBA rookies may take a few years to pan out, it is already starting to pay dividends in the college game. Several freshmen have lived up to the hype so far and have shown that they have the potential to be truly great NBA players.
Leading the pack is forward Kevin Durant of Texas. He is averaging 22.4 points and 10 boards a game and is as versatile as analysts said he would be. He can shoot from anywhere on the floor, take the ball to the basket, rebound and defend. While he has shown his youth at times, like his passive second-half performance in a loss to Michigan State, he has done much to fill the void left by the departure of LaMarcus Aldridge, P.J. Tucker and Daniel Gibson this past season.
Then there is Greg Oden, the most talked-about college recruit in years, despite the fact that he won't play in a regular-season game for several weeks. He is reminiscent of Tim Duncan or Kevin Garnett and will most likely be the first choice in the 2007 draft if he chooses to leave Ohio State. Ty Lawson and Brandan Wright, the two most talented members of North Carolina's stellar freshmen class, are worthy of mention, among other impressive first-year players.
While not universally loved, the draft restrictions will prove to be a mutually beneficial rule for both the nation's best young players and the overall college game. As more top recruiting classes commit to schools around the nation in the coming years, the college game will only get better.
