Enough Already With the Draft Rules…

Kobe Bryant sets the standard of excellence for all NBA players, and not just high-school draftees.

I always thought that the David Stern and all the owners and shareholders of NBA teams – including the general public that can afford to have a meaningful voice – are all full of crap when it came to the 2005 changing of the NBA Draft rules.

Now, I understand the basic arguments around the “no high-schoolers” rule.  Supposedly, the NBA wants more polished products coming into the league.  Apparently, the proponents of this philosophy need to read my “Why is This Guy in the NBA?” post – the only straight-out-of-high-school guy on that list is the dreaded Kwame Brown.  But the NBA is full of bench-warming, minimally talented guys (by NBA standards) who were good college players.  It is also full of guys that skipped college and didn’t progress at all to become true NBA caliber players.

But one thing that cannot be denied is that the overall level of athleticism is at an all-time high – partially because of these raw, talented players with abundant physical gifts.  An these gifts allow the spectacular plays to happen – the ones that we are emailing our boys about an asking them if they saw it.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to pay to see 10 guys on the court who have the same physical abilities as me.  I want to see 10 guys that can each do a tomahawk dunk – and yes, that includes the point guards, too.

But on the back of that came this rule from the NCAA - which is deemed to be beneficial to the recruiting efforts of college programs.  This allows institutions to receive a quicker confirmation regarding players who have declared for the draft.

Now, maybe it’s just me…but if I can know who’s gonna go pro after the previous college season, I’m sure the academic institutions with mage dollars to spend should be able to figure it out.  Also, there’s may sites like www.nbadraft.net that give consistent information on potential draftees and has a continually updated mock draft on the site.  And if you’re a college player and you see your name on the list, particularly in the first round, you are probably not going to pass up that cheese.  Therefore, from an NBA perspective you’ll get some rushed decisions – in both directions perhaps – which in the NBA’s eyes would hurt the overall polish of the game.

For me the solution has always been easy…for three reasons:

1. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  I didn’t feel that anything was broken.  The NBA is at an all-time high for competitiveness, and it’s superstars transcend the stars of all other sports.  If I were commissioner, that would be more than enough for me.
2. If other sports can draft without limits on age, education, etc, it should be the same for the NBA.  I’d really love to see the statistics that support the fact that the NBA is doing worse since 1995 (Kevin Garnett’s draft year) than it has in the years prior.
3. If a team wants to take a chance on what they think is a talented player, they should be able to do so.  They should not have that decision taken away from them.

So, when you mix that in with the new dress code standard that was implemented in 2005, there’s almost the sense of an attempt to de-colorized the league.  If you look at the list of “excluded items” within the code, they basically represent hip-hop culture and fashion.

So, my question becomes…

Who is it that doesn’t like the influence of hip-hop/ black culture?  And why did this person (people) decide to pull the stings that he/she/they did?

Now – on the heels of LeBron James’ disappointing Game 5 performance in the 2010 Eastern Conference Semifinals – we’ve got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar coming out with his idea that the minimun NBA entry age should be 21.

Should he be listened to?  No way.  This is a guy with a different motivation – one that stems from the fact that his records will possibly be eclipsed one day.  The NBA has already assured us that there will be no more LeBrons, Kobes or Tracys in the future – and here’s Lew (his momma calls him Lew, so I’mma call him Lew) trying to shave another two years off of the career of potential players.  That’s some serious dollars that would be taken away from these athletes just to protect his legacy, and reaffirm people’s idea of what the NBA “should” be like. 

Over the past few of years, have we seen any of the anticipated “improved play” from prohibiting players to enter the draft until their 19th birthday?  Lew even had the nerve to say that LeBron would have benefitted from two years of college, claiming that:

“He would have come into the professional ranks very polished, given his innate gifts. Having to go through a college system would have made him a total gem as soon as he stepped out of the college ranks.” 

Hey, Lew?  The guy averaged 27-7-7 in his second year in the league.  I’d think that would have qualified him as a total gem. 

I say enough is enough.  It’s time that we just stop messing with these potential young Black millionaires.

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