Pop Quiz: Which of these athletes could you spot in a lineup? Lebron James, Lenny Cooke, O.J. Mayo.
Okay, if you're one-for-three I'm not that surprised. The other two names may not be so familiar, but along with Lebron, they will both undoubtedly be mentioned in connection with NBA commissioner David Stern's recent announcement that he will bid to impose an NBA draft age minimum of 20.
Lebron James is a perfect argument against an age limit. I remember during my sophomore year in high school being persuaded by one of my friends to go watch some Akron-area freshman compete in a regional final basketball game in Canton, Ohio. After personally coming to grips with driving 30 minutes solely to watch a player younger than myself play, I agreed to make the trek.
I left the gym that day thinking one thing: How could a 16-year-old boy possibly have the body of Terrell Owens and the athleticism of ... well, nobody I'd ever seen? Even as a freshman, he was a man amongst boys. It was obvious to everyone in the gym. So what are players like Lebron James to do? They are ready to be the best players on the planet at age 18. After all, nobody told little Freddie Adu to wait six years to play in the MLS.
This year's All-Star Game proved that high school players are succeeding in the league: Seven of this year's participants made the jump from high school. A classic libertarian argument also seems to apply. Why should someone be prevented from benefiting from a valuable commodity that he possesses simply because of his age? The fact that many of those who are able to make the jump to the NBA are in desperate financial situations only increases the clout of this argument.
There are, of course, some legitimate counterarguments. Enter Lenny Cooke. Cooke - a Bushwick, Brooklyn, native whose number of shattered glass backboards in his high school career (4) is greater than the grade levels he completed (3) - was the top high school player in the United States in 2001. At the end of his senior year, in which he did not play basketball because he had used up his eligibility, he was told that he was a lock to be a first-round selection in the NBA draft, to forgo his college eligibility and declare. This turned out to be advice he should not have taken. Cooke went undrafted and since he hadn't bothered to take the ACT or SAT, was no longer eligible for college athletics. Cooke, whose game was smoother than a Brian McKnight ballad, has not been heard from since.
Advocates for an age limit would argue that Cooke would never have had the disillusioned vision of teenage NBA stardom if he was forced to academically qualify for college and attend for a year or two. He would have tried harder in class and had a better opportunity to succeed in basketball and in life.
The quality of the college game would benefit immensely from the added talent pool if there were an age limit. The "watchability" for NBA fans would also increase, as viewers wouldn't have to wait six years to see the Jermaine O'Neals and Kwame Browns of the league reach their potential.
O'Neal, a high-school-to-NBA product himself, added to the debate last week when he argued that an age limit would be racist. It is true that there has only been one white American taken straight from high school (Robert Swift, in 2004), and thus the majority of the players affected would be black. Although O'Neal's argument is a legitimate one and worth investigation, I believe that Stern's actions are for the good of the league.
The value of an NBA franchise is not keeping pace with the growth of NFL or MLB frachinses. The NBA has been fighting a tidal wave of negitive publicity - fans are unhappy about high salaries and generally becoming more hostile towards players. Stern feels that an age limit could help remedy this.
Although there are definitely race issues involved, it is clearly an unfair card to play. It may be true that the quality of the game is not where it was 10 years ago, but that's the NBA's fault, not the early entrants'. In the end, the arguments against an age limit in the NBA outweigh the counterarguments.
So who is O.J. Mayo? Will you be wearing his NBA jersey and shoes and drinking his soda in two to four years? The verdict on that is still out.
Todd Kapostasy '07 is smoother than a Rob Thomas/Santana duet.
