By Ellen J. Staurowsky
In 2005, the National Basketball Association (NBA) instituted a rule requiring U.S. men’s basketball players to have been out of high school for at least one year and be a minimum of 19 years of age before being eligible for the draft. Designed to block athletes from going into the NBA right after of high school, the rule has generally resulted in elite players attending college for one year and then entering the draft. Five years after the rule was adopted, NBA Commissioner David Stern has been advocating that the age limit be raised to 20 years (Bissinger, 2009; Isenberg, 2008).
Known in popular parlance as the “one and done” rule, this was the subject of a panel discussion at the College Sport Research Institute Conference at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill just a few weeks ago. Panelists included University of Maryland head men’s basketball coach, Gary Williams; former NBA player and now coach of the Lehigh Carbon Community College men’s basketball team Darryl Dawkins; Vermont Law School professor, Sports Illustrated contributor, and writer for the SportsLawblog, Michael McCann; Ken Tysiac, a reporter from the Charlotte Observer; and Shane Lyons, Associate Compliance Commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).
The college sport insiders on the panel (Williams and Lyons) argued for the rule on the basis that players going on into the NBA would benefit from at least a year in college, although Williams also suggested that NCAA amateurism rules should be altered to allow an athlete to enter the draft but return to college if they get passed over. The college sport outsiders (McCann and Tysiac) characterized the rule as a manipulation that served the interests of the NBA and NCAA but not the interests of the players themselves.
Darryl Dawkins, an athlete who had made the transition from high school into the NBA in 1975, offered insights that would support both sides. As one of 11 children growing up in a family of modest means, Dawkins believed his decision to go into the NBA was appropriate to his circumstances. While he did not go onto college, he did provide assistance for six of his brothers and sisters to do so. While acknowledging his own situation, Dawkins did express a belief that athletes would benefit from attending college, even if it was for one year only.
The controversy surrounding this rule emanates, in part, from the stance taken by David Stern, who has gone on record as saying, “This is not about the NCAA. This is not an enforcement of some social program. This is a business decision by the NBA “ (as reported in Isenberg, 2009). In effect, the decision renders the college basketball scene the primary place where potential NBA draftees can develop their skills.
As some have noted, there may also be a bit of altruism in the decision given growing awareness that an estimated 60% of NBA players are bankrupt within five years of retirement from the league (Bissinger, 2009; Torre, 2009). It would seem, however, that if the NBA were intent on remedying that problem, requiring athletes to wait a year before entering the league is a very indirect way to go about it. After all, nearly 80% of NFL players face a similar fate and they have more years of college education (Torre, 2009).
As Professor McCann pointed out in his remarks, the existing NBA rule ignores the fact that “athletes entering the NBA league directly out of high school are not only likely to do well in the NBA, but are likely to become better players than any other age group entering the league”. Notably, these players on average perform better in every major statistical category when compared to the average NBA player or the average NBA player of any age cohort. In support of his thesis, McCann studied high school basketball players who declared for the draft between the years 1975 through 2005. Of the 47 players identified, seven became superstars (Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard, LeBron James, Tracy McGrady, Germaine O’Neal, & Amar’e Stoudmire). Of the NBA draft classes of 2002 through 2005, in which 26 high school players were drafted, 20 were still playing through the 2008-2009 season.
In a 2006 article published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law, McCann further asserts that the NBA has increasingly sought to usurp player autonomy. He puts forward the idea that the NBA skillfully relies on media images that problematize their player workforce and cast professional basketball players as a group of employees who are “immature, out-of-control, and hopelessly uneducated” (p. 4).
If David Stern’s assertion that the decision is one based on the business interests of the NBA, the question of what economic motive the NBA has in regulating its workforce in this manner is instructive. As McCann (2004) notes, “Beyond excellence in performance, high school players can also earn substantially more over the course of their NBA careers, largely due to the brief, but steep career earnings-curve of professional basketball players, as well as collectively-bargained labor conditions concerning free agency. Strikingly, players who bypass college may earn as much as $100 million more over the course of their careers than had they earned a college diploma.”
Given the economic downturn, what might the financial impact on players be if the age limit is extended from 19 to 20 years of age? And what would this move suggest about the integrity of the arguments used to implement the age restriction to begin with?
References
Bissinger, B. (2009, October 27). Bring back basketball’s little big men. The New York Times.
Retrieved May 2, 2010 at
Isenberg, M. (2008). Starting points to a solution: Amateur reform, frost ineligibility.
Basketball Times. Retrieved May 2, 2010 at
http://www.moneyplayersblog.com/blog/amateurism/
McCann, M. (2004). Illegal defense: The irrational economics of banning high school players from the NBA draft. Virginia Sports & Entertainment Law Journal 3, pp. 113. Retrieved
May 2, 2010 at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=567745
McCann, M. (2006). The reckless pursuit of dominion: A situational analysis of the NBA and
diminishing player autonomy. University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law.
Torre, P. (2009, March 23). How (and why) athletes go broke. Sports Illustrated 110 (12), n.p.
Retrieved May 2, 2010 at http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1153364/index.htm
Ellen J. Staurowsky is professor and graduate chair in the Department of Sport Management & Media at Ithaca College.
