Over the weekend, the outspoken owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, had a few sharp words for the NBA’s rule requiring players to be at least 19 and a year removed from high school before they can be eligible to play in the league. He said that the requirement is part of a flawed system, and isn’t the best way of serving aspiring young athletes. I thought that he made some great points.
The current system of recruiting high profile high school players year after year, just to see them come to college and play for only one season is bad for fans. The thing that really separates college from professional sports is the sense of community. The feeling that you’ve seen an athlete on campus, the feeling that you share a class with one of them and the knowledge that they go to the same school as you.
In professional sports, the sense of community between players and fans is much weaker, and that is why many prefer college sports. With the one and done rule, players are constantly coming and going, with little time to establish themselves and make meaningful connections on campus.
Players take classes oftentimes with no intention of graduating and aren’t even given a stipend for their expenses beyond room and board. Instead of telling distinguished basketball players that they must play in college for a year, they should go back to the old system of allowing them to go straight to the NBA, as superstars Kobe Bryant and LeBron James did. Some would argue that allowing players to turn professional right out of high school is bad because the players are too young and not mature enough to handle the league, but that can be managed. Nobody has an obligation to draft a player just because he is draft eligible, so a player perceived by teams as being immature would simply go undrafted. This system is already successfully in place with baseball, where players can go to the pros out of high school, but if they decide to go to college, they must stay for three years.
Reverting back to the old system would ensure that players who sign with a college are committed to joining that community and receiving an education. For the ones that don’t, they would have a direct route to the NBA, a place where they really want to be, and would’ve ended up all along.