Something About a Number

The NBA minimum age requirement is the kind of issue that makes one feel as though all that can possibly be said already has been said. Yet, as last week's news that the players' union may use the abolition of the rule as a bargaining chip proves, it is an issue that still requires some conversation.

When the current rule, which states that a player must be both 19 as of his draft year and that he must be one year removed from high school in order to be eligible for the draft, went into place in 2006, I was cautiously supportive. Although I was fully aware of the class and racial implications that made the issue so heated, and although I was (and still am) a very liberal fan and believer in giving more power to players, I had also seen a lot of heartbreaking career turns that I imagined could have been avoided had this rule been in place. I had seen Darius Miles let mediocrity frustrate him and turn him into a "difficult" player. I had seen Kwame Brown fail to develop at an NBA level and become selfish and, perhaps, delusional. I had seen Jonathan Bender underperform in every way imaginable. I had seen Eddy Curry get eaten alive by the pressures of fame, expectations, and medical issues.

Between those guys and the numerous prep-to-pros whose names you probably wouldn't even recognize, suffice it to say I thought a change could be good. The league was struggling to connect with an audience, trying too hard to connect to its past and frame the stars of the day as the stars of yesterday. Image was bad, even if it didn't have much reason to be, and David Stern is not one to ignore a fact like that. And even though LeBron, Kobe, KG and Dwight had proved that coming from high school could lead straight to stardom and success, it was hard for me not to think more about those guys from the last paragraph. So, I figured, let's encourage kids to go to college and see what else is out there, let's give them the opportunity to go overseas if college isn't their thing, let's make sure their heads are in the right place, not for Stern's benefit but for their own. I didn't want to see any more players fail without second options.

Now, with four full seasons with the rule in place having gone by, it would appear that the league is in a better place. The NBA was on the "front page" this whole summer, the quality of play is higher than it's been in a very long time, and there is a bevy of young stars that are helping create a new identity for the league while staying pretty much entirely out of trouble. Gilbert Arenas notwithstanding, it would be easy for one to think that the NBA has gotten to where it should be, that Stern's fantasy has come just about true.

It would be easy, but it would be wrong. The fact of the matter is that the NBA is still viewed with an air of suspicion and/or indifference by many Americans, even if the reasons they'd claim for their thoughts are of decreasing validity. Although the Miami-Boston season opener on TNT was the highest-rated regular season game of all time, if we take a look at the average Nielsen ratings for the last seven NBA Finals, we see that ratings haven't really gone up since the rule went into place, aside from last year's history-on-its-side Lakers-Celtics matchup:

ABC	2004	Detroit Pistons 4, Los Angeles Lakers 1	11.5
ABC	2005	San Antonio Spurs 4, Detroit Pistons 3	8.2
ABC	2006	Miami Heat 4, Dallas Mavericks 2	8.5
ABC	2007	San Antonio Spurs 4, Cleveland Cavaliers 0	6.2
ABC	2008	Boston Celtics 4, Los Angeles Lakers 2	9.3
ABC	2009	Los Angeles Lakers 4, Orlando Magic 1	8.4
ABC	2010	Los Angeles Lakers 4, Boston Celtics 3	10.6

And while these numbers are nothing to be upset about, they do not display the sort of mainstream audience gain that, in this writer's opinion, stands as the primary motivation for many of Stern's rule changes in the last several years. What he and the owners need to understand is that their American audience--as opposed to the international one--hasn't changed much in recent history, and it's not likely to. And what does the audience look like? Well, of course it is more Black than most other sports (but not the NFL). It is also one of the most politically liberal audiences out of any American sport, as pointed out by a fascinating article on the Hotline from earlier this year. And although liberals tend to value higher education, I think it's also reasonable to say that they would be likely to support a poor athlete's desire to begin making money without being told by those with power that he must adhere to a strict pattern.

This is all to say that I simply can't understand who, at this point, Stern thinks he's serving by keeping this rule in place. Not the fans, who are forced to wait to see young, exciting players begin their time in the league. Not the players, who risk spending valuable healthy time playing for free. And, seemingly, not the owners, who still have a very hard time staying afloat amid low attendance numbers and massive loan repayment. Instead, this rule contributes to the tension between the players and the league that has been quietly building and that looks like it may come to an unfortunate head soon.

With the lockout looming, it is important to acknowledge that this rule still comes down to the owners thinking they know what's best for the players and for the fans, about being able to say that they've done everything they could to make sure players were at an appropriate level of maturity. At at the end of the day, that's the kind of paternalism that is impossible not to see as socially loaded, and as much talk as that point generated when the rule was enacted, it's still just as true today as it was five years ago.

There are a lot of issues at hand in the current contract disputes, and many of them are complicated and not entirely clear to those outside of the business. But a minimum age requirement is simple in its intentions and even simpler in its effects. Those effects--reinforcing the power of ownership that the players have been fighting for years and leading to frustration in fans and players alike--speak volumes about why we may be sitting around next December with not a game to watch.