Power of Caring
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An age-old question

Keeping teens out of the draft won't fix the NBA

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Posted: Saturday July 03, 1999 03:12 PM

David Stern, the grand poohbah of the NBA, wants to figure out a minimum age limit for players who come into the NBA. It's too late for this year, tragically, considering the Backstreet Boys, both Olsen twins, the entire cast of Rugrats and that spikey-haired kid from Jerry Maguire already have declared themselves eligible for Wednesday's NBA Draft.

Still, Stern and a lot of other folks now see that this thing is getting way out of hand. They see an NBA filled with players who can dunk but can't shoot, who are making millions while still pulling down an allowance from their parents.

They see rookies ill-equipped to deal with the rigors of such NBA hardships as an extended road trip.

ROOKIE: "When are we gonna get there? I hafta go to the bathroom!"

CHARTER PILOT: "Don't make me pull over and come back there!"

From the e-mailbag Some comments on The allure of the game, June 25, 1999. I agree with you that the NBA has its many weak points. Some stars earn way too much money (Garnett), some are disrespectful (Sprewell) and some don't deserve to play (Baker). But yet, for example, Sprewell and Garnett always seem to draw me in During the playoffs, I watched Garnett play for the first time ever. He is a really talented player. He's only 19 or 20 and carries himself around the court with a confident dominating air. Sprewell is incredible to watch as he glides the open court, cruising in for a layup. The NBA will always intrigue me, no matter what the players do. The Finals are unparalleled to any other sport. -- Ajay Vasudevan I think David Stern and the NBA got a good closing to the season with the Spurs winning and putting a positive spin on a goofy season. Bottom line, if you love the game, you wish the best for the NBA and are happy that they want to address some of the issues that need improving. -- Diann Gordon I just read your commentary on the '99 NBA Finals. Your assessments were right on target. What was there not to like? There was the Cinderella team. Except in this fairy tale season for the Knicks, the clock struck midnight. It was nice to see the good guys finish first. There were the bad boys who redeemed themselves. Sprewell showed that he was not locker room poison. And finally, it was nice to see the "Rudy" players get some recognition. The much-maligned Avery Johnson proved that he belonged in the league. It was a great Finals. -- Sonia Koopman I am sorry sir but it is EASY to hate this game. Basketball is the most over-hyped sport of the four major ones and caters to the lowest common denominator. While it may be true as you say "it sucks you in," so does South Park. I feel like it is time wasted and I wonder why I bother. I also get the feeling watching the NBA in comparison to the NFL or NHL that the athletes don't really care and do not put out a full effort. -- Dave Zadro And some comments on Fighting for kids' lives, June 9, 1999. Let's face it: the problem IS the parents ... unfortunately, it's not just the loudmouth or hard-driving parent who yells obscenities or insists that their child is better or more deserving of playing time. It's the parent who remains quiet and does nothing. It's the parent who doesn't support the child by attending games regularly. It's the parent who doesn't take an interest in the child's interest. It's the parent who is too busy for their child. -- Ward Barker The situation which you analyzed so well will not change because the people who run the leagues are the worst offenders. They may not engage in physical violence, but they run the leagues as a playground for their egos. The players function simply as an apparently respectable pretext for this behavior. -- John Barnard, Danville, Calif. I am 29 years old and your story took me back to when I played little league baseball, pee-wee football and junior-pro basketball. I can remember a fistfight between my football coach and another team's coach after a pee-wee game that got a little lopsided. During high school, I umpired for the same little league that I had played in and even then began to see the problems that you referred to. I had middle-aged men waiting for me in parking lots and was being cursed at on a regular basis. It was not for my inadequacy as an umpire but that little junior was not the all-star they saw in their eyes. Parents, grow up. Let your children play the game and just be thankful that they are blessed with the ability to participate. -- Jon Ward, Franklin, Tenn. My son, Matty, certainly taught me a valuable lesson last year about the "importance" of Little League ... He lined into a double play to end a very heated game and I, of course, acted poorly towards him. He told me that it doesn't matter what happens on the field, but rather how close we were as father and son in everything we do. And I looked at sports differently ever since. Some coaches tell me that Matty is an all-star shortstop. I am more than secure in the fact that, when we walk off the field together, we are best friends and all-star daddy and son. --Rick DeGeorge The problem in youth sports is the idea, stated by Mr. Engh, that "The lessons of sports are really the lessons of life." It is just that overemphasis on the importance of sports that leads to extreme parent behavior (not to mention the 11-year-old kids who sob uncontrollably, looking utterly ruined, because they blew a lead in the Little League World Series). I am a sports player and a sports fan, but the important lessons of my life were learned in the classroom, in church, in listening to people who knew more than I did, and in standing up for the things I believe in. Sports are something I enjoy on the weekends. -- Kylelane Purcell My son is 10 years old and this is his first season of organized sports. After a good time in football, he tried basketball. His team was lucky enough to make it the championship game. They won, but that was the end of the positive experience for him. While he was shooting free throws one of the mothers of the opposing team yelled things at him that left me absolutely speechless. The parents of the other team berated the referee on every unfavorable call. They screamed obscenities at our children and our coach. Finally, I could not take it anymore. I approached the ringleader and reminded her that all of our children were only 10 and that they were here for the fun of the game. She called me a couple of choice words and continued to yell. Her husband followed me back to me seat and apologized for his wife. He said it was "hell" coming to games with her. If ever there were an ugly parent, it would be her. I feel sorry for her, but most of all for her children. As we left the gym that day, I saw her pointing out her son's weaknesses. I hugged my son and told him I was proud of his effort and that it didn't matter if they won the championship, just that he tried, did not quit and had fun. -- Curtis Coats, III

So Stern, just picking a number out of the air, figures 20 should do it. Twenty years old might be a good age to start and soon, probably next year, the league is going to start carding players at the gate.

It's a grand plan, of course, once you realize that this will not fix the NBA or its current shooting slump a whit.

Hopefully, it'll do wonders for the college ranks, where any player who finds himself on a highlight reel considers it a birthright to jump to the NBA. Hopefully, players will consider actually going to college, or at the least sticking around through freshman orientation, once Stern's plan takes effect.

Hopefully, it'll discourage a few young players who think they can make it in the NBA, only to get there and get crushed.

But for the NBA, this is not a fix-all, or even a fix-a-bit. The problems with the NBA game, as even Stern admits, have little to do with teenagers on the court.

"I am not sure that I can chart a precise correlation between age and play," Stern said during the NBA Finals last week -- during the lowest-scoring five-game Finals in the history of the game, that is. "As I look at shooting percentages, at times, it seems to be unaffected by youth. So I can't draw that anymore necessarily than you go look at some conduct and see that it is not particularly age-related."

Translation: You don't have to be young to shoot poorly in the NBA. And you don't have to skip college to throw up a brick or a few.

The Knicks' Chris Dudley, let's not forget, has a degree from Yale.

No, the NBA has a history as far as the age-problem thing goes, and there is no learning from this history. Some who came in young succeeded. Some didn't. Lots were somewhere in between.