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NBA Age-Limit Fight Guaranteed To Get Ugly

By Phil Watson

Jun 26, 2014; Brooklyn, NY, USA; A general view as basketball fans walk past a sculpture before the 2014 NBA Draft at the Barclays Center. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
Jun 26, 2014; Brooklyn, NY, USA; A general view as basketball fans walk past a sculpture before the 2014 NBA Draft at the Barclays Center. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports /
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While NBA commissioner Adam Silver has said that a priority for the league is to push back its age limit for players to declare for the draft from its current 19 years old to 20, an attorney for the National Basketball Players Association on Thursday showed us just how ugly this fight is going to get.

Gary Kohlman, general counsel for the players’ union, said Thursday that the players will be taking a “radically different position” from the league when it comes to the age minimum.

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According to The Associated Press, Kohlman made the comments while speaking as part of a panel on college athletics at a sports law conference in Miami.

So why is the battle going to get ugly? Because Kohlman pointed out the racial component of the discussion.

“If they were white and hockey players, they would be out there playing,” Kohlman said. “If they were white and baseball players, they would be out there playing. Because most of them are actually African-American and are in a sport and precluded from doing it, they have to go into this absurd world of playing for one year (in college).

“That’s just total complete hypocrisy.”

The NBA didn’t take the bait, but Silver reiterated the points he made shortly after taking over from David Stern as the NBA’s top executive during last month’s All-Star break.

“I think it would be much better for the game if the minimum age were 20 instead of 19,” Silver said. “Having said that, I do understand the other side of the issue. While the union has states its view that they want to keep it at 19, we haven’t entered collective bargaining. We haven’t sat across the table and discussed it with them.”

Actually, NBPA executive director Michele Roberts said last month in response to Silver’s comments that the league should be happy if the one-and-done age remains in place.

The first hardship case

The NBA has been dealing with the issue of high-school players wanting to come straight into the league for more than 40 years and, in much the same way college underclassmen were eventually allowed to enter the draft, the NBA has its old nemesis, the American Basketball Association, to blame.

For years, players were ineligible to be drafted until their senior class had left college. Of course, for much of this time, freshmen were ineligible to play varsity basketball.

Absurd? Picture Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton, among other stars of the 1960s and early 1970s, playing for freshmen teams and answer that question for yourself.

In 1969, the rules changed because of Spencer Haywood, fresh off an Olympic gold medal won in 1968, just after completing his freshman season at Trinidad Junior College.

Haywood jumped to the ABA after his sophomore season, played at the University of Detroit Mercy, and sent pro basketball into a dither.

After completing the first season of a six-year, $1.9 million contract with the ABA’s Denver Rockets, Haywood signed with the Seattle SuperSonics in 1970, a contract challenged by other NBA owners, who claimed he was ineligible because his college class hadn’t graduated.

Haywood’s court case eventually led to the end of the four-year eligibility rule in the NBA draft.

This video, from the documentary The Renegade League, discusses Haywood’s signing with the ABA:

An even bigger leap

Just as it was the ABA that opened the collegiate underclassmen Pandora’s box with Haywood, it was again the ABA that crossed another line in 1974, when the Utah Stars signed Petersburg, Va., high-school standout Moses Malone to a pro contract.

Malone became the first player to make the jump from high school to the pros and the NBA had two players declare their eligibility for the draft in 1975, Orlando, Fla., prep standout Darryl Dawkins and Englewood, N.J., star Bill Willoughby.

It was Willoughby, branded a failure after a nine-year NBA career during which he averaged six points and 3.9 rebounds a game, who stopped the flow of high-schoolers to the pros.

For 20 years, from 1975-94, none made the leap.

May 14, 2014; Miami, FL, USA; Miami Heat forward LeBron James (6) shoots over Brooklyn Nets center Kevin Garnett (2) during the first half in game five of the second round of the 2014 NBA Playoffs at American Airlines Arena. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
May 14, 2014; Miami, FL, USA; Miami Heat forward LeBron James (6) shoots over Brooklyn Nets center Kevin Garnett (2) during the first half in game five of the second round of the 2014 NBA Playoffs at American Airlines Arena. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports /

That changed when Chicago prep star Kevin Garnett declared for the draft. In 1996, Kobe Bryant and Jermaine O’Neal turned pro.

In all, there have been 42 high-school players drafted into the NBA, ranging from legends such as Garnett, Bryant and LeBron James; to star players such as Dwight Howard and Tracy McGrady; to complete non-entities like Korleone Young and Leon Smith.

Amir Johnson, currently with the Toronto Raptors, holds the distinction of being the last high-school player selected in the NBA Draft. Taken 56th overall by the Detroit Pistons out of Westchester High School in Los Angeles, Johnson was one of nine prep players taken in 2005.

As part of the 2005 collective bargaining agreement, the 19-year-old age limit was instituted as a compromise—the league wanted a limit of 20 and the players wanted to continue having no limitation.

The bottom line

If the players don’t agree to it as part of collective bargaining, it’s clear that it is not a rule the NBA can unilaterally impose. It would never stand up to court scrutiny unless it was—as Ohio State freshman football player Maurice Clarett learned the hard way—a collectively bargained exception to federal labor statutes.

I’ve turned 180 degrees on this issue and the reasons have nothing to do with the quality of play or the readiness of many of the players who turned into busts during the 11 years high-schoolers were streaming into the draft.

No, it’s simply this. My youngest son joined the U.S. military at age 18, just after graduating from high school.

If he can draw a paycheck for shooting a rifle, why can’t a kid with enough ability to make a roster get paid to shoot a basketball?

Mar 18, 2014; Dallas, TX, USA; Emmanuel Mudiay of Prime Prep Academy poses for a portrait. He is a finalist for the USA Today Player of the Year Award. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 18, 2014; Dallas, TX, USA; Emmanuel Mudiay of Prime Prep Academy poses for a portrait. He is a finalist for the USA Today Player of the Year Award. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports /

If anything, lifting the age restriction could help the collegiate game. Programs that have relied heavily on the cream of the crop in recruiting have endured wildly inconsistent performance from their blue-chip freshmen, many of whom already have one foot out the door even before arriving on campus.

Many point to Kentucky’s freshman-laden squad that won the national title in 2012 and the currently Wildcat squad that is 30-0.

But what about the 2013 team that was also heavily spiced with freshmen players that lost to Robert Morris in the first round of the NIT?

To date only a couple of players have bucked the trend of going to college to play a season before declaring for the draft.

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    • Brandon Jennings played the 2008-09 season professionally in Italy before becoming old enough to submit his name for the 2009 NBA Draft. Similarly, Emmanuel Mudiay eschewed a scholarship offer at SMU this season and played professionally in China.

    What’s worth pointing out is that this is not the NBPA of bumbling Billy Hunter. Michele Roberts is an attorney with a sterling reputation for being an absolute bulldog on behalf of her clients.

    If Silver and the NBA hierarchy think they can get Roberts to simply roll on key issues such as the share of basketball related income or the age limit, they’re crazy.

    The players have already been advised to prepare themselves for a lockout in 2017. That came down from the union last summer, three years in advance of the expiration of the current CBA.

    The rhetoric thrown around Thursday by Kohlman makes it clear that this time around, the NBPA won’t go down without a huge fight, one that could make the long work stoppages of 1999 and 2011 seem like walks in the park by comparison.

    Next: 50 Greatest NBA Players Of The 1980s

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