|
"When the history of HS to NBA draft has only one player who was not black and with other sports which allows players to earn @ young ages why has the NBA/America decided to try to close this door?"
this is where you miss out. first, the nba is the only major sport (including hockey, to some extent) where you can basically go directly from HS to the pros. you can be drafted in baseball and hockey out of HS, but you're basically a lock to go to the minors. every now and then, you see a 19y.o. break into the majors, and the best 18y.o. or maybe two from around the world would break into the NHL immediately (ilya kovalchuk comes to mind). these players can sign rookie deals, but often have very little in the way of payment after the signing bonuses are handed out, unless these guys hit the big leagues. in baseball, plenty can go wrong between HS and the 3-5 years it takes to make it to the majors, and you're left with no college education, no job prospects, and trying to stretch a signing bonus for the rest of your life (i know two people who've basically wound up in this gig).
as for the fourth major sport, football, they require 3 years out of HS before you can be drafted. i'm on the fence here. on one hand, you have to put up with a lot of crap to play college sports. you get a free education out of it, IF the school/coach is concerned with that, but often, naive athletes are handed schedules loaded with filler classes designed to keep smart players eligible and keep them from overloading on work. also, you're taking a beating playing college ball for at least 3 years, and football players especially have a limited shelf life. the flip side, however, is that how many HS kids would be ready for the NFL? um, i might be biased, but i'm taking Herschel Walker, and maybe a few other RB's. traditionally, rookies there have made bigger impacts than other positions, and much of it seems to center on the simplicity of the position. take the ball, run, don't get tackled. you can be moved in/out when situations dictate and you aren't in a position for the other team to really exploit your limited experience with advanced NFL-level coaching.
the nba has a paradox of its own though: it's bad business to babysit these kids for a few years on your bench (hurts short term quality), but so many of the league's stars are HS players (could bring long term windfall). that forces the hands of the GMs, IMO, to try to find a long-term franchise player. kobe, garnett, mcgrady, oneal, lebron...that's a helluva starting lineup. amare, curry, chandler, and others (including the smiths this year) have shown they're on the way up too.
owners don't have incentive to restrain themselves right now with respect to picking HS'ers. IMO, if they'd change the CBA to increase player movement (shorter contracts, make it so current teams can't overbid so much for their own FA's) then the age limit would be unnecessary. players leave for the pros b/c they either can't/don't qualify for college, or they know they'll go high. if teams know that a HS kid will hit free agency in 4 years, and their chances of resigning him are barely higher than the chances of any other team with cap room, high school players will plummet on draft boards, because teams won't invest 4 years of coaching and development into someone who can't do anything for them immediately. star players like lebron would still find their way into the league, to varying amounts of success, but some of the korleone youngs would be weeded out.
|