Why the NBA's Eligibility Rule Is a Disgrace

(Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

Should the “mistakes” of others affect your ability to gain lawful employment?

Should collective bargaining agreements (otherwise known as union contracts) prevent you from entering a trade (a profession) because you will be paid too much—according to others in that trade?

How much is too much?

Should we regulate how a person can enter a profession, including factors that have nothing to do with the actual profession?

Is a young man’s education, or lack thereof, any of our business?

Have we determined that the only path for “success” in life must run through college?

If a young man’s goal is to make it to the NBA, and teams are willing to pay him to play professionally, should he be denied that opportunity because he is too young (or too this or too that)?

How young is too young?

A man’s way in life is complicated—there are twists, turns, dead-ends, U-turns, hop, skips, and jumps. This is also true for professional athletes; they are people as well.

Presuming the future of someone else’s life is an impossible task, yet that is exactly what the NBA’s eligibility rule does: presumes to know the “best” or “proper” way a young man can and may enter the NBA Draft.

Currently, the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement states that no American can enter their name in the NBA Draft unless they are 19 years old and are one year removed from high school. There are a few “reasons” for this, and none, I repeat, none are acceptable. 

The biggest “reason” for the rule was to shield the public from the heart-wrenching stories of the dashed hopes and dreams of NBA stardom­—at least the publicized ones. We just couldn’t take it anymore. 

It’s all really quite pathetic.

Watching a young man’s dream collapse before your eyes isn’t fun, it is tragic. Yet it happens to thousands of people, and it happens every single day. We only care when we see no other future for them, and somehow, this is how we view professional athletes. That is the pathetic part.

As “Alabaster Stone” has pointed out in his (or her) article, The NBA’s Bender is Finally Over: The “Gap” Year is a Success, Jonathan Bender’s NBA career didn’t take off: “Potential, potential, potential.”

Well then, his life must have been a total waste. Any accomplishments beyond the tender age of 25 are irrelevant­. Notice how this is true in only one aspect: our (sports media’s) idea of what his life should have been.    

Never mind the bizarre assertion made in Alabaster’s article that Bender’s knees would have been better off had he gone to college. It is entirely possible that the man simply didn’t have a whole lot of tread on his tires. In that case college would have severely hampered his, albeit brief, professional career and all the money that came with it.

Did Jonathan Bender “fail?”

This is a matter of perspective. Media pundits—known for their mystifying accuracy on who is and who isn’t going to be a star—predicted a Hall of Fame career for Bender. That didn’t happen, so society (modern media, us, Congress, the Courts, you name it) labeled him a failure. 

It doesn’t matter if Bender had had a successful professional basketball career, it doesn’t matter if he had ended up in the gutter, and it doesn’t matter if he took his NBA riches and now owns an Italian wine imports company, invented a fitness device called Bender Bands, and owns a New Orleans recording studio. 

Or if he's developing a reality show, Brand New Orleans, based on his numerous ventures in the New Orleans area, including Kingdom Homes, a for-profit home-building company focusing on the still on-going Hurricane Katrina cleanup.

Which is exactly what he did.

It doesn’t matter. It is none of our business.  Alabaster—it is none of your business.

Bender took the “risk” (which turned out to be an excellent decision—for him) of entering the NBA Draft and we did not. His life is his own and no one else’s. 

How do you feel when someone presumes to know what is best for you? 

I most assuredly will be accused of not being pragmatic, of not looking at the facts, circumstances, and other qualifiers. I will be accused of basing my opinions on principle—not “reality.” 

“Surely Bender is an exception,” you say.

Exactly what is he an exception to?  

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