You may not see it now—but the NBA is headed for obsolescence.
1. High school star decides to play basketball in Europe after he is unable to achieve satisfactory SAT test score for admittance to college, and the professional basketball league says that he can't be drafted until he turns 19 or he has been out of high school for at least one year.
1 (a). Is it just me, or do you all not see that it is ridiculous to care what a kid's SAT score is when everyone knows that he's going to be in school for one season and then leave?
If the rationale is that all students should have to meet a qualifying academic standard to be admitted to an institution, then like all other students shouldn't said athlete be allowed to work and make money like all the other students?
Oh, that's right he doesn't have time to work, because he's spending 14 hours a day with the basketball team—which is, by the way, selling a jersey with his name for it at $59.99 a pop in the student center and plastering the kid's face all over local television networks as they advertise their "season packages" for viewers.
My bad...he is getting a free education after all. Yeah, for one season.
And if his education is free then how does the balance sheet work out when you factor in television contracts, sneaker contracts and salaries for coaches—don't forget those American Express commercials, Coach K!—and season tickets going for several hundred dollars a pop?
I wonder—if you subtracted Michael Beasley's tuition from all of the revenue lowly Kansas State made off of him last year, how much money would the school owe Beasley?
Thanks David Stern!
1 (b). Doesn't the NBA have a development league for this kind of athlete? What the hell is the use of the NBDL?
2. Key member of young up-and-coming NBA playoff team, unhappy with contract negotiations, decides to bolt for Europe. The player makes the decision to go overseas so abruptly one has to wonder if that was what he had desired to do all along, and spent the entire season hoping for bad contract negotiations.
2 (a). Houston? Atlanta? We have a problem.
What player doesn't want to play in the NBA? Well, obviously Josh Childress—but wait, there's more! Tiago Splitter, Boki Nachbar, Carlos Delfino, Primo Brezec have all left as well, among others.
Many foreign-born players are drafted by NBA teams, and either never come to the States to play—or, after receiving limited play for limited pay, decide to go back to Europe.
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