Mike McCann at Sports Law Blog has an interesting chart and some reflections on the new NBA minimum draft age, looking specifically at patterns of NBA players getting in trouble with the law (a proxy for personal maturity). Mike has been critical of the NBA's decision to raise the draft age with the intent of excluding kids from going straight to the NBA out of high school and his evidence presented here makes a pretty strong case.
His conclusions:
First, college education does not appear to diminish the probability of a player getting in trouble with the law.
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Second, players appear more likely to get in trouble with the law towards the middle and end of their careers than at the start.
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No matter the interpretation, it doesn’t appear that the recent decision by the NBA and NBPA to raise the age of NBA draft eligibility from 18 to 19 (or one year out of high school) will improve the overall law-abidingness of NBA players. If anything, actually, this data suggests that it might have the opposite effect.
My view is that raising the draft age by one year will likely just increase the corruption in high school and college basketball. If I had to predict, I suspect that the response will be to just increase the bidding among the Oak Hill Academy-type programs for players to do one year of prep school or for lower-ranked schools to try to grab guys for one year. Either way, I suspect that the corruption in the system is likely to increase.
Overall, I think that raising the draft age by one year will likely have some serious unintended consequences. They may have either been better off keeping it the same and allowing high schoolers to go straight to the pros or moving to an NFL-type system where kids actually have to commit to college for a few years. The current compromise seems like the worst of all worlds.
Also, generally for baseball it's a matter of economics for kids that go to the minors versus those that go to college. Most kids drafted high enough out of high school (guaranteed money contracts) do go straight to the pros, in fact most decisions to draft college players are more closely scrutinized because they haven't been reared by the pro organizations and tend to be farther along in developing bad habits with the use of aluminum bats. Generally those players that choose to go to college versus fighting their way through the minor league system from the 51st round of the draft, do so simply because they will receive tiny contracts and the odds are heavily stacked against them. Far more so than late round picks in other sports.
However, I do agree with the unintended consequenses, but I doubt the NBA isn't concerned about those, becuase now they
I don't know which method has been more efficient. It seems to me that MLB clubs cast a wide net in the 18-20 year old pool and bring lots of prospects into the system. Then they pick, choose, and trade witin that talent pool. Some players become very successful, some quit, some hang on and play in the minors for quite a few years before moving on. This costs MLB teams some amount of money to run these clubs (unless they're self supporting, which I doubt they are entirely).
NBA teams (and the NFL) draft selectively from the college and (until now) high school ranks. They take a risk on unproven high school talent, presumably more than on college players with at least a couple years of experience. That risk has a cost as well, but it seems to be a lower cost than setting up their own minor league proving ground.
I'm not in favor of an age requirement to play in the NBA, although I think (I'm NOT a lawyer) it's defensible in court. At least the NFL has successfully defended its similar rules. It's clear they're doing this for economic reasons, though, rather than for any "good of the game" nonsense, and I suspect that leveraging that free farm system has something to do with it.
Doesn't the NBA put the "maturity" point forward in order to avoid antitrust scrutiny? I think you are right about the real motives--and the speciousness of the NBA's articulated reasons probably demonstrates that the proffered motives are pretextual.
Why doesn't the "free market" in players work here?
Catfish
Baseball also has a ridiculous draft with an ungodly number of rounds compared to the 4 rounds in the NBA and 7 in the NFL.
In terms of why the NBA has sought a higher age floor, the league has carefully avoided discussion of player performance, since prep-to-pro players average more points, grab more rebounds, and dish out more assists than does the average NBA player or the average player of any age group. Moreover, and contrary to popular opinion, high school players who make themselves eligible for the NBA Draft are a relatively small, self-selected group: only 45 over the last 11 NBA Drafts, and a greater percentage have been drafted, and drafted in the first round (meaning guaranteed multi-million contracts) than any other age group. Instead, David Stern has repeatedly referred to their lack of maturity and ill-preparedness for the "pressures" of the NBA (something which I believe I disproved in my post on Sports Law Blog). In fact, here are some of Stern's recent comments:
If you are interested in some of the data and what I consider to be clear economic incentives for when to declare for the Draft and when not to declare, please check out my law review article entitled "Illegal Defense: The Irrational Economics of Banning High School Players from the NBA Draft, 3 Va. Sports &Ent. L.J. 113 (2004)" on this topic.
I also have supplemental data on Sports Law Blog, such as in these posts:
High School Players Average More Points, Rebounds, and Assists
Legal Issues of NBA Draft Age Floor
Red Herring of Age in the NBA Draft
As a disclaimer, I was a member of Maurice Clarett's legal team in his lawsuit against the NFL last year, though I joined after publication of my law review article referenced above. Thank you again to all, I really appreciate your interest and insight, Mike McCann
1. Would it really be a bad idea for the NBA or NFL to require the kids to, y'know...graduate from college before being drafted?
I can see a few advantages for the leagues:
A. More mature players, probably less likely to present personnel issues (steroids, drugs, etc, etc).
B. Players have a fallback, so are less likely to do desperate things like juice themselves.
C. It looks better, PR-wise.
D. I am...unsure that there is really a difference in performance between a player who's gotten their degree and one who has not.
Advantages for the players:
A. There is a fallback. Plain and simple.
Remember that all it takes is one hit, one fall, one misstep to destroy a career. The longer one plays as an amateur, the more opportunities there are to suffer a career-ending injury. In effect, the universities will reap the added benefits of the income generated by the atheletes while the athletes themselves shoulder a disproportionate share of the risk.
While forcing players to graduate would have the attractiveness of a bright-line rule, I really don't see how that would necessarily accomplish the advantages you list. A college education doesn't automatically prevent stupid (or smart) people from doing stupid things.
1. NBA union: The rule was put in place as part of collective bargaining. Why isn't anyone mentioning the most likely instigator of the rule? Pro players, particularly those getting paid scale, don't want an onslaught of younger players forcing them out to pasture early.
2. Race: Professional tennis, gymnastics, figure skating, and swimming--in short, all the sports that require money--don't have a high school requirement, much less a college requirement. Any discussion about the importance of maturity and college for an athlete is ludicrous when you think of the pubescent little darlings competing for Wheatie contracts after their Olympic gold.
It is hard to see how the NBA's (or NFL's) age limit really affects race when compared to the the harm done by the NCAA and most schools' current practices. Especially when the NBA Player's Union represents such a high percentage of minorities.
As for corruption and race, it is ludicrous to think basketball (and football) isn't already full of corruption that has a racial element. The fact most of the kids that do stay for four years of basketball or football don't even graduate anywhere close to their school's graduation rate is, in my opinion, inherently corrupt. Basketball and football already allows some/many academic institutions to profit by millions, if not hundreds of millions, off unpaid employees that don't even receive a degree, which is supposedly why the go to college (since a very small percent ever advance to any professional level). Academic corruption/profit, in my opinion, may be the only place where race is a factor because so many minorities (70-80% of the average team) are disadvantaged from an academic creditional viewpoint by the current practices. How hard is it to make graduation rates part of the expectation of your coach? How hard is it for the NCAA require some meaningful graduation rate for college teams that involves fining or other punishment of a school/coach/team that continues to fail at meeting these levels? It can't be that hard, especially when education is supposed to be the #1 priority of the institutions, not free advertising for alumni donations.
(1) Taking into account this year, the number of H.S. players drafted over the last ten years is in the low 40s (I don't recall the exact number). Even when you factor in under-19 Euros, the impact of under-19 players on actual NBA rosters is quite small - at least I wouldn't call it an onslaught. So in a league with 300+ players we're talking about roughly 9-10 guys per year being affected. And even that's a stretch since most under-19 guys just fill bench spots. (Plus, with the expansion of rosters from 12 to 14 under the new CBA, there are now 60 more roster spots that teams must fill.)
(2) I've never understood the comparison of team sports to individual sports (maybe that's because of my own shortcomings). But in tennis and golf, the only cost to the league of letting a H.S. kid play is the roster spot they are taking from someone else. In the NBA, unlike MLB and the NFL, the vast majority of active players were first round picks and 80+% were drafted in the first or second round. This makes draft picks extremely valuable. It makes sense that a team would want to have as much information as possible on a player before investing so heavily in him.
Regardless of whether I agree with the NBA's contention that the age requirement will benefit the players in someway, I think it's unquestionably a good business decision, i.e., good for the game.
I'm surprised that on a legal blog no one has compared the new age requirement to the clerkship moratorium. The NBA Draft, just like the hiring of clerks, involves individuals investing in other individuals who will play a large role in the success of the venture. In each situation the selection is based on limited information and the moratorium/age requirement was imposed to give those doing the selecting another year to collect information, so they can make a more informed decision. Except that NBA teams are locked in for three years (now two), and GMs can't take over themselves if need be.
Whereas the MLB and NFL drafts more closely resemble law school admissions. There, you are also targeting individuals who you hope will be successful in your organization, but you're allowed a much greater margin of error.
Why in God's name would a college degree be necessary for a career as a professional athlete? Only about 1 in 4 Americans graduates from a 4-year college, so for most jobs, a degree isn't necessary. Why would "pro athlete" be one of the exceptions?
By the way, Mike McCann makes some excellent points. If you look at all of the players who've gone straight to the NBA from high school, they are, on average, far superior to players who go to college. They also don't get in any more trouble. David Stern is talking out of his ass.