Sticking it to the Man

I promise that I'll write more about that poll later, but something about the NBA and college basketball else caught my eye this morning.

First, a little background. The NBA, like any business, likes to get stuff for free. Specifically, it likes someone else to teach their players how to play. Unlike baseball and hockey, there is no minor leagues in basketball (or football, for that matter). Sure, there are European and Asian professional leagues, but they are of lower caliber than the NBA, but the NBA has very little control over what goes on there. The NBA also likes its players pre-marketed to the American public and they can't get that from overseas leagues.

Enter the NCAA. They need recognizable players to sell school jerseys (of which they get to keep all of the revenue since they "can't" give any to the players) and keep their TV ratings high (so they can keep selling the games for more and more money). If their best players keep leaving to the NBA, it costs them revenue. Worse yet (for them), the very best players (Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, to name two) skipped college all together, so the NCAA completely missed out on the money they could have made for the schools.

So, using a bunch of excuses (oh, we can't really judge how good high school players are before we pay them millions of dollars), the NBA negotiated with the players association a rule that a guy has to be at least 19 before being drafted. I'm sure this was done completely without consultation with the NCAA. Outside of bartender, I can't think of another job with that kind of requirement.

What this has done is led to a slew of players going to college for one year only (such as OJ Mayo and Kevin Lowe) because they had to. Mayo was pretty open about the fact that he was only going to stay at USC for one year and chose the school because it's in LA and he would get a huge amount of marketing exposure. This is pretty unsatisfying for the fans, is disruptive for the guys on the team who are playing for 3-4 years, and arguable whether the one year makes that much of a difference in improving the players' talent. And it makes the NCAA look like the pimps that they are. One of these days, a player's going to hire a smart lawyer and sue the NBA over this and win. In the meantime, the best players in the country have essentially been forced to play for the NCAA for a year. Until now.

Fast forward to Brandon Jennings, a very good high school basketball player. Just the kind of guy who would have to play in college (in his case, most likely University of Arizona) for one year before entering the NBA draft. Well, he just gave the NCAA a huge middle finger by signing a contract with an Italian professional team. Note that this whole thing was setup by Sonny Vaccaro, a sort of reformed scumbag who played a big role in having sneaker company money fuck-up amateur youth basketball leagues. This will lead to hemming a hawing by the NBA-NCAA cabal (the quality of play is not as good, he'll struggle learning another culture, blah, blah, blah), but in the end he's refusing to be the NCAA's whore. He's good enough to be a professional he wants to get paid like one. What's wrong with that?

I'm thinking that until the NBA changes its rule, he won't be the last (the union's back tracking saying they were 'forced' into agreeing to it). But, if the NCAA starts losing all of its good one-year players to Europe, the NBA may not think the rule is worth enforcing (or the risk of a lawsuit). In the meantime, the post office should start sending passport processors to high school all-star basketball games.