For those of you who are unaware, the age limit says that a player must be at least 19 years old and one year removed from high school. It first affected players like Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, and most likely kept Derrick Rose and OJ Mayo from entering the NBA draft straight from high school. Cohen's letter cites the fact that Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard are playing for the Championship this season, and both of them did just fine coming out of high school. Cohen also made references to the scandals surrounding both Mayo and Rose at USC and Memphis that have surfaced recently. With this, it seems like Cohen is attempting to claim that these two young players would have had no scandals following them if they had simply been allowed to leave high school. Give me a break. Sending those kids to college might have been pointless because they were never going to take it seriously. But they were never going to take high school seriously either. They were always going to be offered money and accept it or have their test scores switched. This rule made no difference in that respect. What it did do was provide college basketball fans with some excellent entertainment, especially from Rose, who led his team to the best National Championship game in recent memory. I don't see much negative in that.
After that, Cohen comes up with this abomination in his letter: "It's a restrain of trade on these kids, and you see it in the NFL and NBA," Cohen said. "You don't see it in Major League Baseball. I was watching the [Memphis] Redbirds play ... and I was looking at the field and there wasn't an African-American player on the field when the Iowa Cubs played the Redbirds [in a Triple-A baseball game]. I didn't see one on either team, and I thought, 'This is a white sport. And tennis is a white sport. And golf is a white sport. And swimming is a white sport. And hockey is a white sport. And they don't have these restrictions. But basketball and football are predominantly African-American sports, and that's where they have the rule that forces players into college [instead of] going straight to the pros. Something here doesn't compute."
Come on. It's a race thing? Really? It's smart. A high schooler that attempted to go straight to the NFL would never make it, or he would die. There is too much of a size and strength difference. The same is true a lesser extent for basketball. There is more growing and more strength to be gained. In golf, baseball, tennis, etc., that is not as important. To act like we are doing this to keep black athletes down is ridiculous. Congressman, just enjoy the sports, don't try to control them please.
Here is the article if you would like to read more: http://www.cbssports.com/nba/story/11816994
O.K. you are back from a vacation at the beach without your little shadow - Nicholas and I have a question to pose to you - what do you think of allowing baseball players who have illegally taken steroids to enhance their performance being able to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, yet Pete Rose, who was a great player WITHOUT enhancement drugs remains blacklisted. Ok - he gambled - maybe even on some of his games, but did he enhance his performance as a player?
ReplyDelete