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Indiana Pacers center Jermaine O'Neal says the NBA's attempt to install an age limit on its players is racist. Commissioner David Stern has asked for a 20-year-old age limit in the next collective bargaining agreement, with incentives provided to players who defer their draft eligibility to stay in college.O'Neal is absolutely correct in opposing this move, and I'm also willing to go along with the contention that the move has racist implications. O'Neal pointed out Monday that the two most recent Rookies of the Year have been high school draftees, and there were seven high school draftees in this year's All-Star game. How exactly do you make the case that these players are unprepared to play at the professional level?
"As a black man," O'Neal said, "you kind of think that's the reason why it's coming up. You don't hear about it in baseball or hockey. To say you have to be 20, 21 to get in the league, it's unconstitutional. If you can go into the U.S. army and fight the war at 18, why can't you play basketball for 48 minutes?"
Right, right, and right.
In football, the Maurice Claretts and the Mike Williamses of college age were denied their chance to begin earning a living, and lived as pariahs outside the pro ranks until Clarett won a court battle to enter the draft. If these players wished to keep playing competitively over the last two years, they risked life, limb, and their financial futures on the college fields.
The naysayers were silent in 1936 when Bob Feller started his big league baseball career with Cleveland at the tender age of 17, and if they weren't, they bit their tongues after he fanned 76 batters in 62 innings.
The reason you see the NFL attempt to keep a death grip on their age policy is that they want to maintain the freebie development league they have set up on college campuses. The players there are disingenuously referred to as "student-athletes," though we all know they are full-time athletes rewarding their coaches with million dollar deals and filling corporate coffers without compensation of their own.
The NBA situation adds a wrinkle to the subject in that it's a sport thoroughly dominated by African-Americans. The commissioner privately believes that the "bling-bling" youth culture of the league threatens its future marketability. This is the race factor coming into play. Whereas Feller was a "phenom" farmboy and a human interest story at whom we marveled for dominating American League hitters, even before graduating from his Van Meter, IA high school, we look with great suspicion upon the LeBron Jameses and Amare Stoudemires of the NBA. We know they can play, but we're not sure if they can handle themselves in the public spotlight? In the corporate NBA, this uncertainty is bad for business. The players' union is beginning to waver in their opposition to the age limit, as well. College age players, after all, eat up valuable positions on NBA rosters. And a man's gotta haul his own luggage in the CBA.
ESPN.com's wire story today about O'Neal's comments includes a hideously biased sentence: "O'Neal went to the NBA straight out of high school in 1996... (He) didn't blossom into the star he is today until he was dealt to the Indiana Pacers during the 2000 offseason. The obvious implication is that O'Neal needed all of what is the college standard of four years to reach his potential in the NBA. Left out of the equation, though, is how much money he made for himself and his family in those four years while ultimately reaching the same plateau.
An unscientific poll on the website revealed that roughly two-thirds of basketball fans believe the NBA should impose a 20-year age limit on entering the league. In a similar poll, 95 percent of Americans believe they pay too much in taxes, while every one else pays the right amount.
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I'm watching the Cardinals and Reds tonight on Fox Sports Midwest. Whatever became of Barry Larkin?
posted by CM @ 8:41 PM
4 Comments:
I agree that O'Neal (and the players union) should definitely oppose the move. Interesting union dynamics at play though. At the end of the day, the NFL and NBA are denying young adults from earning a good honest living as professional athletes. The human body can only compete at the level required for pro sports so long and two years can be a large fraction of that time. However, its interesting to think about how young we should allow kids to play professional sports. I bet LeBron could have contributed to an NBA team when he was 16 or so. Would/should child labor laws begin to kick in at some point?
Why do so many Americans automatically cry racism in response to any decision or issue that negatively impacts a person of color? The only reason this decision has "racist implications" is because there is no diversity on the court in the NBA. You don't hear about it in the NHL because the owners are busy breaking the union. Of course there are no "racist implications" there because the NHL players are mostly white. Is the "'bling-bling' youth culture" really the race factor? I'm quite far removed from today's youth culture, but I thought it was pretty much the mainstream with the majority of young people from across all demographics.
Like most things this is all about money IMHO. Chris, you hit on the reasons: 1.) Corporate types don't like uncertainty of any kind 2.) Future marketability of the league helps owners make a big profit when its time to sell their franchises 3.) Freebie development league = lower costs, more profits, and higher franchise value. Its not personal, its strictly business. TA
Barry Larkin, I believe, has taken a front office job with his old Reds general manager Jim Bowden with the Nationals.
I also heard that in 2009, he's been asked to go to Cooperstown, New York to deliver a speech about why he's the best shortstop of the last 20 years and to say thanks for a plaque they'll be hanging in his honor in a museum they have there.
Tom Hagen makes a good point. The money does speak the loudest, but even in the Godfather, the family, ultimately, couldn't escape the personal damage inflicted by the business.
Perhaps I clumsily made my point, considering I used the oversimplified expression "'bling-bling' youth culture" and the hostile word "racism."
I truly believe that forty years after Sidney Poitier went to the Tracy/Hepburn house for dinner, racism is rare.
But what is not rare is cultural intolerance. We fear the "other," to the point that a couple dozen citizen "patriots" are patrolling the Arizona/Mexico border with assault rifles, and there has been almost no reaction to this on the north side of the border. African-Americans, perhaps to a greater extent than any other racial minority, have chosen to forego cultural integration and challenge the American white majority to acknowledge their differences. I can understand how this leads to impatience and frustration by whites. I feel those things a lot. But that's why it's a challenge. We have an instinct to seek comfort and relaxation, and they fear our complacency. Thus, the conflict.
I wasn't calling hockey or baseball racist because they lack diversity. In fact, I think baseball most accurately reflects the American population, but the public's reaction to high school players in those sports have been very different. What else could explain this?
Any time you bring the word "racist" into a discussion, it conjures up any number of ideas and images that mean different things to different people. I watched O'Neal's interview on ESPN last night in which he did a good job clarifying his earlier comments, as well as pointing out that he didn't use the word 'racist'. He said something along the lines of "as a black man, he sees it that way." That's a big contrast compared to the way most people who just see the word 'racism' in a headline are going to take it. If you go to foxsports.com today, you'll see a headline that clearly implies he used that word.
It's an important distinction, I think, because it honestly reveals where he's coming from as an individual, which is fair, but also because I happen to agree with him. I think there's a very specific cultural reason for the rule, but it's certainly difficult to define. The style of the game has changed drastically over the years, as with many sports, but basketball seems to have the reputation of taking on a more "street" version of itself. One that's a far-cry from the traditional, highly-disciplined John Wooden style coaches still like to praise.
You guys are both right when you say this plays into the marketability of the game. I think the NBA worries it's toeing the line on turning off it's mostly white corporate sponsors. Consider for a moment, this example, that there's a stark-contrast between 3 former All-Stars from the so-called glory days of the league - all, at one time or another, noted for their smiles. I'm thinking of Magic Johnson, Isaiah Thomas, and Michael Jordan. In a million ways, these guys were considered much more marketable (and by "marketable", I mean "safe and harmless") than the cornrows and tattooes of Allen Iverson, Latrell Sprewell, Ron Artest, and a dozen other guys. This has changed the way America sees the game and I think it's naive to suggest race (specifically: how we define it) doesn't play into this to some degree.
ULtimately, I think it's insane to argue that a guy shouldn't be allowed to make a living at something that - at 18 - he's become world-class at. Are 13 year old gymnasts "ready" to compete on the world stage of the Olympics? I don't hear anyone making that case. Should Maria Sharapova not be allowed to compete at tennis because she's not 18? Is it a stretch to suggest that her bouncing around the court in a tight top and a short skirt is potentially dangerous for her? It probably sounds like a far different argument, but how many female tennis players have had stalkers? The point I'm making is that I think the powers-that-be in these sports have more than the best interest of their athletes at stake.
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