Basketball Needs
to Be Fixed
Professional and college basketball have
become very popular in the hearts and minds of many Americans. Millions of dollars a year are spent on
apparel, tickets, and television all generated by people's love for basketball. But in the last couple of years, both the
National Basketball Association (NBA) and college basketball have lost a
substantial amount of their competition and have caught much criticizim for it. At the heart of this problem is a single
cause, greed. The game of basketball has
become all about money instead of the game and its fans. This problem needs to be addressed, and the
best place to start is with the college players, or more specifically, the NBA
draft. The rules and guidelines that
pertain to the draft are greatly at fault for the down slide of both college
and NBA basketball and they need to be changed before the game down slides into
nothing.
The changes that need to be made are
simple, underclassmen should not be eligible for the NBA draft; or in other
words, if you have years of eligibility
left, you should not be eligible to be drafted by an NBA team. What problems would this solve? The answer
is most problems
in basketball today.
First, college basketball has paid greatly
by losing its most talented players to the NBA as many as three years
early. This has resulted in not only an
overall lessening of the game, but in certain circumstances caused the downfall
of once great basketball programs. This
is how it happens, colleges recruit players based on what their needs are or
what they will need shortly in the future.
So let us say that one school has a great core of sophomore and junior
players for an upcoming season. The
coaches do not have the need or the room for many new top notch players. So all of the top recruits find other schools
to go to. Then, let us say that the
great core of players leaves for the NBA, leaving the team with mediocre
players and a horrible season to look forward to. By the next recruiting period comes around,
the school's reputation has been hurt, and so has their chances of landing the
top recruits. This continues until the
school's once proud basketball tradition is a thing of the past. This situation is not only hypothetical,
schools like UNLV, Georgetown, Seton Hall, and Houston have all gone through
this process and now find themselves at the bottom of the barrel.
It is not only the universities that early
entry to the NBA hurts, the league in general takes a huge blow. College basketball markets their teams after
their best players, when those players decide to go pro early, the promotion of
college basketball is hurt; along with the overall talent level of the league
is lowered drastically. Games become
less interesting
because the players are not as talented.
This in turn hurts the television networks because people do not like
watching games in which they do not know who the players are. And then, that in turn hurts the league and
the schools again because the networks will not pay as much to televise the
games as they once did.
The schools and the league are not the
only ones hurt, by leaving school early hoping to make the big bucks the
players hurt themselves. In the world
that we live in today, if you do not have a college degree, opportunities are
limited. Look at the statistics, 60
players are drafted each year, and there are only 360 roster spots in the
entire NBA. The chances that each player
drafted will make the team is almost an impossibility. Some people go back to school and try to
finish their degrees, but most do not because once you give up your
eligibility, you cannot get it back, with means most of them cannot afford to
go back to school. This leaves a lot of
people out of work and with no degree.
By keeping the college players in school, most will achieve their degree
by the time that they are ready for the NBA.
The beneficiary of the underclassmen being
allow to leave early would be the NBA right?
It seems that way, but that is not really the case. The problem with drafting underclassmen is
that they are not totally matured yet, they have not yet received all of the
skills that they would need to make the immediate impact that their teams
expect them to make. These skills
include leadership, responsibility, and maturity; these are the thing
that college is
supposed to teach them, but by leaving early they are not given all of the
things that they need to be a success.
Many of the new players in the league
develop attitudes of cockiness or overconfidence because of their draft
position or because of the millions of dollars that they are being paid. Suspensions and fines for misconduct are at
an all-time high in the NBA now and the biggest reason for it is the young
players who have not been taught the respect and conduct that they need. This gives the NBA a bad name and is starting
to upset a lot of the veteran players who have made the NBA what it is today.
Another thing that the draft does is that
it makes building or rebuilding a team a total gambling game. Wagering millions of dollars on a player in
their early twenties that teams have no idea if they will be any good, many
teams are often wrong and are stuck with a multimillion dollar investment that
went sour. This makes teams take years
to develop their young players, and in the meantime their record and fan
attendance and support go down the tubes.
This also hurts the TV networks because no one wants to see mediocre
professional teams play, and then that turns around and hurts the teams and the
league because the networks pay less for television rights.
Money, is obviously the reason why
underclassmen leave for the NBA early.
If you were twenty-two years old, and someone would pay you 90 million
dollars to play a game that you love, would you drop out of college? The problem with this is the
inflation of
players salaries. When players are
drafted young, they demand to be paid what they want; teams pay them millions
right out of college. This makes the
veteran players jealous, and they ask for more money. Then when the next year comes around, the
pattern repeats itself, and it's another downward spiral. That is how players' salaries have rose to
absurd limits. No one noticed the
problem while it was happening, but now that it is a problem there is no real
way to fix it. In 1996, a rookie salary
cap was put into effect by the NBA to put a limit on beginning salaries, so
some measures are being taken. This is a
start, but it is not the answer to the problem.
If underclassmen were not allowed to come out early, high rookie
salaries would not have to be as high, and the players would probably be more
accepting of less money than most rookies are getting now, and this would help
solve the all-around money problem in the NBA.
Both the NBA and college basketball seem
to be in a rut. And as stated before,
they reason is the underclassmen leaving school early to make money in the
NBA. So what's the solution? Easy, do not let the college players enter
the NBA draft early. It would benefit
everyone in the future. Of course there
would be a transitional period, but the losses would be short and the effects
of the change would be evident very quickly.
Let the game be played the way it was meant to be played, for the
competition and not for the money.
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