Avery Trendel
Writer, Charlotte, NC
English 1102-061 Andrews
The One-and-Done:
It Makes Dollar$, But Does It Make Cents?
By: Avery Trendel
I want you to stop and imagine a young Michelangelo crafting his finest statue. Not just any ordinary statue either, I’m talking about an absolute top of the line piece of art that deserves to live at the Vatican, the site of only the holiest things. Now imagine the pope comes to Michelangelo with a “Godfather” type of offering for the statue that could change his life forever. The only catch is that Michelangelo could not take that offer unless he lets The Louvre Museum in France display his statue for one year with no compensation. On top of that, let’s say that not only does he get no compensation for his work during this time, but he also must take a mandatory class on the study of rocks (paid for of course). Oh yeah, and since there’s only one pope to make him the grand offer, he has no choice but to go through this path if he wants to become world famous.
Turns out Michelangelo's dead and already has a statue in the Vatican. Looks like this.
The Pope gives plenty of excuses behind his reasoning when he explains the process to Michelangelo, but in reality he knows why he created that catch. He loves the statue itself, but worries that his visitors will have never heard of it, and will wonder what type of wonderful man is responsible. By forcing the statue into The Louvre, it ensures that millions of people will have heard of and seen the work before it becomes part of the fabric of the Vatican. The class on rocks though? That’s just so the pope can claim Michelangelo as not just an artist, but also a “fine, young scholar”.
Now you might wonder what Michelangelo would think of the situation. He knows he’s an ultra-talented artist ("Everyone knows there's 500 branches on a evergreen tree", :51) that can craft statues and paintings with the best of them. He hates rocks. So as you can guess, that year of rocks class seems awfully pointless to him. He completes it to please the pope, but at a minimum level of effort. Next thing you know, Michelangelo has a statue in the Vatican and becomes a world famous artist.
What’s the moral of this hypothetical situation? Michelangelo had the talent and skills in art to be world famous from the get-go (much like Bob Ross), should he capitalize on the pope’s offer. The pope admits he wanted the statue originally, but he also knew he had the power to gain extra benefits for himself off of it before paying Michelangelo, the one who had actually crafted the work, a dime.
As crazy and historically inaccurate as this story may sound, that exact situation is where the most talented high school basketball players in the world find themselves each and every year. In 2006, the NBA instituted an age restriction rule which requires players to be at least nineteen years old and at least one year removed from high school before they can become eligible to play professionally in the league. The era of uber-talented players such as Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, and Lebron James (he of the 15 minute long high school highlight mixtape) declaring for the professional ranks as raw eighteen year olds without college education was put to a halt. The result was that the players with this talent level were now being forced to attend college on scholarship for a year before they could ultimately declare for the draft at the end of that year. The catch with pushing them into college is that these specific kids don’t usually want or need to go to class because they view basketball as their major. As Masterson and Streck’s academic journal on the subject rightfully points out (CAPITAL LETTER EMPHASIS MINE):
“According to NCAA rules, eligibility for competition shall be determined based on satisfactory completion of SIX semester hours of academic credit during the PRECEDING regular academic term in which the student-athlete has been enrolled full-time at any collegiate institution”(Streck, Masterson 56).
In other words, these kids need to attend classes only during the semester that precedes the basketball season (the fall semester), and in addition to needing to pass only one semester, they only need six credit hours, which is the equivalent of passing TWO FREAKING CLASSES. Since there are only so many of these “uber-talented” players to go around, the majority of colleges don’t mess with this egregious use of the term “student-athlete”. The colleges that do employ the services of these kids get over the negative perceptions of the academic situation by winning more games and thus making more money than the schools that don’t.
This leads me to pose the question: Why does the NBA require players to wait just one year out of high school before they can play in the league, when the majority of colleges see the rule as a disservice to both the schools and the players?
The answer may not be as difficult as some believe. I say look no further than to the faces of some of our country’s great heroes: Washington, Lincoln, Hamilton, Jackson, Grant, and Franklin—the faces of our currency. The NBA and the top level NCAA athletic institutions each see great profits and benefits carried to them by way of these players’ backs every year since the rule has been in place. The players meanwhile, see nothing until they are drafted. (That scholarship they didn’t want or even ask for to begin with is just the university investing money into a talent that will provide them with even bigger returns)
The men really behind the rule, seen here in their mugshots
“As a young kid, the only thing we look at is fame and fortune and the quickest way to get there. I’m not saying in every instance that’s the right thing to do, but at the time, it looked real good to me and I don’t regret it. That’s the route I took” -- Jonathan Bender, a seven footer from Mississippi whose career was ultimately ended by injury after a leap from high school to the professional ranks
This quote gave the NBA the ammunition they needed to institute an age limit. They could argue that with the rule they were “protecting players from themselves”(Medcalf). While some of the NBA’s brightest stars successfully made the jump straight from high school into the professional lifestyle, others, like Bender, grew up dreaming of that same superstardom, but couldn’t quite make it in the cut-throat world of pro basketball. A few players, such as Ellis Richardson and Taj McDavid, declared themselves eligible for the pro draft straight out of high school, only to be undrafted, giving up their amateur eligibility and their right to play in college (Medcalf). The thought of young men being denied scholarships to college because they couldn’t play basketball for the schools anymore apparently didn’t sit well with the NBA. They felt the need to step in and stop these “young, immature” athletes from making uninformed decisions that could harm their futures. Susan McAleavey’s academic article on the subject for the St John’s Law Review, written four years after the rule was enacted, comments that more recently “The NBA primarily justifies the NBA age rule as a means of providing amateur athletes with the ‘life experience’ imparted from college that is necessary to handle the pressures of life in the NBA”(McAleavey 286). Basically, the NBA attempts to justify its rule based on the case studies of a handful of players, and the false idea that one year of college can make a man out of even the most immature of boys.
A Sports Illustrated story that ran in 1997 described 6’8’’ high-schooler Korleone Young as a “man-child” and one of the best players of his class. He declared early, was drafted by the Detroit Pistons with the 40th pick, signed his contract, and then went on to play in just THREE games, averaging just FOUR points and ONE rebound in those contests before eventually being bought out of his contract(and the league, as he would never play again) at the end of his first season (Milner). NBA scouts had missed badly, and Detroit had lost out on their investment.
Korleone,shown here in-game, hoping Coach doesn't bench him again
Once 2006 rolled around and players were forced into a year of college ball, the league had gained an extra year to scout these top prospects at absolutely no cost; their hope being that teams would be able to make better-informed investments come draft time.
Derrick Rose would eventually become one of the first of these “better-informed investments” when he was taken with the first pick of the 2008 NBA Draft by his hometown Chicago Bulls. Rose, a two-time Illinois state champion at Chicago’s Simeon Career Academy, spent his lone year of college at the University of Memphis, where he led the Tigers to thirty-eight wins(an NCAA record) and an appearance in the school’s first national championship game since 1973. The fans and scouts each expressed their awe about the talents of this kid. Playing point guard, the spot typically reserved for the team’s smallest player, Rose displayed freakish athleticism, often jumping right over defenders to slam the ball into the hoop.(Don't believe me? Just Watch.) The NBA knew they had a pre-packaged star just waiting to be taken out of the box. His time at Memphis was just Michelangelo’s statue sitting in The Louvre. In fact, the NCAA would later investigate the Memphis program in 2009 ,with the Infractions Committee finally determining that Rose had actually been ineligible
The city of Chicago seemed to accept Derrick's choice of major
for that season due to a fraudulent SAT score used by the school, so that he would be eligible both on the court and for the classroom (Wischnowsky). The decision vacated all of the accomplishments Memphis had earned while Rose was there; including the single-season wins record and the title game appearance. Clearly undeterred by any type of maturity or “pro readiness” issue, the Bulls wasted no time drafting him first overall; en route to his becoming the league’s youngest MVP three years later at age twenty-one. This makes you wonder, did Derrick Rose really need college? Or did college need Derrick Rose?
One year later, another player would confront this question head on. Brandon Jennings wowed pro scouts and college coaches alike with his wiry frame, incomparable ball handling ability, and speed in the open floor. (High school highlights here) Colleges salivated over the Compton, California product who was attempting to escape his crime and poverty stricken hometown through basketball. Jennings and his family however, knew the talent was there, and weren’t about to be preyed on by the system. They needed the money, so Brandon decided to take his talents overseas to play professionally in the Italian League for his one year “maturing into a professional” (McAleavey 280). He was the first to take this unconventional route, but was able to because of the demand for his abilities. The Milwaukee Bucks saw enough maturity in Jennings to take him with the 10th overall pick in 2009, where he rewarded their confidence by becoming the youngest player to score fifty points in a game when he dropped fifty-five against the Golden State Warriors in November of ’09.
Jennings proved to SLAM magazine that yes he can rock the NBA, but also that he can, in fact, dribble through walls
With each case though, the same two things happened. The NBA still ended up making large profits off of these stars, and the players had to endure ridiculous situations which could have been avoided altogether. Rose, with the public scrutiny over the fudged SAT and Jennings forced with the task of assimilating into a foreign culture by himself at such a young age.Without the rule, the NBA would lose an extremely small percentage of profits (what these players would cost for their first year, while they’re still on cheaper rookie contracts) while these high-level players could exercise their rights as eighteen year old adults with special skills to enter the workforce.
A talented blacksmith would become a professional blacksmith right away if he was good enough, why shouldn’t it be the same for basketball players? The only reason it isn’t is because there’s only one league in the world, the NBA, which can offer the type of financial security and exposure these players covet, and that league doesn’t want it to be that way because they are also a business that doesn’t want to lose money. The talented blacksmith is hired by the “smith shop” that covets his services, so that their shop will be better than the rival “smith shops”. This is more similar to what the top level athletic colleges do. They recruit these talented players (maybe doctor their SAT scores), compensate them with scholarships they don’t want, and profit off of all the wins and merchandise sales. In other words these high level athletic schools are willing to push their limits of academic integrity, in order to make money to fund programs for their “academic institutions”? To me it seems as if these schools should just be referred to as America’s athletic institutions.
Don’t get it twisted though. The smaller schools that don’t have athletic piggy banks anywhere near as large absolutely hate this rule. They don’t have the resources to attract the high level talent, so in effect the playing field becomes a bit uneven. While the top level schools continue making money off of their wunderkinds, it only creates a further divide in the resource gap. On top of that their players are much more likely to graduate and actually fit the “student-athlete” billing. The schools that fulfill their academic duties are almost “punished” in a way, by not seeing anywhere near the same cut in the NCAA’s discretionary income as the athletic schools. As the NCAA commercials preach, these schools’ athletes are” likely to go pro in something other than sports”.
To make it simple, it’s time for the “one-and-done” rule to go. If the NBA really cares about the well-being and education of the players, it would push to require more than just a single year of college. Hall of Fame college coach Bobby Knight (Fast forward to :21 for the gold) told USA Today back in 2009 that he feels the age limit should be pushed to two years, and that he thinks the NBA commissioner agrees (Wieberg). Both supporters and opponents of the rule each could state player cases that back their arguments, but to me the case by case nature seems to support abortion of the rule. The reasoning being that with the rule, the extra cash those players generate goes to the people that are already rich: the NBA and the collegiate “athletic institutions”. Without the rule, the players would see that slice of the pie; a much better outcome for the talent coming from impoverished situations like Brandon Jennings. When the next “hot-shot” player comes along and they decide maybe they want to stay in college for more than a year, there is no rule that says he can’t. Colleges, such as Memphis, can also stop embarrassing themselves with the dramatic lowering of academic standards for these kids. The NBA will get its stars one way or the other. The cream always rises to the top.
ESPN's dynamic duo, Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless, debate the "One-and-Done" rule
Works Cited
McAleavy, Susan. "Spendthrift Trust: An Alternative to the NBA Age Rule." St John's Law Review 84.1 (2010): 279-304. Atkins Library Academic Search Complete. Web. 22 Apr. 2013.
Medcalf, Myron. "Roots of One-and-done Rule Run deep." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 26 June 2012. Web. 22 Apr. 2013. <http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/8097411/roots-nba-draft-one-done-rule-run-deep-men-college-basketball>.
Milner, Mark. "The One-and-Done Rule Revisited." Questioning the NBA's One-and-Done Rule. The Good Point, 18 Feb. 2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2013. <http://thegoodpoint.com/2013/02/one-done-rule-nba/>.
Streck, Katie, and Gerald Masterson, Phd. "The One and Done Rule: A Need For Change." Insights to a Changing World Journal 4 (2010): 55-64. Atkins Library Academic Search Complete. Web. 22 Apr. 2013.
Wieberg, Steve. "Knight: Solutions Exist for Fixing NCAA's One-and-done Problem - USATODAY.com." Knight: Solutions Exist for Fixing NCAA's One-and-done Problem - USATODAY.com. USA Today, 24 June 2009. Web. 22 Apr. 2013. <http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/2009-06-23-knight-one-and-done_N.htm>.
Wischnowsky, Dave. "The One Thing I Don't Like About Derrick Rose." CBS Chicago. N.p., 28 Dec. 2011. Web. 22 Apr. 2013. <http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/12/28/wisch-the-one-thing-i-dont-like-about-derrick-rose/>.