Kareem's call

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has been known more for his love of African-American history and other advocacies than his status as one of the greatest basketball players of all time. But this week, he weighed in on what he perceives is a disturbing trend in the NBA, viewed from the long perspective of someone who has been associated with the sport for half a century.

Jabbar, the six-time NBA Most Valuable Player and career leader in a handful of statistical categories, believes that the NBA should raise the minimum age for rookies to 21. In 2005, the NBA actually raised its minimum age to 19, or the equivalent age of an incoming college sophomore.

“When I played, the players had to go to college and earn their way onto the court, meaning that there were upperclassmen ahead of them,” the Lakers special assistant coach said. “Players who had to go through that and had to go to class, when they got to be professional athletes, they were a lot better qualified.”

There is a big group of NBA stars now who all entered the league straight from high school or at least without completing their college courses. Among them are Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard and Tracy McGrady.

“They get precocious kids from high school who think they’re rock stars – ‘Where’s my $30 million?’” said the 63-year old Abdul-Jabbar.

“The attitudes have changed, and the game has suffered because of that and it has certainly hurt the college game.”

As a member of the UCLA freshman squad, Kareem led the newbies to a rousing victory over the NCAA champion Bruins. Despite the great demand for his talent, he refused to play in the 1968 Olympics as a sign of protest over America’s treatment of African-Americans. His 2007 book, “On the Shoulders of Giants” is a chronicle of and reflection on the Harlem Renaissance from 1920 to 1940, an era marked by an explosion of great black talent in music, literature, sports and the arts.

Of course, Jabbar would have a hard time enforcing his argument today.

Young NBA players with great talent are a bonanza for lottery teams, who reap immediate benefits in season ticket sales and merchandise. And though it is unfair to generalize, he may have a point when you consider the image problem that NBA has had with some of the teens who entered the league early. Anthony has had more than his share of run-ins with league authority, including that memorable sucker punch in New York in 2006. As a rookie, Bryant himself had problems with Lakers head coach Del Harris, demanding he be given the ball for isolations all the time. And we need not look far for all the personality conflicts that these players have had with teammates, coaches, the press and even fans.

From an emotional standpoint, players who take the “hardship” route and say playing professional basketball is the only way to provide for their families, there is the additional pressure of being the head of the family. This maybe as significant as the public scrutiny and pressure to perform placed on them. It’s akin to the preponderance of post-traumatic stress disorder cases discovered after the Vietnam War.

The average age of the American soldier in World War II was 26. In Vietnam it was only 19.

Also, in the last 20 years or more, agents have had a big role in filling kids’ heads with dreams of basketball grandeur. But, they do so in order to be able to hike up the salaries of their veteran players by comparison. In effect, they make money off both ends of the spectrum.

From a physical standpoint, the human body is designed to grow until about the age of 22. So the rigors of the NBA, a big leap from the short college basketball season, may also adversely affect the body of a teenager who is still growing. Overuse injuries also become more common, and, to a certain degree, careers are shorter. More and more younger players move from one team to another, because of difficulty in adjusting to the new situations.

Tracy McGrady once told me, “You go to college to get a good job. I already have the best job in the world.” But if you take the “student” out of student-athlete, what happens when the “athlete” part doesn’t work out?

Here in the Philippines, it would be even more difficult to raise the minimum age for pro basketball players. In many schools in the provinces, children don’t go through kindergarten, prep or even grade seven. They end up having a difficult time because, physiologically, they are too young for their grade level. Technically, the appropriate age for grade one is late six or early seven. Sadly, that isn’t really followed. So sports becomes a way out of a frustrating school life, and eventually, a way out of poverty. A former national coach once said, “Players used to dream of playing for the national team to serve the country. Now they dream of playing on the national team to earn a bigger salary in the PBA.”

We can always hark back to the NCC experiment in the 1980’s. The players were housed together, and played together until the time they were released to the pros. Up to this day, the majority of them are still contributing to the sport as coaches, team managers, trainers, TV commentators, and ambassadors of the game.