CBA Negotiations

As you well know, the NBA Owners and Players association are currently negotiating a new CBA. I'm not gonna put you to sleep pretending I know about escrow accounts and all that other jibberish they talk about. I am going to talk about what I feel is the most important aspect of these negotiations and probably the most controversial topic, the age limit.

First off, I know the NBA is a business and everybody has a right to make money. Afterall, we live in the USA where capitalism is king. I'm writing this from a pure basketball fans standpoint though. The NBA NEEDS an age limit. I'll highlight a few of the reasons why I think it's good for the game of basketball ( I stole that from MJ).

• Team USA blowing
• Everybody has watched USA Basketball disappoint us the last two times they got together. I don't know about you but I find this to be unacceptable. We invented the damn sport. We should be the best at it. Just 13 years ago we were destroying teams every single game. Now we don't even medal. I think a lot of that has to do with the young players in the game today. Some don't go to college and many of them only stay for a year or two. USA gets beat on fundamentals, notathleticism and you learn fundamentals in college. It's one thing to work on your skills in practice, but it's a whole new monster when you get to put your practice to work in gametime. A lot of the young players never get to play their first few years and I think they fall behind in the fundamentals department. At least with an age limit of 20, most players would be forced to play 2 maybe 3 years of college basketball. I think this would help tremendously in teaching them the game. Every once in awhile you might run into an Amare Stoudemire who comes out of high school and is already 20. You just have to live with that, but for the most part I think this would help.
  

• NCAA becomes better
• I like the NCAA as much as I do the NBA so I'd like to see it benefit from this age limit as well. I think the fans get cheated a lot of times of some really incredible teams. Can you imagine some of the Duke or UNC teams we might have seen in the last decade if it weren't for early departures? On top of that, I think it'd be a lot more interesting to see what Kobe could have done in college as opposed to seeing him average 6 ppg as a rookie. I think both the NCAA and NBA win with an age limit.

Overall, I just don't think this hurts anybody. Yeah you might lose out on a year or two of earnings, but when you're making 50-150 million dollars in a career, how much are you hurting from losing some money by waiting an extra two years to get your 2nd contract? And a few of you out there might ask, what about the kids who get hurt in college and lose their chance at an NBA career? I say that can happen to anybody at anytime. Just look at the Bulls Jayson Williams. Most likely, he's done for good after getting hurt in his motorcycle accident. The point is, you can say what if all you want, but you have to look at the big picture. An age limit helps a lot more people then it could potentially hurt. And it helps the NBA and it's fans, and we should push for an age limit if you ask me.