One and Money
by Chris Spatola
Time to get rid of the NBA’s one-and-done rule, which is driven by economics, not basketball.
In one of the great cinematic monologues, Al Pacino’s memorable “Scent of a Woman” character, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, spoke passionately about the soul of the next generation. As he defends the “intact” soul of his friend Charley, a member of that next generation, he, in turn, sears the fictional Baird School for its hypocrisy, its self-interest and its purported moral standing.
“If you think you’re preparing these minnows for manhood,” Slade says, “you’d better think again, because I say you are killing the very spirit this institution proclaims it instills. What a sham.”
It is unfortunate that Lieutenant Colonel Slade is fictional. We could use his cutting judgment of the National Basketball Association’s “sham” of a one-and-done rule, which is Baird-esque in its autocratic predisposition, and the national dialogue that surrounds it.
The inherent flaw in the conversation about the NBA’s one-and-done rule is that it is too often viewed through a philosophical, bordering on paternal, prism, when it should be viewed, instead, through an economic one. This disconnect skews our understanding of context, and ultimately stunts our attempt to find an honest solution.
Let’s start with context.
The one-and-done rule, or more officially Article X, Section I of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), is unequivocally an NBA rule; it is not a college basketball rule. When the League and the NBA Player’s Association (NBAPA) sat down at the bargaining table in June of 2005, the owners dangled revenue splits and uncapped raises in front of the NBAPA in exchange for an amendment to Article X, Section I that would require draft prospects be at least 19 years of age and one year removed from high school.
While the no age-limit, or “prep to pro,” era produced the likes of Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant and Lebron James (to name a few), the owners were motivated more by that era’s misses. In light of miscues like Korleone Young and Jonathan Bender (to name even fewer), the owners believed that the bulk of potential high school draftees lacked a base of fundamentals, were too unpredictable to project based high school’s variable competition, were unprepared emotionally and were a misallocation of valuable scouting time and resources. In other words, a first-round pick, and the money invested in that pick, was too valuable to waste on what amounted to a wild projection on a player only weeks removed from his senior prom.
In other words, the one-and-done rule was not passed in 2005 because NBA owners and the NBAPA agreed on a philosophical level that the age limit would be better for the college or NBA games, or that they were saving high school kids from themselves and from the potential of becoming catastrophic flops.
The owners and players were moved by one dominant factor — money.
In the ensuing 2011 and 2016 CBA negotiations, the one-and-done issue wasn’t touched. Of all the things NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said on Colin Cowherd’s radio show a few weeks ago, nothing described the impasse on an age-limit revision more than when Silver said, “In the last round of collective bargaining, Michele Roberts [NBAPA Executive Director] and I both agreed let’s get through these core economic issues in terms of renewing the collective bargaining agreement and then turn back to this age issue.”
While the rhetoric on the one-and-done rule from the league and the player’s union would lead us to believe they care, history tells us that the only thing the one-and-done rule has been used for, on both sides, is as one big bargaining chip.
In fact, between college athletics’ archaic view of amateurism, and the owners’ and players’ prioritized, albeit disparate, economic interests, it seems the only ones who aren’t allowed to make capitalist decisions in this rampaging capitalist market are the college players; not to mention the “system” has been set up as one gigantic false choice — go to school for a year, even if school is not for you, but don’t stay in school too long because that stigma decreases your draft value.
Every generation feels like the next one represents the decline. Fear of decline is itself an altogether American impulse, but our declinist impulses as it relates to sports are all too often pinned on the backs of younger generations. “Entitled,” “soft,” “spoiled,” “ungrateful” are all applied to young athletes in an attempt by elder generations to claim, albeit abstractly, that the soul of competitive athletics is corrupt.
The one-and-done rule has become a manifestation of this generational judgment. Despite the fact that the number of one-and-done players represents less than 5% of the college basketball population, the one-and-done rule and the growing number of freshman leaving college after one season has evolved into a referendum on what Lieutenant Colonel Slade would describe as the “amputated spirits” of young college athletes. For which, of course, “there is no prosthetic.”
The reality is, the increasing number of one-and-dones is simply a response to the market. It is young people analyzing and choosing the path that represents the greatest potential economic outcome. The broad generational indictments should be reserved for the “adults” in the room who ratified this ridiculous age limit to begin with, and for the “adults” who continue to jerk around these young people, using the economic earning power of college players as nothing more than leverage in collective bargaining’s economic chess game.
As the number of one-and-dones continues to increase, arguments related to the age-limit rule have devolved into abstract generational indictments, and obscured the actual historical — and fundamentally economic — context of the rule’s inception.
It’s time to cut down all impediments and barriers to entry for college athletes. If a high school payer wants to try to go to the NBA out of high school, he should be able to do so. School isn’t for everyone. If a college player feels prepared to enter the marketplace after his freshman year, his sophomore year, or his junior year, he should be able to do so.
Will they all make it? Probably not. But that’s how free markets work. Markets are historical, and the lessons therein inform future decisions. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg weren’t the only ones to ever drop out of Harvard, they were just success stories. But the freedom to choose one’s path, and yes the freedom to sometimes make a bad choice, is what makes free markets work.
“You hold this boy’s future in your hands, Committee,” Frank Slade admonished. “It’s a valuable future, believe me. Don’t destroy it. Protect it. Embrace it. It’s going to make you proud one day. I promise you.”
In the case of the NBA, the best way to protect and embrace the futures of its finest product — its players, its men — is to free them of the shackles imposed by the one-and-done rule and offer them the freedom to make their own philosophical choices as willing participants in the League’s market economy.
Chris Spatola currently serves as a college basketball analyst for ESPN and is a host on SiriusXM radio. He is a West Point graduate and former captain in the U.S. Army.
