Set up by David Stern in 2005, in order to regulate the arrival in the NBA of high school students who saw the league as a financial windfall without being prepared for it, the age limit should be abolished in the next collective agreement.
Currently, the regulations prohibit players under the age of 19 from entering the league. The measure initially pushed young basketball players to go through the university box on leaving high school, but now no longer really has the desired effect, as Dirk Nowitzki pointed out.
The NCAA is no longer the only path
Asked by Graham Bensinger, the former Mavericks player felt that this measure was no longer necessary, because the university championship is no longer the only way to integrate the NBA.
“I think it’s been a bit weird for a few years: some guys go to Australia for a year, some guys go to the G-League. I think we might as well get them in right out of high school, if they’re ready… They don’t really want to go to college anyway.”, he reminded. “And then if they do, at the end they are afraid of getting hurt. So they don’t play the Final Four, as we’ve seen for the past two years. To me, it’s just stupidity, it’s just stupid. We might as well open the doors to them, if they are ready”.
The examples going in this direction are indeed numerous. We can notably cite LaMelo Ball, who passed through Lithuania and Australia before entering the NBA. Overall, the biggest “prospects”, followed by NBA scouts since high school, therefore only spend a year in the NCAA, often with the impression of wasting their time there.
A career choice
In 1998, Dirk Nowitzki had received 40 scholarship offers to join a university but had chosen to skip this step so as not to be formatted as an “American-style” interior.
“I think it would have been fun, but it was the right decision not to go, because back then, in the late 90s, the game was still different for the big guys and I didn’t want to become a pivot, and make me gain 10-15 kilos to say to myself: ‘Hey, shooting is fun, but we need you closer to the circle’. The game was not as advanced as now, with all the big ones playing outside, can move and jump.
The only thing he regrets today is the extra-basketball environment that can reign on an American university campus, a significant experience for all those who have been there.
“Throughout my career, most of the teammates I talked to about it, they were all like, ‘Those years in college were amazing, in terms of the camaraderie. It’s different in the NBA. We play together, we make good friends, but everyone is a bit in their own corner, after training or the match. I think I would have liked the cohesion and life on a campus as a bit. But I think for my career it was the right decision to go straight to the NBA.”he added.
