To hear the critics tell it, allowing high schoolers into the NBA ruins the league. For some reason, high school basketball players are deemed to be less worthy prepared to deal with professional life than young tennis, hockey, and baseball players. ESPN’s True Hoop author Henry Abott wrote about the issue, and refers to Michael McCann’s paper that refutes the idea of high school players damaging the NBA.

It’s pointed out on True Hoop that the top three candidates for NBA MVP (LeBron, KG, Kobe) didn’t go to college. I have Chris Paul in my top three and King James out, but that’s not the point right now. If you look at the playoff standings, six of the 16 teams that currently qualify are headed by players that didn’t go to college. Boston-Garnett, Orlando-Howard, Cleveland-James, LA Lakers-Bryant, Houston-McGrady, and Dallas-Nowitzki. Phoenix and San Antonio rely heavily on Amare Stoudemire and Tony Parker respectively so you could say that eight current playoff teams are dependent on players without college experience.

Whenever this subject is brought up a guy like Leon Smith, Kwame Brown, or Korleone Young will be used as the argument for players attending college. Drafting a player with or without college experience is a crapshoot. There’s truly no way of telling who will perform well on the next level or handle the money and fame with maturity. According to McCann’s paper, the high school class of NBA player tends to be a better player and get in less trouble than players that took the college route. Some of that is probably due to the smaller volume of high school to the NBA players than college to the NBA, but it also shows that more factors determine whether a player is successful than attending college.

Commissioner David Stern is saying that he’d like to change the minimum age for the league from 19 to 20 when the collective bargaining agreement expires in 2011. He says setting an age requirement of 19 has been very constructive. I guess that’s his story and he’s sticking to it, but I don’t see the support for his argument.

NBA Players Need College? Prove It. Courtesy of True Hoop

Illegal Defense: The Irrational Economics of Banning High School Players from the NBA Draft. Courtesy of Michael McCann

Tags: NBA, MVP, high school players, college