Earlier this week, several reports surfaced indicating that the NBA is interested in lowering their age limit to 18, which is a step towards ending the “one-and-done” era. However, according to a report fro ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the NBA and National Basketball Players Association are struggling to reach an agreement.
Commissioner Adam Silver is pressing NBPA executive director Michele Roberts to require that player agents furnish all teams with medical information on prospective draft prospects, league sources said. The league also wants to mandate players attendance and some level of participation in the pre-draft combine, sources said.
Clearly, the NBA is crossing all their T’s on this one. It seems the league wants to gather as much background information on the incoming young prospects as possible.
“We’re investing millions of dollars into players who we’ll now have even less information about coming out of high school, and we should have the right to have all the information available on who we are selecting,” one general manager told ESPN.
The regulations that are in place now allow player agents to withhold medical information about their clients from interested teams. It’s a strategy that is used to steer a player to a preferred destination, though it doesn’t always pan out properly.
General managers all around the NBA have pushed the league office to legislate the sharing of medical information with all teams, according to Wojnarowski. Agents, on the other hand, would like to keep their ace.
“Some organizations are run better than others,” one prominent agent told ESPN. “A lot of success comes from a player getting into the right situation at the right time. If I can do something that influences that, why would I give that up?”
“I understand why the league wants this. I get that it’s not fair across the board to teams, but I don’t work for the teams. I work for the players. When it’s all said and done, and my player doesn’t have as good of a career as he could’ve had, because, in part, of the coaching, the environment, the kinds of teammates that surrounded him, will the NBA put a contribution together to help him? No, they’re moving on. I’m not trying to embarrass any teams, but I’m going to do everything I can to give my players every chance for success.”
Though they’ve hit a proverbial speed bump, the NBA is still hoping to reach an agreement with the NBPA. If the new plan goes forward, graduating high school seniors would be able to enter the league, starting with the 2022 draft.
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