Over on The Situationist, Jason Chung has a thoughtful and provocative article on why the typical life circumstances of U.S. players who would like to seek the NBA right out of high school, and who are capable of being drafted right out of high school, are often missed by advocates of the NBA's age limit. He compares those players with reactions to European players, some of whom turn pro as young as 14 years old (e.g., Ricky Rubio turned pro at 14). Here is an excerpt from Jason's piece:
Given that all these young athletes made seemingly informed, mature personal decisions, why is that Brandon Jennings [photographed above while living in Italy] has been ostracized by some quarters while the others have largely escaped such scrutiny? The answer may lie in the fact that our moral reasoning does not rest in an evidentiary basis. As Jonathan Haidt notes, “Most people gave no real evidence for their positions, and most made no effort to look for evidence opposing their initial positions.” As long as their point of view “makes sense” there is little reason to question their knee-jerk reaction.
Jennings’ position – that of rejecting a college athletic scholarship – unquestionably evokes a stronger negative reaction in the American psyche. In America, those with higher education are often better employed, possess higher earning power, and are considered a better fit for the modern economy than those without such an advantage. It is drilled into the minds of most Americans that higher education is the way to go in order to attain professional and personal success. In addition, for student-athletes, playing in the NCAA is viewed as the traditional way in which to interest NBA teams and to raise your draft profile. Jennings bucked conventional wisdom and the resulting immediate reaction on the part of some of the public and NBA analysts like Jalen Rose was to question the motivations, financial and otherwise, behind this decision.
This initial reaction is simply not supported by facts. . . .
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