If there is an age restriction on going to war, because everyone knows how easy it is to pull the trigger on a gun; why can't there be an age restriction in the NBA?

The age restriction on war is a luxury of a secure American society. Many of our wars have involved boys that lied about their age or were accepted into the regulars with full knowledge by their superiors that they were only 14 or 16. They were allowed to defend their ideals. How come an 18 year old kid, who is an adult in the legal sense, has to go to college for year? What if he is a poor student and his only real skill lies in playing ball? If his only real skill rested in the ability to pee gasoline he would have been on the job two days after he was shot out of the womb.

The age restriction on war is a luxury of a secure American society. Many of our wars have involved boys that lied about their age or were accepted into the regulars with full knowledge by their superiors that they were only 14 or 16. They were allowed to defend their ideals. How come an 18 year old kid, who is an adult in the legal sense, has to go to college for year? What if he is a poor student and his only real skill lies in playing ball? If his only real skill rested in the ability to pee gasoline he would have been on the job two days after he was shot out of the womb.

The more mature, polished player makes for a better NBA product and since they are an exclusive league, meaning anyone can't join in on the fun, they can set stipulations for playing in it. Most, if not all, kids are not ready to play in the NBA after 0 or 1 year in college.

In the end though, it comes down to money. The younger you let players come into the league, the younger they go out of the league. So....older players don't really want a 19 year old coming in and filling that last roster spot when they are 25 instead of when a 35 year old used to fill it. Then you have the owners who are tired of signing these kids to a guaranteed three year deal (with an option for the fourth) and not getting anything out of him until the second contract, if he's even with the team anymore.

You still didn't answer my question though, why 18 as the age to allow people to join the military? I mean, anyone can throw a grenade, so why not 14 or 12?

YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH! Actually th 26th Amendment to the Constitution makes 18 the voting age and it has a lot to do with Vietnam. As many of you know, the war in southeast Asia opened the eyes of many Americans to some for the injustices rampant in society. As far as suffrage was concerned, the power to set the age limit rested in the States. Some states had adopted 18 as the legal age, some were 19, 20 or 21. Regardless of the State age for enfranchisement, the age for conscription in the United States military, and institution governed by the federal bodies, was 18. As a consequence, men were being sent to war against their will by a government they were unable to participate in. This is disenfranchisement. Now dammit, I am not going to say this again, everybody go read Starship Troopers. It is a classic that covers this very topic. Forget watching the movie, it is crap and not at all about the same thing.

Now, the issue is conscription. The 26th Amendment, signed in the spring of 71, made all of the soldiers subject to conscription part of the body politic. One will note an important lesson the government has learned. Since Vietnam, there has never been any real suggestion of reinstating conscription. In 70 the Prince of Cambodia was deposed by his prime minister, who was a close buddy of the US. Now our movements into Laos and Cambodia were wide open to increase. The war was spreading. But one thing was clear to the, Laotian neutrality was being violated, the war was spreading unhindered. In 71 the Pentagon Papers came out. The public was being better informed of the rising deception that was Vietnam. The failure of Vietnam points out a lot of things. One in particular is the age old reality that a conscription army is far weaker than a volunteer auxiliary. In WW2, many of the better outfits were those made of volunteers, and military leaders were not ignorant of that. That is not to say soldiers that served in Vietnam were bad, in fact, there are a lot of combat statistics that show that the soldiers and Marines in Vietnam consistently outfought their opponents. They were better equipped and better trained. They routinely drove off enemy forces that vastly outnumbered them. But the enemy had number and moral. The conscripted army had moral issues, drug issues, leadership issues, race issues, and the sense of no solution to an orientalized problem they could not fully understand. These were all (if not whole at least in part)a product of the growing disillusionment of the troops in country and the people stateside. That disillusionment still exists, clearly, and that is why we don't conscript anyone and probably won't. It is also one of the reasons that the argument that relates the injustice done to the soldiers of Vietnam to that of those in Iraq (which was a common protest theme early in this recent installment of lunacy) it is somewhat toothless.

That is why 18 is the Voting age in the US.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know all that stuff. Again though, why 18 and not like 14? Higher maturity/strength/intelligence level(s)?

The point I'm making is that the NBA has learned that kids coming straight from high school are not prepared to play in the NBA and since playing in the NBA is not a 'right', it's a privilege, the NBA can make a decision that's best for the league as a whole. Sure there might be one or two players who can make it in the NBA that young, but as a whole, it makes the league worse.

So- this link is only good until Sunday the 20th at Midnight- but a link worthy of following.

If you have ever liked anything Joss Whedon did, you have to watch this- even if you think you are too good for that stuff (which is a sad statement in itself)

http://drhorrible.com/index.html

FAQ's at http://drhorrible.com/plan.html

Thanks for the link. Glad that you like the blog.

Cobra - 18 in the US because that is the voting age. In our society the idea of bringing in younger soldiers has become unconscionable, there for we don't. If you are asking if it is because older men are bigger stronger faster then you are asking the wrong question. If the Army could get its recruits younger and begin indoctrinating them at a younger age and building them physically at a younger age, they would and they have. A lot of developed societies have adapted this sort of thinking to paramilitary type clubs for the purpose of developing useful skills. NJROTC, Boy Scouts, Hitler Youth, you name it. They want to get them as young as possible. Not only that, but it is not the most substantial argument to say that the NBA wants to get guys more ready, because then they wouldn't pass up drafting all those freshmen. Asking them to spend one year in college is far from establishing higher maturity/strength/intelligence level(s), particularly when it is based on letting kids run around without any court discipline or structured offense. That one year is no consolation at all, it is a just a ploy to make the NBA look like it is attempting to push young black males towards college. It is not a privilege to play in the NBA. One may feel honored to do it, many who cannot may desperately desire the distinction, but at the end of the day it is not a privilege. Privileges are things bestowed, a sort of entitlement. Playing in the NBA is a job they are well rewarded for. Let me a share a little labor theory from the writer of the great John Wayne movie, McLintock. When a guy receives an honest wage for an honest day of work, nobody owes anybody anything. Owners didn't mind when other high schoolers came into the game, they capitalized on their youth and popularity the same way they do older guys. They form game plans around them the same way they do older guys. It is a job, and an exclusive one, and those with the ability to perform it should be allowed to ply their trade in the best way they see fit. If I was 6'11" and ran the floor like I do at 5'11" then I would never risk staying four years in college and "maturing" if each year I was there it cost me half a million dollars. If I could play in Europe I would for the price they are apparently offering as stated in that piece I linked to. The reason is two fold, first it would be a year I would be making solid bank that would otherwise be wasted in a university I never intended to graduate from. Secondly, it would be a snub to the NBA, who clearly desires to steer these kids into a year of college. My question is this, why is there an IQ test for the NBA? They want kids to go to college for a year, but what happens when a kid with extreme ability comes along that is totally unable to get into a college? I want to know if this has happened. Do they just fudge him in? Has anybody out there read Blind Side and thought, while they are talking about Oher's college preparations, that some of the stuff they went through to get him into college seemed a little dodgey? Did anybody else think that if a writer who wasn't a good friend of the family was telling the story that bit might not be as favorably proposed? I don't hold a grudge against the kid, and since he was investigated by the NCAA I can only assume that he followed the rules to get into school, and i am glad that he was able to get his life squared away, but what if Mayo or Rose was so badly failing school that they could not have been accepted to a D1 program? you are a essentially telling someone that has million dollar skill that they can't work.

Being a player in the NBA doesn't constitute just putting the ball in the basket. The NBA tried having players who could only do that a few years ago and they ended up with more and more players in the police blotters instead of the box scores. To play in the NBA players need to be more mature and responsible. If you can put a ball in the bucket that's nice, but if you aren't one of the top 1% of players in the NBA and you are out there smoking pot, driving drunk or not showing up for practices; they are going to push you out really quick, if you make it in at all. You don't have a million dollar skill unless you have a complete expertise of the skill.

Next, the NBA was becoming a 1 on 1 league as far as the offensive sets go because all the HS players would come in and try to do what they did in HS. That not only didn't work, but made for a bad product, thus less money for not only the NBA, but also the players as a whole. That was where my point was going with an Army of immature men who didn't know what they were doing. Next thing you know they are raping women and killing kids and the Armed Forces begin requiring more than a GED to be a foot soldier.

Third, it is a privilege to play in the NBA since not everybody can do it. You have to meet certain requirements/specifications and one of those is to be a certain age.

I appreciate the age limit because I don't think the kids are ready to be there and it makes for a better product for me to watch, since I'm one of the few NBA fans left. Look at the teams that are winning the NBA Title and you will see teams built around veterans who run offenses and defenses as a unit. It takes time, and maturity, to truly succeed in the NBA.

The kids aren't missing out on money since, as has been shown this year, they have the ability to go elsewhere. This isn't the first year they've let kids do that. They've been free to do so for a long time. On top of that, the kids are getting money while they are at school, as we both know.