NBA age limit unfair to freshmen

We will all surely remember this year’s tournament for Stephen Curry’s brilliance and the dominance of the No. 1 seeds, which have all advanced to the Final Four.

But I wish the people who run the basketball world would look past those stories and see a problem in the sport that has had a huge impact on this year’s tournament: the age limit for the NBA draft.

I’ve never liked the rule, established in 2006, that forces all high school ballplayers to attend college for at least one year. This system, which leads many teams to rely on freshman stars, gives the top programs an edge.

Sure, freshmen Derrick Rose and Kevin Love led Memphis and UCLA, respectively. But neither squad would be on its way to San Antonio without experienced leadership. Love may be the “missing piece” for the Bruins, but junior Darren Collison is the team’s foundation. Memphis has star forward Chris Douglas-Roberts, a junior who played in Elite Eight games in 2006 and 2007.

The other two teams still alive in the tournament, North Carolina and Kansas, do not start any freshmen.

These top programs recruit so well that they don’t have to place their hopes squarely on the shoulders of freshmen.

A lot of the lower seeds don’t have that luxury.

In UCLA’s region, No. 10 seed Arizona lost in the first round. Its freshman slasher, Jerryd Bayless, shot just 33 percent in the Wildcats’ last two games.

And this freshman failure wasn’t confined to the West Region.

In the East Region, Indiana’s phenom, Eric Gordon, couldn’t get the eighth-seeded Hoosiers out of round one. Oklahoma flopped in round two against Louisville; its star freshman Blake Griffin scored just eight points.

The trend was most evident in the Midwest Region.

The overhyped Kansas State-USC matchup in the first round didn’t even produce a Sweet 16 team. Freshman O.J. Mayo played all right, but the Trojans barely tested Kansas State. The nation’s best player and best freshman, Kansas State’s Michael Beasley, couldn’t get his team past the second round.

Meanwhile two mid-major teams, Davidson and Xavier, stormed their way to the Elite Eight. Neither of those teams started a freshman.

Clearly this model is broken.

The three best players in the NBA right now ““ Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Kevin Garnett ““ were never forced to play in college.

Why is Michael Beasley ““ a player with that type of NBA potential ““ forced to spend a year in Kansas when he could be earning millions?

The most frustrating part about all of this: There’s a simple fix.

Let the best high school players make the jump ““ require all NBA general managers to submit a list of five to 10 high schoolers they believe are ready to play. A player is eligible only if he’s on the majority of those lists.

Those few get the option to go straight to the league while everyone else must stay at least two years in college.

In 2007 that list probably would have been Mayo, Beasley, Love, Gordon, Bayless, Rose and Duke’s Kyle Singler ““ another guy who hit a wall at the season’s end.

Mayo, Beasley and Gordon would likely have gone straight to the NBA. Duke, UCLA, Arizona and Memphis would have been fine if the other four made the same choice.

With this new system, coaches wouldn’t live and die by their blue-chip recruits. There would be more parity because coaches of lower-seeded teams would actually have the two seasons to improve their players. And those players would have the experience that is an absolute requisite in the NCAA Tournament.

After Rose scored 21 points and led Memphis past Texas on Sunday, the freshman said he was “living the dream.” I’m all for that.

But it’s not fair to force Beasley, Mayo or Gordon to live a nightmare.

E-mail Allen at sallen@media.ucla.edu.

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