If the NBA's age minimum were raised to 20 or 21, would incoming players be less likely to fall victim to depression or substance abuse? As Michael Beasley begins his apparently (and hopefully) earnest journey toward getting right, is there a case to be made for keeping kids in college another year?Unfortunately, college life is no cure for depression or dependency. In fact, it's quite the opposite: Beasley might be in a worse situation if the NBA mandated two years of post-high school activity before league admission. Unravel the gilded dressing on our idyllic portrait of the campus life and you'll actually find that college can be a really stressful and unforgiving place ... even for a basketball prodigy.
In the American College Health Association's 2008 survey, 11% of the nation's college students reported having suffered from clinical depression within the previous year. Some 47% said they had experienced feelings of hopelessness. Nearly 60% reported feeling "very lonely." More than 30% said they had felt so depressed they could not function. Schoolwork, new environs, the pressures of work or what could effectively be considered work (such as near-pro basketball), physiological and psychological reasons. And let's not even get into drugs ...
Actually, yes, let's get into drugs. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University reported that, as of 2005, some 23% of college students met the medical criteria for substance abuse. That's more than triple the rate in the general population.
David Stern has said that the age rule is "not a social program." The league does not force its prospective players into a year of college, European, or D-League ball in order to bolster the players' mental stability -- it is a business decision to allow NBA teams to cull more informed talent assessments before committing high draft picks and large contracts to kids with limited competitive oeuvres. To Stern's thinking, we could just as easily rename the age rule the "DeAndre Jordan Rule" -- a year of mediocre play at Texas A&M dropped D.J. from top-5 to second round.
Why isn't the age rule billed a social program? Because Stern isn't stupid. He has to know the NCAA is rife with bad-intentioned hustlers (in sky-box booster and street-runner forms). Colleges, including Kansas State, offer counseling services, and I bet the professionals there are fantastic. But accepting that help is hardly compulsory for someone like Beasley, whereas in the NBA players are forced to get help. That's what Beasley is undergoing right now.
My best guess is that Stern knows that arguing for a higher age minimum on the basis of NCAA basketball's track record of success in shaping young men to fit our preconceived notions of the assimilated American superstar -- the Tim Duncan model, I suppose -- is absurd, and that he'd be laughed off the front page. I happen to disagree that the age rule works as a business decision -- there were far more high school-to-pro successes than failures -- but that's irrelevant here. Let's not invent a social benefit where one will clearly never exist.
There's no denying that the events of last summer's rookie transition program -- in which Beasley and two fellow players were caught in a room with weed and women -- were unfortunate, and bespoke a need for guidance. Where do you think that guidance can be found more readily? At K-State, where he could have been booted from the team for one season by testing positive for pot or getting caught with alcohol? Or in the NBA, where the league decreed a rehab program as a result of the rookie program incident? Undergoing this struggle in college could have resulted in further isolation or deeper darkness -- he was only at K-State for basketball, after all, and that would have been taken from him under NCAA regulation. In the NBA, he has a support system (Alonzo Mourning, John Lucas) in place to try to help him.
The reality of the situation is that some people are troubled -- athletes, yes, but also med-school students, investment bankers, politicians, sportswriters. Beasley is not the first human to immaturely challenge authority figures (or to wear pajamas to school, for that matter). And if bouncing around and alienating folks is a crime, plenty of my peers belong in the slammer.The problem of equating Beasley's personal issues with the need for neo-colonialist expansion of the NBA's exclusion rule says more about the state of writing about mental health more than anything else. We tag those suffering from depression and substance abuse with the "problem child" moniker before we attribute the issues to a real and widespread illness. We can never have an honest discussion about mental health so long as we get no deeper than using such cases as props in the sports debates of our times.
Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Too true, Mr. Z., university students often blend uppers, so they can
study/cram for exams late nights, with downers, so they can sleep,
more uppers, to help them wake in the morning, and blend those with
alcohol. Louis B. Mayer prescribed uppers and downers to Judy
Garland, as well as making up a fake sex life for her, and arranging
dates for her, with her mom`s consent, which was why Judy ended
support for her, not Judy`s consent, and she was a minor, so she
couldn`t legally consent if she`s wanted to. He also forced illegal
abortions on her. And Judy was by no means the only one assaulted in
that manner, in or out of MGM. The additiction forced on her
eventually resulted in an overdose in middle age which killed her.
When I was briefly at Berkeley, the red brick sidewalks were yellow
with permanent stains from the vomiting of the student alcoholics.
Any excuse for stealing human rights is an abuse which leads to more
abuse. It may sometimes be a necessary evil to risk, but it is always
an evil. The victims can and should sometimes do more to save
themselves, but they aren`t always the victimizers by any means.
Have you ever been to Manhatten, KS? If he can survive a winter there without jumping of a grain silo I think the dude will be alright.
Got an email today from a member of the family born in Kansas. Oklahoma stock, raised in Oklahoma. Yeah, outside of Kansas City, most of which is in Missouri, and should be named Missouri City, and Wichita, places like Lawrence and Manhatten, are kinda sleepy college towns. Jumping off a grain silo, with a bungy chord, into a bail of hay, is almost citified up there. And the Canadian winds rip down the Plains in the winter, because there are no major mountains east of the Rockies to slow them down, unless you count the Adirondacks in New York, the Alleghenies, etc., as major, and they are far east of Kansas. Sure hope he pulls out of his tail spin. But to reiterate, college isn`t a panacea. More women go to college than men. Men usually have to work. And some college majors aren`t worth the paer they are written on. In terms of getting a job. Maybe good for the mind. If colleges had to prove their majors led to a job requiring the major, within a year of graduation, a lot of majors would do what the banks are doing now.
Tom - I know I took you to task about the age minimum stuff, but this argument is nuanced and subtle: from a mental health standpoint are the athletes better off in college or the NBA.
It's a tough argument to pick a side on and my answer is wishy-washy enough: it really depends on the person.
Let's abstract from Beasley for a moment. Think about LeBron and Oden. LeBron was not forced to attend college and handled the wealth and fame as a result of his 1st pick status smoothly. However, he's admitted to smoking weed as a result of peer pressure and perhaps had he gone to college, he would've done it more so. Under the NBA umbrella, he realized that the costs were too high and stopped. He also got older, that helps, too.
(I'm not indicting LeBron here. Most of us have, at one time or another, touched the stuff.)
Oden, however, may have benefited (mentally not financially - there's no question that leaving early was the correct financial decision) from another year of college. Oden, by all accounts, liked being in school. Good. College IS and should be fun. It's a learning experience and Oden enjoyed being with his peers. His struggles with depression early probably had to do with the fact that he lacked quality social outlets of his peers.
So, can we necessarily draw the line and say that mentally, these kids would be better off going to the NBA early? No, we can't, but it sure is an interesting question. I laud you for asking it.
Excellent stuff Tom. The last line in particular is something I completely agree with.