It's all FUNdamental...
Okay, I'm tired of people talking about Basketball, mainly because I'm not a big fan of the sport. But there are some issues I'd like to address. Eighteen year-olds, should not really be going to the NBA. Here's a laundry list of issues:
1. Some of them have not grown all they are going to grow. This means that they may get more gangly and need the 4 years in college to grow into their new skin and height.
2. Most of these hot-shots have been the star of their high-school team. They've hot-dogged their way to these accolades and don't understand how to dish the ball, but man can they slam it in your face.....oooooh. How about team play? Did you see those international teams walk all over our hot-shot team in the Olympics? You know why? They were a team, in a team sport. Hmmm.
3. These guys need to get in trouble in college, with booze, women, drugs...you name it, they need to experience it. You're right, if they get in trouble in college maybe they don't get to play. I would rather an idiot get in a fender bender while drunk in college and have to go to prison or at least spend some time in jail and jeapordize a career, rather than have millions of dollars to buy a Hummer (that will kill all the passengers of the other car) and the defense attorney that can get him off.
4. Let them go to school and learn some business sense, or at least try to soak some classes into that blockhead of theirs. That way, when they get thrown out of the NBA or break a leg in 4 years, they may have something to fall back on, or maybe some of that signing bonus left to start their own rap label :-) (Oh....wait)
5. Team players learn fundamentals, and those team players play longer. It's the guys you don't hear about that don't make as much money in one chunk, that end up playing longer, and usually end up making better business choices and have actual "careers".
6. Teams don't end up blowing way too much of the earnings on a short fizzle star, and your price of beer doesn't go up at the coliseum because the owner has to make up that extra 40 million he wasted. (That's our true concern, isn't it?)
7. You get to see your team win, instead of watching that star fade out and take your team with it, or you actually make it to work on monday morning, because the idiot didn't wipe out your car Saturday night or beat up the guy who was car-pool driver this week.
"Maturity is the ability to think, speak and act your feelings within the bounds of dignity" -Samuel Ullman