20-Year-Old Age Limit in the NBA: A Positive for College Basketball

2. Player Maturity

When is comes down to raising the age limit of the NBA draft, player maturity is a topic at the top of the list. It’s important for the maturity of NBA players’ image and the NBA’s image overall. This was partly the reason why the NBA changed their draft rules once saying that a player needs to go to college for one season before being eligible for the NBA Draft.

Player maturity can be described as having a concept of how hard day-to-day work can be, but more importantly it can be described as how a player acts. Many students coming out of high school think they know everything they need to know, but in reality they do not. By moving the age limit to 20-years-old, players can have the opportunity to mature and learn how hard day-to-day work can be. An important skill that future NBA stars can learn from playing an additional season in college is how to talk to the media.

A perfect example of immaturity in the NBA would be Andrew Bynum. Bynum entered the NBA in 2005 and became the youngest player ever to play in an NBA game at 18 years and six days for the Los Angeles Lakers. In his rookie season, Bynum had an altercation with former Lakers center, Shaquille O’Neal.

On January 15th, 2006, Bynum got dunked on by O’Neal and after returning the favor he shoved O’Neal with his elbow while running down the court. O’Neal retaliated with a elbow to Bynum’s chest and they both received technical fouls.

Bynum also showed some immaturity in the 2012 NBA Playoffs. Before a Game 5 between the Lakers and the Denver Nuggets, Bynum told the media that “close-out games were easy.” The Nuggets won Game 5 and Game 6 before the Lakers closed them out in Game 7.