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Adam Silver thinks an age limit increase to 20 'would make for a better league'

Adam Silver thinks an age limit increase to 20 'would make for a better league'

Following sports often forces us to balance how we utilize our own value systems in real life versus what we instinctually want to react to as fans. It’s a tough give and take that often sees people rooting against movements and for decisions that we wouldn’t want applied to us personally.

For years, the casual NBA fan was told to ready themselves for a killer 2014 NBA draft. Several teams started out the 2013-14 season by dumping personnel in hopes of establishing good position in the league’s draft lottery, in anticipation of a bevy of fantastic young players. Nearly a month into the season, however, the league’s rookie class is more than underwhelming. Nobody is calling the class a bust – far from it – but none of the expected standouts have even put up an average Player Efficiency Rating thus far. The top overall selection, Minnesota’s Andrew Wiggins, needed a 29-point, five-rebound game on Saturday just to bump his numbers up to 12.5 points and 3.5 rebounds in just under 29 minutes a contest.

The reason nobody is calling this class a bust is because its lead dog, the aforementioned Mr. Wiggins, won’t turn 20 until after the season’s midpoint. Most of his lottery contemporaries are around the same age, as this year’s vaunted class is getting paid to develop on company time. The NBA long ago stated that it wanted to change this, and raise its minimum age limit to 20 or even 21, but it would need the players’ approval for such a move, and the players’ union has opposed the move.

In a discussion with Chuck Klosterman at GQ, NBA commissioner Adam Silver explained why:

Why can't you do that now? If it's possible to dictate that players can't sign until they're 19, why is making that age 20 any more complicated?

The reason we can't unilaterally do it is because it must be collectively bargained. We bargained with the union many years ago in order to move it from 18 to 19. Going to 20 was on the table during the last bargaining cycle [in 2011], but it was an issue we parked, having already lost several weeks of the season [due to the lockout], and we were anxious to get the season going. But it's something I hope to address in the near future.

What is the union's principal argument against raising the age limit? It seems like it would be good for everyone—the NBA, the college game, the physical development of the players.

Their principal argument is that it's a restriction on players. And as a philosophical argument, I totally understand that. Of course it's a restriction, in the same way a draft is a restriction. But our view is that it would make for a better league. You'd have more skilled players, more mature players. The draft would be better. It would be better for basketball in general. Strong college basketball is great for the NBA. And we know those players are eventually going to come to the NBA, whether they are 19 or 20 or 21.

For further background, the NBA’s age limit was 18 until 2005, when the National Basketball Players Association agreed with the NBA in collective bargaining agreement talks to move it to age 19. For decades, few players left college for the NBA before their junior year of college, much less jumped to the NBA straight from high school. Starting in 1995, however, scads of preps-to-pros prospects turned out – even if, ironically, the final year of age limit-less featured only one American high schooler taken in the first round, the currently unemployed Andrew Bynum.

The league’s players voted for a change to preserve roster spots for declining players, older players that would lose a gig if a team decided to draft a youngster in order to develop him. The Players Association has remained staunch in its opposition to any changes this time around, though, even though more and more teenagers are being selected by NBA teams later in the first round and into the second, selections used to garner a talent, rather than a contributor.

This is where a fan’s personal politics come into question.

If an NBA team wants to employ a basketball player at age 18, 19, or 20, they should seem to have earned the right to make such a decision, as the player has earned the right to be viewed as someone whose talents are valuable. Personally, I was paid to write about this league at that age, and restrictions on employment seem ridiculous and, if we want to get haughty over it, un-American.

The fan in me, however, doesn’t really want to wait around while 19-year old Noah Vonleh figures his game out. And the fan in me loves Noah Vonleh’s potential game. The fan in me is having too much fun watching all these veterans do their thing, and he doesn’t really mind waiting a few years for a bigger and better Noah Vonleh to make the NBA.

The American in me thinks it ridiculous that the NBA should get in the way of denying the Charlotte Hornets a chance to make Noah Vonleh a professional at age 18, however. The American in me also thinks it ludicrous that Noah Vonleh would have to work without compensation for an NCAA organization that packs more commercials on CBS into the final minutes of a game than ‘Big Bang Theory’ does for an entire episode.

(The snob in me wants to point out that, when it comes to ‘Big Bang Theory,’ I wouldn’t claim to know how many commercials are in an episode.)

The sportswriter and NBA follower in me also understands that the best possible thing for someone like Noah Vonleh’s development in his chosen profession is to be selected by an NBA team. He’ll receive the best coaching he possibly can, he’ll be allowed to practice without NCAA restriction, he’ll be forced to earn his way amongst the game’s best players, and he’ll be forced to do it over the course of an 82-game season. Even if Noah Vonleh won’t play in half of those games, he’ll still have played more than he would have as an Indiana Hoosier.

Experience is no sure bulwark when it comes to adapting to the NBA. Doug McDermott, a four-year senior and last year’s NCAA Player of the Year, has a 5.8 PER (15 is average) and is routinely being torched defensively. Fellow Chicago Bull Nikola Mirotic, widely considered to be the best international player in the game prior to this season, needed a 24 and 11 game on Friday to move his PER into the realm of the passable, and he’s the only member of this year’s rookie class to contribute a double-double thus far.

It’s true that two members of the same team shouldn’t probably be used as benchmarks for how the 20-somethings would perform, and it’s also true that Andrew Wiggins’ time as a teenager is best served in the presence of the Minnesota Timberwolves, despite our deep respect for the folks at Kansas University. An age limit guarantees absolutely nothing.

As humans first and fans second, though, where should we fall on this?

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Kelly Dwyer

is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!