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This is strictly one white man's opinion.
Though all but one of the NBA's owners are white – while most of the players are black – I do not believe the owners' push for a 20-year-old NBA age limit is racially motivated.
That's what former 18-year-old first-round pick Jermaine O'Neal suggested recently. And that's what Billy Hunter, who heads the NBA players' union, echoed the other day. Hunter said, "I'm still philosophically opposed to [an age limit] and I can't understand why people think one is needed except for the fact that the NBA is viewed as predominantly black."
O'Neal and Hunter are black.
By "people," Hunter could be referring to basketball fans in general – and I agree that some white fans surely think, "These talented black kids need a couple of years of college to learn how to cope with all that NBA money and attention."
But I do not think that.
Some black fans also might believe that black high school stars would benefit from at least two years of college. Some fans, both black and white, who prefer college basketball surely resent that so many high school seniors have diluted March Madness by going straight to the NBA.
But don't include me in that group, either.
I prefer the NBA to college basketball – and the NFL to college football – and I believe an age limit in either sport is unconstitutional and an outrageous injustice against players of any color.
To me, the owners' motivation is far more financial than racial. Yes, it's possible that white executives all the way up to commissioner David Stern have a subliminal instinct that tells them black players would be better representatives of the NBA after two years of higher education. But if so, that's far down their list of reasons for pushing for an age limit.
Foremost, owners want to be saved from themselves. They're tired of risking millions of dollars on 18-year-olds whose NBA future is so difficult to predict, and they don't want to spend millions more to subsidize a developmental league for high-paid first-rounders who might not advance.
Yet that includes the NBA's international Caucasian invasion of the last decade. First-rounders such as Detroit's Darko Milicic (taken No. 2 overall at age 18) and Denver's Nikoloz Tskitishvili (taken No. 5 at age 19) have been mostly high-paid bench-sitters so far. Tskitishvili was traded to Golden State last February.
But perhaps many American fans – black or white – don't really put the internationals in the same category with American white players. Of the Caucasians taken in last year's first round, only one was American – Robert Swift (18).
And yes, in some cases, NBA talent evaluators feel slightly more comfortable assessing the future of European players who have been on pro basketball teams since they were 16 or so.
Then again, what greater feeder system could the NBA have than college basketball? High school stars get to play in game after nationally televised, Dick Vitale-hyped game in pressure-cooker arenas often packed with student-section road fans who can be at least as verbally vicious and mettle-testing as most NBA crowds.
