Three cheers for Oak Hill player's bid to skirt NBA rule

I'm glad this issue with Brandon Jennings has come up, because it shines necessary light on the worst sports rule since they banned dodge ball.

A Southern Californian, Jennings is the basketball player from Virginia's Oak Hill Academy who says he'll skip college to play professionally in Europe for at least one year.

It's a bold, pioneering move. Most prospective NBA phenoms - Jennings, a point guard, supposedly fits that bill - are forced to fake it as college students for a year before they turn pro because the NBA bars 18-and-unders.

It does this because NBA franchises needed to be saved from their own incompetence. Too many owners embarrassed themselves by paying huge money to high school stars who couldn't play.

All the better for both parties if the rule, approved in 2005, blatantly allows them to wash each other's hands. It pays the NCAA by guaranteeing stars like Memphis' Derrick Rose, this year's No. 1 draft pick, play one season.

And it pays the NBA by making the Roses, Michael Beasleys and Kevin Loves more recognizable - i.e. able to sell more officially licensed product - than they'd be turning pro straight from high school.

Good for Jennings for refusing to be strong-armed by this imperious restriction and rejecting the student-athlete ruse. For exercising his right to use his talents for profit, as Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and even the bust Kwame Brown, 2001's top draft pick, got to do.

From news accounts, Jennings - who's expected to sign with a European team and with a shoe company within a couple weeks - has neither the interest nor the aptitude to set foot in a college classroom.

To make him do so as a prerequisite to dribbling, dishing and shooting 3-pointers for a paycheck makes no sense.

The kid wants to be a pro ballplayer, period. If he's good enough already for some owner to reach into his vault for him, then Jennings should be allowed to be an NBA pro next season.

Citing the prodigiously talented baseball players, tennis players, musicians, actors - electricians, for that matter - who are free to pursue their trades at 18 or even much earlier is cliche, sure. But it very plainly applies.

Young baseball players use college as leverage to squeeze more dollars out of pro franchises. That's how things work. Where, exactly, is the problem with that?

A lot of people, especially high school players who are walking Jennings' path, have their ears up for what becomes of their new, potential role model. It could be that he opens a pipeline to Europe which, with luck, would push the NBA toward rethinking its age limit.

Now, granted, it's very possible Jennings could be making a big mistake, although I doubt it. Anything could happen in Spain or Israel or wherever he ends up. Different language. Different food. Stranger in a strange land and all of that.

Life relatively alone could be tough. Conditions might not be what were expected. Jennings could get roughed up, hardened, jaded. Maybe his game suffers, and maybe that hurts his draft status with the NBA.

Those are all legitimate concerns. They are also totally immaterial to the fundamental argument that Jennings, and anyone else, should be able to make every mistake in the book if every mistake in the book is their destiny.

Naturally, the safer path is the one of least resistance. Enroll in college - Jennings originally chose the University of Arizona. Take up dorm space. Enjoy the parties. Try to win the NCAA title. Try not to get hurt. Do enough to stay academically eligible. Bolt for pre-NBA draft training at the earliest opportunity.

For whatever reasons, Jennings has dropped the pretense. Let's see how many others elbow through that open door.

Tom Robinson, (757) 446-2518, tom.robinson@pilotonline.com