Should the NBA dump one and done?

Recently, new NBA commissioner Adam Silver expressed his desire to raise the minimum age limit from 19 to 20.

 

The biggest reason to raise the age limit is also the biggest reason against doing so: The rich will get richer. IOW, the major conferences stand to gain the most because it’s no secret that ever since the one and done era that midmajors and select autobids have narrowed the gap.

 

If a baseball-like rule is adopted by the NBA, here are other side effects:

·         If this is about high schoolers going straight to the pro, the purpose is defeated

·         Some talent may only need one year to sharpen their tools

·         Other players may pull a Brandon Jennings by going overseas—and be more successful

 

For me, this is about the fact that Silver’s predecessor marketed the D-League very poorly. The D-League should be split into two 15-team leagues and the NBA should add the third round back into the draft to handle such players.

 

Barring any easy solutions, the best solution may be for things to go back the way they were before 2005.

Furniture City musings

One would have thought that when High Point University bought Oak Hollow Mall that the school would have had its ducks in a row and least have quietly resolved outstanding issues with Dillard's and Sears. Even though previous owner CBL ran the mall into the ground, it was HPU's responsibility to get the two department stores to agree to let the university have total ownership of the mall as a condition for CBL no longer running Oak Hollow Mall. Now, Montlieu Avenue residents will be inconvenienced by HPU's failure to buy the whole mall.

When it comes to Montlieu Avenue, I'm glad that a poster on the High Point Enterprise's website brought up the possibility of renaming one of the soon to be disconnected segments after MLK, Jr. because it would put an end to 22+ years of failed attempts--including another one that happened last week--to name any street in honor of the slain civil rights leader. However, the proposal makes too much sense to city leaders who aren't known for "rocking the boat."

UNCG's shift

UNCG's expansion into the Glenwood neighborhood could be a sign of a socioeconomic shift. Students who have opposed the plan talk about tuition being expensive and flat-to-declining undergraduate attendance and steeply declining graduate school attendance. The end result is that the university is shifting from being a blue-collar school to being North Carolina's second Public Ivy. It is completely within the realm of possibility that a decade from now that UNCG will be the place for Greensboro's elites to send their children when they are unable to get into Chapel Hill.

Three years ago during the unsuccessful attempt to save the popular wrestling program, a professor wrote to the News & Record that if the school were really feeling the brunt of statewide budget cuts that UNCG would have saved money by taking the Spartans back to Division III. However, there is a big problem: As I read in Once Upon a City, ex-mayor Jim Melvin pumped a lot of money into UNCG in the 1990s as the school was moving up to Division I. As a result, there's no way that UNCG  is going to go back down--not when neighboring High Point University and Elon are in Division I.