Adam Silver: NBA age limit not changing anytime soon

Looks like the one-and-done rule isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver told Bloomberg News that while he wants to move the NBA age limit back to 20, the NBA Players Association leader Michelle Roberts wants to move the limit up to 18. Thus, the compromise of 19 years old will likely remain.

“It is still something I care about,” Silver said. “I’m also a realist. Given that Michele has said her preference would be for an 18-year-old minimum age, my sense is that it’s not something that’s going to change int he short term.

“And by the way, I’ve always said I understand the other side of the issue, about a young man’s opportunity to make a living. But my views has always been that we’d be a better league if players came into the draft at 20 instead of 19.”

No one has made better use of the NBA age limit in recruiting that UK coach John Calipari. Yet even Calipari has said he would like to see the age limit pushed back to 20 so that players would have to spend at least two years in college.

Calipari has had 17 one-and-dones at Kentucky: John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe and Daniel Orton in 2010; Brandon Knight in 2011; Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Marquis Teague in 2012; Nerlens Noel and Archie Goodwin in 2013; Julius Randle and James Young in 2014; Karl-Anthony Towns, Trey Lyles and Devin Booker in 2015; Jamal Murray and Skal Labissiere in 2016.

As Matt Ellentuck of Sports Blog Nation points out, raising the age limit to 20 would cost new players millions of dollars.

“This is also the first opportunity for players to sign a new contract,” he writes. “Even though 19-year-olds average lower win share numbers their rookie year, that doesn’t affect their pay grade. Many first-round picks can play poorly in their first three seasons without much consequence because NBA teams are reluctant to give up on them that quickly. Then, after their third seasons, teams are likely to throw more money their way because they are playing at a similar level to the rookies that enter the league older than them. Coming into the league at 19 doesn’t stunt growth at all.

“That means players are actually at a deficit having to wait another year in which they could have been paid going through their inevitable three-year growth period in the NBA. Even seniors in college aren’t playing league-average ball in their first season.”

Another interesting note in the Silver interview had to do with single-game streaming, which the league experimented with last season.

“We learned it was incredibly popular,” Silver said.