Strong Black Bucks for Sale

Step right up and feast your eyes on these young Black bucks. They’re strong, run fast and can jump real high. They aren’t very educated, but they’ve trained their entire lives for this work. What am I bid?”

Ok, maybe equating the NBA draft with a slave auction isn’t entirely accurate or fair, but as I sat watching it Thursday night I couldn’t help making the comparison.

Every year the league’s 30 teams select new players from the college ranks, foreign countries, and increasingly American high schools. In a sport where all but one of the owners is White (the expansion Charlotte Bobcats are owned by BET founder Robert Johnson), the majority of the players and new draft picks are Black.

The event itself is part award ceremony, part game show, part graduation. Held at Madison Square Garden in New York, NBA Commissioner David Stern steps to a podium before throngs of rabid basketball fans waiting to see which player is selected by their favorite team. Stern reads the name of the lucky winners off a card given to him by each team representative. This scene repeats itself through two rounds or about 60 selections.

In a large waiting area offstage, the hoop hopefuls, all decked out in new designer suits tailored to their oversized yet often skinny frames, sit with their entourages of family and friends until their names are called. The anticipation is heart stopping and when the moment arrives, it often results in shouts, hugs and tears from mamas overjoyed to see their boys getting picked to play in the NBA. And this is where I have the most problem.

At this point, all they’ve really won is an opportunity. While the prospect of a large multimillion dollar contract is there, only first round selections get guaranteed ones. Even so, nothing is ever guaranteed in sports. An injury, an inability to learn the team’s system or off court problems could all spell the end of a career before it even gets started.

This year, the number one pick in the draft was Dwight Howard, a high school player from Atlanta. This is the fourth year a high schooler has gone first. Lebron James was number one last season. Of the first 19 players drafted, 8 were players with no collegiate experience.

While the number of young Black males entering and graduating from college is in steep decline, and too many see their opportunities as limited to either sports or rap music, this will undoubtedly influence even more young Black kids to put down the books and pick up the rock, spending inordinate amounts of “study” time in the gym.

What they don’t grasp is how easily they are being exploited. A college player with even a couple years of experience, can conceivably negotiate a higher contract. A high school player, no matter how highly touted, is going to have to wait to get paid, after he’s earned the right through league play. By then, he could be gone. The average NBA career only lasts 3-5 years.

Know that with 30 teams and approximately 16 players per team, there are only around 480 jobs in the entire league. Every team has their veterans and stars who are fairly certain to return each year, thus the job openings are actually fewer than that.

These young men who may have been able to apply their skills towards an athletic scholarship and earn a degree that could guarantee them lifelong opportunities, have put all their balls in one basket.

What they never see are the players from last season, sitting on the end of the bench barely playing, who will now be leaving the league because they just aren’t needed any more. Every year there’s another draft and another population of former players.

Ironically, the number 2 pick in the draft was a young man who recognized the benefits of higher education. Emeka Okafor led the University of Connecticut Huskies to the NCAA National Championship last April, while majoring in finance and keeping his GPA near 4.0. He was an Academic All-American as well as a star player and earned his bachelors degree in three years.

If by chance he gets injured or can’t play again, Okafor has career options. Can the same be said for all the other young men with big dreams of an easy life? If not, are they any better than hired field hands, totally dependent on someone giving them a job, but always at risk of being let go or sold away?