Rubio to enter draft

[Smash Williams]

Exactly, that's why it's really silly to compare him and Jennings. Age has little to do with it. I still for the life of me can't understand American basketballs rules. It just holds back the talent. And why can a 17 or 18 year old Ricky Rubio enter the draft but a 17 or 18 year old American kid can't? Stupid.

Ricky Rubio is 18 years old and will turn 19 before the end of the 2009 calendar year. If an American kid were to go play in Europe, he would also be eligible for the 2009 draft as long as he also turned 19 years old before the end of the 2009 calendar year.

The NBA has a couple of good reasons for structuring there eligibility rules the way they do. First, raising the minimum age gives NBA teams an extra year to scout players, making the draft slightly less of a guessing game. Secondly, and more applicable to the different rules for American kids, having kids go to college for a year allows those kids to become household names before they enter the NBA, thus making them instantly marketable in the NBA. Conversely, a kid having to play an extra year in Europe is going to make him more marketable in the United States. Also, European educational systems are structured much differently than the American system, so it would be impossible to apply rules about a player's high school graduating class to Euros.