Never Can Say Goodbye: When Is It Time For an NBA Player To Retire?

December 10th, 2009 by Andrew Ungvari Leave a reply »
If the last few seasons are any indication, one of the NBA's golden eras might soon be coming to an end.

From 1992-96 the NBA experienced five of it's greatest draft classes in terms of superstar talent and career longevity. Now that many of those stars have begun retiring, we have a large enough sample with which to gauge the average career span of the modern-day NBA superstar.

There are a number of factors which separate this particular generation from those that preceded it.

For example, the number of high school games many of those guys played was nearly twice as many as their predecessors, due to tournaments across the country that were sponsored by shoe companies offering money to schools that couldn't resist.

On the flip side, many of those same stars played fewer college games because they either left college for the NBA after just one or two years, or, in some cases, bypassed college altogether.

Improvements in sports medicine and physical training have also prolonged careers from injuries once considered career-threatening.

The modern-day NBA player hasn't necessarily stopped Father Time, but he has m ...

Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NBA
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