Unlike the players of the 1960s/1970s....who had four years of real college...these guys are mostly high-school level types, and have zero knowledge over how the team generates money or how their salary relates to real life. This is the sad level of NBA action today...a bunch of ‘kids’ who act and behave as if they were 13-year-olds.
You and I could - and maybe should - write a book on the infantilization of society.
As I don’t have to tell you, we’ve extended childhood to age 30 and beyond. The emotionalism. The overreactions. The tantrums. The sloganeering. The belief in childish simplicity regarding economics (everybody gets what they want when they want it regardless of quantity or cost), health care, sexuality, etc.
There are many causes and culprits starting with indulgent parents but I take the somewhat contrarian view that bans and age limits are some of the worst offenders.
Bans immediately spark the mind to find a way around the ban. Smoking is bad, admittedly, but banning it has led to the vape industry which is wildly popular among young people with all its gadgetry, flavors, brands, etc.
The 21 drinking age has been a disaster all round. Off-campus parties involving students of all ages where oceans of beer and especially hard liquor are consumed in huge quantities as quickly as possible have replaced bars where consumption can at least be monitored if not cut off entirely.
Drinking, like it or not, was once a sign of reaching adulthood. An 18 year old could order a drink next to an 80 year old and be expected to behave accordingly. Socialization was the key to maturity.
There were on-campus pubs - places with cute names, pool tables, video games, etc. Moderation was the rule and - gasp - it was possible to have a (small) beer or two and go back to class none the worse for wear.
3 years between age 18 and 21 is a long time to get blotto at every opportunity. Add in the frequent simultaneous consumption of high-potency cannabis and you have a recipe for disaster.
About 10 years ago there was actually a movement among college presidents, of all people, to lower the drinking age again. They knew about everything I’ve written above and were tired of being the unpaid Alcoholic Beverage Control police. They were aware of the causes and effects among young people and could remember more sane times, even at so-called party schools.
Conditioning remains the strongest shaper of human behavior. Young people have learned to mouth the platitudes of the left - racism, homophobia, etc. Yet one of the most frequent insults heard on an NBA court is ‘faggot.’ They have lectured the players forever about it but it remains evergreen.
As you say, these players are stuck in a pattern of arrested development. Previous militant jocks like Jim Brown and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar would put on respectable suits and hold press conferences to discuss their issues. They had no thought of demanding slogans be printed on fields or uniforms or hijacking TV coverage of games.
Finally, black militants - athletes or otherwise - had better take stock of the heroes they designate. Junkies, thugs, felons, and accessories to same may seem worthy of sympathy if and when they are shot by police but to state the obvious 99.9% of people, including junkies, thugs and felons, can encounter police without facing gunfire. Police require loads of provocation and threat to draw a weapon let alone fire it. George Floyd is not a hero. He really isn’t even a martyr. The tendency is to make icons of the deceased but the haste is revealing: we are now discovering, to no great surprise, that Breonna Taylor may not have been the innocent hard-werkin bystander as portrayed. She may very well have been a ‘babyface’ assisting criminals and had shifted allegiance from one drug dealer to another hence the nerves that caused them to shoot at police.