With just more than eight minutes remaining on the clock, the University of Kentucky’s Nerlens Noel chased down Florida guard Mike Rosario and swatted away a fast-break layup attempt. It was Noel’s 106th block of his freshman season at Kentucky. It was also his last. As he returned to the floor, Noel bumped into the basket support, twisted his knee, and collapsed to the floor. His left anterior cruciate ligament was torn, his season — and likely his Kentucky career — ended on a block he never should have made in a game he never should have played.

Noel is only at Kentucky, and only in college, because the National Basketball Association instituted a rule in 2005 requiring all American-born players to be one year removed from high school before they can enter the league’s draft. Nevermind that Noel, the top-ranked player in the high school class of 2012, would have surely been a first-round pick were he eligible last year. Noel wanted to play in the NBA and an NBA team would have gladly accepted his services. He is in college not because he wanted to be, not because of some sense of amateurism or for an education. He is in college because he had to be.

Proponents of the NBA age limit (as well as those who think it should be stronger) argue that it is a good policy because it allows players to mature and improve their games before they jump to the pros. This is nonsense. The age limit exists because NBA teams, some burned by straight-from-high-school prospects that didn’t work out in the past, saw an opportunity to protect themselves against the possibility that the people they pay to scout and draft players aren’t very good at their jobs. Rather than risk millions of dollars on players who entered the draft right out of high school, the NBA now forces those players to perform a one-year trial run in the cost-free minor league that is college basketball.

It is entirely possible that Noel could have suffered the same injury at the professional level, but if he did, he would have already signed a contract and would have a guaranteed paycheck from his NBA team. Instead, he received a scholarship worth comparably little, and though he will still get drafted, the injury could cost him an untold amount of money if his draft stock drops. Even then, he is probably lucky, since an injury that was more likely to threaten his career entirely would have cost him even more.

But while Noel’s injury highlights problems with the limit, what makes it a bad rule is that it is another unnecessary form of restriction on young athletes that doesn’t exist for other workers. Replace Noel with a person with a different skill-set and basketball with a different industry, and no such policy would stand. An 18-year-old computer whizkid with an offer to join Apple is free to take the job. Someone of the same age with a talent for writing who had a job offer from the New York Times has the same opportunity. But because the NBA wants to protect itself from itself, no such chance exists for talented basketball players like Noel, who, even if an NBA team would be willing to pay them to play, are forced to spend one year as indentured servants in a system where everyone — the NCAA, the NBA, and their schools — makes money except them.

When the New Orleans Hornets’ Anthony Davis, this year’s number one overall draft pick, went down with a concussion in the team’s second game of the season last week, he was forced to exit the game and then stayed in New Orleans for further evaluation instead of traveling to the team’s next game in his hometown of Chicago.

The NBA has been proactive in dealing with concussions, and its policy mandates that players pass a series of tests to make sure they aren’t still dealing with the effects before they return to the court. So even as heightened awareness about concussions in football and other sports has made leagues and athletes more aware about the dangers of playing through head injuries, Hornets coach Monty Williams blasted the policy before the team played in Chicago:

“When you’re dealing with the brain, I guess what’s happening in football has impacted everybody,” Williams said before the game. “He got touched up a little bit last night. That happens a lot in basketball. It’s just that now they treat everybody like they have white gloves and pink drawers and it’s getting old. It’s just the way the league is now.”

“It’s a man’s game,” Williams said. “They’re treating these guys like they’re 5 years old. He desperately wanted to come, but he couldn’t make it.”

The idea that protecting players from potentially damaging head injuries is handling them with “white gloves and pink drawers,” that players are too sissy to return to this “man’s game” if they aren’t immediately back on the court, is exactly why concussion protocols like the NBA’s are necessary. Davis may have wanted to get right back on the court, and Williams may have wanted to get him right back on the court. But that doesn’t mean the best decision for Davis’ health and future was getting him right back on the court.

Williams seemed to realize that later in his rant, when he moderated his stance:

“I’m not saying I don’t like (the policy),” Williams said. “We’ve got to protect the players, but I think the players should have more say-so in how they feel. I’m sure I had four or five concussions when I played, and it didn’t bother me. The NBA is doing what’s necessary to protect the players, but this is not the NFL. You don’t get hit in the head that much. I understand it. But as a coach, I’m a baby about it. I want my guys ready to play. That’s basically the bottom line; I’m just a baby.”

It’s understandable that Williams wanted Davis on the court: he’s arguably the team’s best player. And it’s understandable why Davis would want to get back on the court: the Hornets don’t have another game in his hometown this year. But the more we learn about concussions and how they effect athletes in all sports — from football to stock car racing to gymnastics to basketball — the more evident it is that medical professionals should be the ones with the most “say-so” in when a player like Anthony Davis gets to return to the game, whether players and coaches like it or not.

Sports fans, the national media, and even National Basketball Association insiders are wondering how everyone missed out on Jeremy Lin, the where-did-he-come-from point guard for the New York Knicks who has set the sports world on fire over the last two weeks. Lin, after all, was barely recruited out of high school, undrafted out of Harvard, cut twice by NBA teams, sent to the NBA Development League, and nearly cut again, all before emerging to score more points in his first five starts than any player in NBA history.

The New York Times found what seems like at least part of the answer this week: Lin is of Taiwanese descent, and according to some coaches the Times talked to, “recruiters, in the age of who-does-he-remind-you-of evaluations, simply lacked a frame of reference for such an Asian-American talent.”

Racial stereotypes, taboo in virtually every other aspect of American society, still play a huge role in sports, particularly in how the media, analysts, and scouts evaluate talent and make comparisons. Analysts use adjectives like “crafty” and “intelligent” to describe how white athletes overcome their general lack of athleticism, while marveling at the sheer athletic ability of black players who supposedly lack the intangibles of their white peers. Whites are often touted as the tough-nosed, blue collar players; blacks, the ones who make it look easy.

The stereotypes then carry over to the comparisons we make between athletes. Analysts spent years looking for the “next Larry Bird,” putting the label on virtually every talented white player to reach the NBA. On a statistical level, though, the “next Larry Bird” was actually Kevin Garnett, a 6-foot-11 black forward who has been in the NBA since 1995, just three years after Bird retired. We ignore that black quarterback Donovan McNabb had a lot in common with white quarterback Mark Brunell, and that neither played much like white quarterback Dan Marino or black quarterback Warren Moon.

The same stereotypes are in play with Lin. Few other Asians have ever played in the NBA, and the majority have been tall centers like Yao Ming and Wang Zhizhi (Lin is 6-foot-3). The stereotype for Asian NBA players was easy, then: they’re tall, or they don’t exist. Now that Lin has proven that wrong, others persist. With no Asian to compare him to, analysts are matching Lin to the next closest thing — white point guards like Steve Nash who came out of nowhere to star in the NBA. That may be a compliment to Lin — Nash is a two-time MVP — but other than blossoming in similar systems and having lighter skin than most of the other players, Lin and Nash’s games bear little resemblance.

The stereotypes, many of which exist subconsciously, likely aren’t going anywhere. Which means whenever the next Jeremy Lin comes along, fans, the media, and even the biggest experts won’t see him coming.