Watch Your Back, Beasley -- Here Comes Zach Feinstein - FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

File this under the "I wish I'd come up with it first but it probably shouldn't ever happen again" department: Zach Feinstein, a student at Washington University in St. Louis, has applied and been accepted for early entry into the NBA draft. The catch is that Zach, well, he's not so much slammed full of what you might call "upside."

He is a 5'8", weighs a buck-thirty, and claims under the "Scouting Report" section at his website that his weaknesses are "Lacks Actual Basketball Skills, Ability, and Experience". Zach, in other words, is probably not good at basketball. But Zach found a pretty funny, albeit logical, loophole in the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement, in that he actually met the requirements for eligibility.

It was at that point decided - I must write a letter to the NBA declaring my intent to be drafted. Using my best legalese I crafted such a letter.

[...]Finally on April 1, I got a reply - a letter in my mailbox from the NBA. But this was no April Fools' joke. They were letting me into the NBA Draft.

After filling out a few more forms, Zach can now find his name on both Draft Express and NBA Draft.net. Now, he's probably not getting drafted, unless Billy Knight sees something at a workout feels like making a funny. But it is simultaneously a hysterical and secretly ominous story that will probably end up getting some major media play.
It's funny, of course, because the NBA let him in and he's going forward with it. And it's absolutely worth hitting up his site to check out all the scanned NBA paperwork he has, in addition to the full story of how he ended up doing that and a pretty freaking funny profile.

It's ominous -- and maybe that's a touch strong -- because, based on my limited employment law knowledge, the NBA cannot really keep anyone from applying. I could be wrong here, but how would stopping someone from applying for a job based on their athletic ability not fall under ADA guidelines? At the very least, I could see a desperate-for-attention, would-be-baller filing a lawsuit.

Laugh all you want, but if Target can get sued because their website wasn't designed well enough for someone with poor vision to use it, why couldn't I get my case at least past summary judgment if the NBA decided to reject my application based on my (in)ability to play basketball? It's ridiculous, but it's still discrimination.

H/T: AA