Time to retire?

I saw this week that Chris Webber is retiring, at the age of 35.

From time to time I've thought about professional athletes - the non-golfers, anyway - and how strange it must be for them to have to hang it up in their thirties. I remember being in high school and reading an SI with a cover story on Michigan's Fab Five, of whom Webber was one. Since then, in my professional life, I've gone to college, decided on a major, found a job, went back to school, found a job in a new field, and now think ahead to what, potentially, the next 30 or 40 years of that career might hold. Chris Webber has played basketball. Not to say that there is no more to him than ball, but he has been focused on that job the entire time. (At least, I figure he's been focused to compete at that level.) His entire professional life has been as a player, and now, one year older than me, that life is over, whether he wants it to be or not.

Maybe it's only a difference of expectations. Webber certainly didn't expect to play in the NBA until he was eligible for Social Security, and maybe he thinks, "My word, how strange that someone one year younger than me could contemplate doing his current job for another 30 or 40 years."