Analysis: It’s long past time to change rules for NBA draft
The NBA says it is seeking an answer to the one-and-done issue, and that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It already has an answer.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has acknowledged for years that the current plan — where players have to be 19 years old and a year out of high school before reaching the league — doesn’t work. The NBA has talked about raising the minimum age to 20. The players have talked about lowering the minimum age to 18.
So the solution is both.
If a player is ready join the NBA.
If he wants to go to college first, make him stay there at least two obvious. at Do 18, let him years. Everybody wins. “Some kids think they’re ready when they’re really not, but still have aspirations to play professional basketball your whole life,” said Phoenix star guard Devin Booker, a oneand-done collegian at Kentucky who doesn’t seem too far away from joining the ranks of the NBA elite. “And I don’t think you should be forced to go to college.” That’s what is happening. Most likely there are Division I underclassmen right now, with the NCAA Tournament looming, who aren’t going to class anymore because by the time the spring semester grades come out they’ll have left school and declared themselves eligible for the draft. They’re just biding their time before they can enter the workforce of their choosing.
“Kids should be going to college because they want a college education,” Detroit coach — and former Division I and Division III coach — Stan Van Gundy said. “There really shouldn’t be another reason that kids should be going to college and we’re forcing them into this system. For one-and-dones, that means they’re going to go to school for one semester and they’ve got to get a C in two classes to be eligible. They’re not there for that.”
The rule was changed 13 years ago, in part to protect the owners from themselves.
It isn’t Kwame Brown’s fault that he was drafted No. 1 overall immediately out of high school in 2001 and never became an All-Star. He didn’t pick himself. Washington picked him. It didn’t work. That’s not the system’s fault. That system worked just fine for LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard, Tyson Chandler, Tracy McGrady and others.
Jonathan Bender, Darius Miles, Andrew Bynum, not so much.
The answer to this conundrum, for both the NBA and the NCAA: The G League.
Who knows how things would have worked out for those three guys — and many others, Brown included — if the G League was then what it is now. The G League, as currently constructed, is up to 26 teams. Washington will join next season, New Orleans will then likely be next, and at that point Silver should simply order Portland and Denver to be like everyone else and add a franchise.
And then the NBA will have a true development league. It won’t reach its full potential until there are 30 franchises, one for each NBA club. Until then, the salaries — $25,000 or so for the majority of players, except for those on two-way deals making as much as $250,000 or so — won’t be able to get where near they need to be, either.
“I think the question for the league is, in terms of their ultimate success, are we better off intersecting with them a little bit younger?” Silver said last month at the All-Star Game. “Are we better off bringing them into the league when they’re 18 using our G League as it was designed to be as a Development League and getting them minutes on the court there?” Put simply, that answer is yes. It would have to be addressed in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, but the NBA Players Association would be on board so that won’t be an issue.