LeBron, Melo rip into college org
LEBRON James and Carmelo Anthony are the latest athletes to speak out against the NCAA.
The two NBA veterans both referred to the organization as “corrupt” while speaking after the team’s respective shootarounds on Tuesday.
“I am not a fan of the NCAA. The NCAA is corrupt, we know that,” James said. “Sorry, it’s going to make headlines, but it’s corrupt.”
James, who went to the NBA straight from high school before the one-and-done rule was implemented, was responding to Friday’s bombshell report from Yahoo Sports, which implicated several players in documents as receiving illegal payments. The three-time NBA champion and basketball’s biggest star advocated an expansion of the G-League, the NBA’s developmental league, and transforming it into a “farm system” as a way to combat the NCAA’s corruption.
“Every NBA team has to have its own farm system,” he said. “I think we’re almost there but not quite there yet. … We’re getting there. The GLeague is doing — I clap and commend what we’re doing with that.”
James added he wants to speak with NBA commissioner Adam Silver about the farm system idea, but said “that’s a longer dialogue.”
Anthony, on the other hand, said he would want to talk with the NCAA about fixing the problems.
“I would love to sit down with the NCAA just to hear — no, I’m serious. Just hear about their thought process behind this and what they’re thinking,” he said. “What’s the future? I’m all for the athletes. I think we need to figure something out for college as a whole.”
Anthony, who won a NCAA championship as a freshman with Syracuse in 2003 before entering the NBA, also added that he thinks college basketball players should be compensated.
“I think it has to be a collective effort between NCAA, NBA — just basketball as a whole,” he said. “NCAA and amateur sports have been corrupt for so long. We all know that. Whether you get caught doing it or not, it is what it is. But that’s beside the point. I think college basketball players — college athletes, period — should be compensated. You have to think about a 16-year-old kid, 17-year-old kid going to college. Yeah, they get a free education if they get a scholarship. But how are they surviving on those campuses? A lot of them can’t afford food. They’re getting in trouble for taking $10 or $20.”
James sounded less optimistic, though. “I don’t know if there is any fixing the NCAA,” James said. “It’s been going on for many, many years. I don’t know how you can fix it, I don’t see how you can fix it. Obviously, I have never been a part it, but I do know what five-star athletes bring to a campus.”
James and Anthony are the most recent sports figure to speak out against the NCAA. Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy called the NCAA the “worst organization in sports” and said the one-and-done rule requiring players to spend a year in college was “racist.”