Coach K has 1 & Done idea
The first 10 picks in Thursday’s NBA Draft all might be players who have just completed their freshman season in college, at least according to the latest mock predictions of Draftexpress.com.
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was dead-on this week when he made the case for the NBA to eliminate the sham of the oneand-done trend and go back to allowing players to enter the draft directly out of high school — especially with his proviso that if they choose college they must stay for a minimum of two years.
“In baseball, in theater, in music, if you’re 16 and you’re really good, you go on a different path,” Krzyzewski said Tuesday during an ESPN Radio interview. “I really think that high-school players should be allowed to go. And once they get to college, if you don’t do that, I think a two-year period, so you legitimize being in college, going for an education. You don’t just kind of use the college system as a training ground.”
The past seven No. 1 overall picks have been college freshmen, and NBA commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged during the NBA Finals that the current system is “not working for anyone.” He reportedly would like to raise the age limit for the draft from 19 years of age to 20, while the NBA Players Association would prefer it be lowered back to 18.
Hence, while I don’t always agree with him, Coach K’s suggested compromise here makes a boatload of sense.
“Adam is the best,” Krzyzewski said of Silver. “So maybe we’ll get more movement in this.”
Coach K’s proposal would include each NBA team having a set affiliate in the Development League, allowing players not interested in NCAA basketball to simply enter the draft. If they aren’t deemed ready to play at the highest level, they can be sent to the D-League, which would operate closer to baseball’s minor-league feeder system.
“A kid who’s really, really good coming out of high school, who does not want to go to school, would gain more from being in a pro system where he is working on his craft and his body and the development every day, just like a baseball player,” Krzyzewski said. “I would like to see that.”
Small forward Jayson Tatum is slated to become the latest oneand-done player from Duke to be selected among the top picks in the draft over the past decade. And powerhouses like Kentucky — with two more freshmen (De’Aaron Fox and Malik Monk) expected to go in the Top-10 this year — essentially reload their roster every season with highend recruits, who mostly stay in school for just one year.
“People say that we’ve changed our recruiting philosophy, but we haven’t changed our recruiting philosophy,” Krzyzewski said of Duke. “We’ve always recruited really good players who are good students and good kids, and now that combination has produced one-and-dones.
“Grant Hill and Elton Brand … we’ve had a number of guys who early on, like 10-20 years ago, they would be one-anddones right now. We’re not going to stop recruiting them, but it doesn’t mean we’ve changed our philosophy. The world of basketball has changed, and we’re trying to adapt to those changes.”
Krzyzewski predictably would like to see other changes — such as more allowable practice time — to college hoops, which he claimed is subject to “archaic rules that haven’t advanced with the game.” The NBA has banned high-school players from directly entering the draft since 2006.
“If you’re on the school newspaper, they don’t limit the number of hours you work on writing an article,” Krzyzewski said. “I think we should take a look at the whole system and see how we can cooperate and make sure that the kid is not cheated. He’s allowed to go (to the NBA), but if he doesn’t go, he’s allowed to work more with the coaches that he’s chosen in the collegiate ranks.
“We move at a very slow pace in college, and the NBA and the Players’ Association move at a very quick pace, because they’re a business. And I think as we’re in this, we should run college basketball much more businesslike than we do — for the players, especially for the players — so they would be given the opportunities and be given what they deserve while they’re in college.”
Coach K is onto something here. The time has come for “one-and-done” to be over and done.