Dick Weiss on College Basketball
We knew it would happen sooner or later.
The NBA’s G-League will offer one-year paid professional paths to elite prospects as a college alternative. The professional path will begin next summer and offer $125,000 contracts to select prospects. The G-League will target players who are one and done . The move allows non draft eligible prospects to begin NBA training. Athletes will automatically be placed in the NBA draft pool the following year.
The NBA plans to do away with the one-and-done rule altogether in 2022, allowing high school players to enter the draft after graduation and change eligibility to 18. None of this will help college basketball, which could be deprived of many of its top 30 prospects, which in turn could affect the value of the NCAA TV contract.
This could only be the beginning if elite U.S. high school players, many who have left traditional high school programs are attending unconventional prep schools, decide to attend the league’s growing number of NBA Academies. Nike apparently has already seen the future. Yesterday, the giant shoe brand reportedly dropped 40 high schools and cut their EBYL travel teams by 25 percent.
