"Die, One-and-Done, Die!" - Adam Silver, 10/16/17

[greenl]

Will this withstand the lawsuit that is certain to follow, if enacted?

[jnrjr79]

Will this withstand the lawsuit that is certain to follow, if enacted?

What would be the basis of any lawsuit? If anything, the current one-and-done system, which inhibits qualified adults from pursuing their careers, would be the thing more likely to face a legal challenge.

[greenl]

Will this withstand the lawsuit that is certain to follow, if enacted?

What would be the basis of any lawsuit? If anything, the current one-and-done system, which inhibits qualified adults from pursuing their careers, would be the thing more likely to face a legal challenge.

I won't claim to be an expert in labor law. I would guess that a few agents will challenge the idea that the league can arbitrarily decide when a player is or is not ready to earn a living as a basketball player. For a country that loves itself some 'free market' this feels like the opposite.

[jnrjr79]

Will this withstand the lawsuit that is certain to follow, if enacted?

What would be the basis of any lawsuit? If anything, the current one-and-done system, which inhibits qualified adults from pursuing their careers, would be the thing more likely to face a legal challenge.

I won't claim to be an expert in labor law. I would guess that a few agents will challenge the idea that the league can arbitrarily decide when a player is or is not ready to earn a living as a basketball player. For a country that loves itself some 'free market' this feels like the opposite.

Agents would not be likely to challenge a rule change that results in speeding up potential clients' entries into the NBA where the agents can start collecting a percentage of their contract.

Also, "agents might not like it" is not a basis for any legal concern. Truly, there's no issue here. The NBA allowed high schoolers for quite a while, nobody thought there was any legal issue to it, and I cannot even fathom what type of an argument one could craft.

[greenl]

What would be the basis of any lawsuit? If anything, the current one-and-done system, which inhibits qualified adults from pursuing their careers, would be the thing more likely to face a legal challenge.

I won't claim to be an expert in labor law. I would guess that a few agents will challenge the idea that the league can arbitrarily decide when a player is or is not ready to earn a living as a basketball player. For a country that loves itself some 'free market' this feels like the opposite.

Agents would not be likely to challenge a rule change that results in speeding up potential clients' entries into the NBA where the agents can start collecting a percentage of their contract.

Also, "agents might not like it" is not a basis for any legal concern. Truly, there's no issue here. The NBA allowed high schoolers for quite a while, nobody thought there was any legal issue to it, and I cannot even fathom what type of an argument one could craft.

D'oh. My bad. Misread the article as the league wanting to further restrict entry (moving to two years minimum). Carry on. I'll take the 'L" in this one.

[RedBulls23]

Hopefully they take a page from the MLB. Like if a team drafts a player, but chooses to put them in the nbdl, their rookie contract doesn't start still they are up to the pros. That way teams don't have to lose contract time on raw players that need to develop still.

[mj234eva]

I never understood why NBA fans want highschoolers in the league...

For every Lebron there were 10 or 20 Darius Miles...

Bust, is Bust. It doesn't matter if Player A came straight from high school or went to college.

[DuckIII]

I never understood why NBA fans want highschoolers in the league...

For every Lebron there were 10 or 20 Darius Miles...

Bust, is Bust. It doesn't matter if Player A came straight from high school or went to college.

And statistically speaking, Chi's post is factually inaccurate.

First round preps-to-pros busts (Miles wasn't even a bust, so its an odd example to use) are the historical exception, not the rule. Its a pretty small percentage of highly drafted preps-to-pros players who busted out.

And guys like Miles and Bender don't count because their career problems were injury related. We we're talking about basically Eddy Curry, Kwame Brown and Sebastian Telfair. Leon Smith counts too, I guess, but he wasn't highly valued and was drafted at the end of Round 1. The rest of the list looks pretty damn good.

The notion that drafting HS players has historically been a failed strategy just isn't true at all.

[League Circles]

I never understood why NBA fans want highschoolers in the league...

For every Lebron there were 10 or 20 Darius Miles...

Bust, is Bust. It doesn't matter if Player A came straight from high school or went to college.

And statistically speaking, Chi's post is factually inaccurate.

First round preps-to-pros busts (Miles wasn't even a bust, so its an odd example to use) are the historical exception, not the rule. Its a pretty small percentage of highly drafted preps-to-pros players who busted out.

And guys like Miles and Bender don't count because their career problems were injury related. We we're talking about basically Eddy Curry, Kwame Brown and Sebastian Telfair. Leon Smith counts too, I guess, but he wasn't highly valued and was drafted at the end of Round 1. The rest of the list looks pretty damn good.

The notion that drafting HS players has historically been a failed strategy just isn't true at all.

The problem isn't that those players aren't good enough. They are, because they were usually the most talented guys in their class. It's that the lack of seeing them against real competition makes it too difficult to decide who to pick where in the draft. Though I'm not sure that one short college season is all that much more to evaluate on.

For example, Kobe should have gone #1 or whatever instead of #13, but the inherent difficulty and guesswork of grading a guy playing against children made a dozen NBA teams pass on a generational great.

Ultimately, it's just kind of apples and oranges watching guys play HS vs major college or G league or foreign pro ball.

[Chi]

I never understood why NBA fans want highschoolers in the league...

For every Lebron there were 10 or 20 Darius Miles...

Bust, is Bust. It doesn't matter if Player A came straight from high school or went to college.

And statistically speaking, Chi's post is factually inaccurate.

First round preps-to-pros busts (Miles wasn't even a bust, so its an odd example to use) are the historical exception, not the rule. Its a pretty small percentage of highly drafted preps-to-pros players who busted out.

And guys like Miles and Bender don't count because their career problems were injury related. We we're talking about basically Eddy Curry, Kwame Brown and Sebastian Telfair. Leon Smith counts too, I guess, but he wasn't highly valued and was drafted at the end of Round 1. The rest of the list looks pretty damn good.

The notion that drafting HS players has historically been a failed strategy just isn't true at all.

Sebastian probably would have been a better example I could have used, although Miles was never anything special like he was supposed to be...

With that said, even if we look past the busts, even the guys who panned out like Kobe and KG. How long did it take before either one of them had any type of real impact? It usually takes HighSchoolers years to pan out if they ever do.

Had Kobe and KG went to college for a couple of years I can almost guarantee Rookie of the Year and immediate impact wherever they were drafted like Duncan, Iverson, D.Rose, Kyrie, Jordan, KD and hundreds of other stars / hall of famers did when they were drafted out of College.

Lebron may literally be the only one who ever came strait to the pro's and mattered. Even if he's not then I still know that it's a very Very short list...

Edit: Btw, you just named 5 or 6 Highschool busts for 1 Lebron... I'd bet you could probably do 5 or 6 more for Kobe... etc.

[League Circles]

I just don't understand why any factor would be considered other than what is best for the league.

preps to pros makes the difficult draft that much more of a crapshoot, inevitably pushing a few more players to the undrafted FA to succesful NBA career route (which isn't good for competitive balance). It also degrades the entertainment level. It's a lose lose for fans across the league. Hell, the 18 and 19 year olds in question would even play more and entertain more playing a bigger role for a year or two outside the NBA first. The ONLY upsdie for anyone is a little more money a little earlier for like maybe a half a dozen guys a year at most. The other 450ish players, the owners, the fans all lose.

[TheStig]

I like players being in college longer but this and the lottery change screw us after this year. The year after this draft will suck if you pull out all the 1 year players.

Actually, it seems like this is setting up to help the Bulls very much. I sincerely doubt Silver would yank the one-and-done rule for the 2018 draft. It would be too disruptive to NBA scouting departments and D-I basketball programs. The earliest I can imagine it being, and what would be ideal for the Bulls, is the 2019 draft. In the 2019 draft, assuming the Bulls are improving some and no longer a bottom 3 team, the odds of them popping into a top 3 slot with the new ping pong ball ratios improve. That's great! And, if the Bulls don't make a leap toward the top, the draft would project to be significantly deeper than normal, because you'd have both the one-and-done guys in the draft along with some additional elite high school prospects that wouldn't otherwise be there. That's also great!

Honestly, this seems like the ideal scenario.

Do you have some inside knowledge that it won't be 2018? Silver acts pretty fast. And we'll still be bad in 2019. Probably 2020 too.

[Jeffster81]

Not to mention the NBA is way way wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more stacked with talent right now than when they allowed those bum highschoolers in!

The NBA is on the right track right now as is, if anything make them stay out of highschool for 2 years, don't go backwards. If it ain't broke don't break it!

If a HSer is going to get paid might as well have them bypass the cesspool that is college basketball.

[Jeffster81]

Hopefully they take a page from the MLB. Like if a team drafts a player, but chooses to put them in the nbdl, their rookie contract doesn't start still they are up to the pros. That way teams don't have to lose contract time on raw players that need to develop still.

When the NBDL(GL) was being developed, this is what I thought they had in mind. Now that I believe every team has their own NBDL team (or at least a majority of teams do), I think the NBDL will now be treated as a legit minor league system.

[mj234eva]

I never understood why NBA fans want highschoolers in the league...

For every Lebron there were 10 or 20 Darius Miles...

Bust, is Bust. It doesn't matter if Player A came straight from high school or went to college.

And statistically speaking, Chi's post is factually inaccurate.

First round preps-to-pros busts (Miles wasn't even a bust, so its an odd example to use) are the historical exception, not the rule. Its a pretty small percentage of highly drafted preps-to-pros players who busted out.

And guys like Miles and Bender don't count because their career problems were injury related. We we're talking about basically Eddy Curry, Kwame Brown and Sebastian Telfair. Leon Smith counts too, I guess, but he wasn't highly valued and was drafted at the end of Round 1. The rest of the list looks pretty damn good.

The notion that drafting HS players has historically been a failed strategy just isn't true at all.

Agreed! On another note, I graduated with Leon.

[DuckIII]

Edit: Btw, you just named 5 or 6 Highschool busts for 1 Lebron... I'd bet you could probably do 5 or 6 more for Kobe... etc.

I definitely couldn't, because I named all of them. The others like Lenny Cooke or Korleone Young either weren't drafted at all or were drafted in the second round.

The success stories vastly outsize the bust stories. The ratios are closer to the opposite of what you stated.

Also, as is pretty clear but worth noting, college players bust all the time as well. Historically speaking, drafting HS players thought of highly enough to be first round picks has been a successful strategy. There is no evidence that the one year between HS and College makes a meaningful difference in success or failure for the high end prospects.

[DuckIII]

I like players being in college longer but this and the lottery change screw us after this year. The year after this draft will suck if you pull out all the 1 year players.

Actually, it seems like this is setting up to help the Bulls very much. I sincerely doubt Silver would yank the one-and-done rule for the 2018 draft. It would be too disruptive to NBA scouting departments and D-I basketball programs. The earliest I can imagine it being, and what would be ideal for the Bulls, is the 2019 draft. In the 2019 draft, assuming the Bulls are improving some and no longer a bottom 3 team, the odds of them popping into a top 3 slot with the new ping pong ball ratios improve. That's great! And, if the Bulls don't make a leap toward the top, the draft would project to be significantly deeper than normal, because you'd have both the one-and-done guys in the draft along with some additional elite high school prospects that wouldn't otherwise be there. That's also great!

Honestly, this seems like the ideal scenario.

Do you have some inside knowledge that it won't be 2018? Silver acts pretty fast. And we'll still be bad in 2019. Probably 2020 too.

But a logical projection is that we won't be *as* bad in 2019 and 2020. The further we move away from the high end of the lottery in the year this happens, the better it is for us and all other rebuilding teams.

This is a very good development for rebuilding teams if the NBA does a simple rule removal.

[MC3]

This works for Bulls because we will get bigger pool of talent to choose. It's simple. And it works for teams who are in basketball hell and can't get out. There is only so much talent worth coming from college or europe to matter teams to draft a in middle of lottery a franchise player. This way you get HS players, college players (1-4 years) + international players.

With today's technology, analytics, scouting, medicine at never higher lvl. And with internet and communication unlike in late 90's or early 00's it should be easier to scout the right talent from HS.

I cursed Silver for changing lottery system and changing odds because it hurts our rebuild. But now if you take this in picture I must say Silver is done good job to give teams a chance to build a better teams.

[mj234eva]

Though I'm not sure that one short college season is all that much more to evaluate on.

For example, Kobe should have gone #1 or whatever instead of #13, but the inherent difficulty and guesswork of grading a guy playing against children made a dozen NBA teams pass on a generational great.

Ultimately, it's just kind of apples and oranges watching guys play HS vs major college or G league or foreign pro ball.

If Kobe were lazy, not a hard worker, he wouldn't have improved his game THAT much to become what he became. A players character, drive, and work ethic are very underrated. See Jimmy Butler, as another an example.

[Jeffster81]

I never understood why NBA fans want highschoolers in the league...

For every Lebron there were 10 or 20 Darius Miles...

With the NBDL slowly become a legit minor league system, HSers would not necessarily be in the NBA to start off their careers. HSers, ideally, would spend the first half of the season in the NBDL, slowly transitioning from amateur ballers to NBA player.