Tiny ball wrote:Bleeding Green wrote:https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2847686-espn-to-broadcast-australian-nbl-games-featuring-lamelo-ball-rj-hampton
Pretty excited for this, maybe we'll see major changes in the NCAA and the recent rash of guys opting to skip college will become the norm, at least for the top prospects. I feel like it started with Brandon Jennings a decade ago, and now you have 3-5+ prospects skipping college to either play in Europe/China/Australia or just spend the year working out. None have been drafted in the lottery since Jennings, but the hit-rate on them is pretty high just anecdotally.
RJ Hampton even has a sneaker deal worth millions, if that is on the table for other guys in coming years, it's hard to pass up a few million and a year in Europe/New Zealand just so you can play for some prick college coach.
I never got how the players sold out the younger guys with that deal. Why should anyone be able to deal you out of a job when you are of age?
If you're a veteran NBA player, why would you want people taking your job if you could very easily avoid it? Even if you're a vet minimum guy, every extra year you hang on is another 1.5+ million dollars that can go to you as opposed to some young draftee.
Chris Paul is head of the player's union and had the Over-38 rule pushed into the CBA so he could sign for 45 million more dollars on his most recent contract. If you're one of the guys running the union, why do you care about some kid coming to take your job? And the owners don't necessarily want high schoolers that they have to pay to sit on the bench for a year either, so I'm kind of surprised that there seems to be a push to get rid of the one-and-done rule. For every LeBron that is ready Day 1, there are ten Jonathan Bender-like players. Even when you have high schoolers who prove worthy, they take at least an extra year of just sitting on a bench producing nothing. Gerald Green took like 5 years before he was ready, Tyson Chandler is a huge high school success and he was nothing his first 3-4 years. The team that drafts these kids usually don't see the full benefit unless they are Kobe/KG/LeBron/Amare/Durant and they instantly step in and are great within year 2.
But perhaps with the push to make the G-League relevant, and with the addition of two-way contracts, we'll see high school kids get drafted and spend a year or two in the G-League before they are given an NBA contract. Something similar to baseball, where you don't start accruing time on your NBA contract until you are on the active roster. So when the next LeBron comes through, he can play immediately at the NBA level, but someone who is the next Jonathan Bender, needs a couple years of strength training, skills development, etc, he can stay in the G-League a year or two and then come up to the big show. That seems like it would be beneficial; a guy like Bender maybe would have made it at the NBA level if not for injury and contract service-time issues.
God damn Jon Bender was ridiculous in high school, wish he could have figured it out.