As the NBA season comes to a close, the next thing on the minds of basketball fans is the NBA draft, perhaps the most controversial draft of all the four major sports. The most recent change to it has required players to be one year out of high school to be eligible.
These changes were initially welcomed by most – not including, of course, the high school players who wanted to play professionally right away. But recently, it seems more and more people are coming to the conclusion that this is not for the best. The NBA might have been trying to protect high school players when it established the rule, but for some players, the requirement only hinders their quest to make it in the NBA.
In the years leading up to the implementation of the “one and done” rule, there were plenty of players that were going straight to the NBA from high school.
Everyone knows about LeBron James and Dwight Howard going No. 1 overall in their respective drafts, right out of high school. But there were even several that were going in the second round.
In 2005, the last year in which high school players were eligible, there were six high school seniors selected in the second round. For those players, this meant no guaranteed contract. Even if they received one, it was for a lot less money than those in the first round.
This system allowed agents to prey on younger athletes and smooth-talk their way into having them sign on the dotted line and enter in the draft. The new system was supposed to take away the fear of going too early for the players.
But what the current system does not recognize is that some players do not need college. Sometimes there is a LeBron James, who does not need one year of college basketball to be ready for the NBA.
The NBA was trying to protect a team from selecting a Kwame Brown or a player from becoming Kwame Brown (the biggest air ball in Michael Jordan’s front office career). The current system might do that to an extent, but it does not protect the colleges that take in these one-and-done recruits.
When a college recruit agrees to play basketball at a school, it used to be assumed that he would be there for three or four years. Now, every single off-season is brought with speculation of whether a player will go, leaving college coaches unaware of how many scholarships they have to offer. A few one-and-dones at a school could elevate the team from one that needs to reload to a team that needs to rebuild.
A proposed idea for the best solution to this problem is to allow players to go straight out of high school to the NBA again. But if they do go to college, they need to stay for at least three years. One year of college is not going to make a big difference in a player’s game. And it is not wise to force players to go to college when they do not want to be there.
This might not be the perfect solution, but there really is not a perfect solution to this problem.