That brings up another interesting thought. Is there something to be said for a kid who attends Duke for a year? Does that make him more marketable than if he went to an off brand D1 school or even Memphis?
There’s a perception that comes with being a Duke player and I wonder if that helps with a player make a choice when they look at the marketing etc.
Only thing I’m concerned with is a little (extra) volatility introduced late in the cycle, depending on how the timing of these G-League(-adjacent?) deals compare to LOI windows.
Can’t imagine it would impact us regularly, but we’ve seen how some programs do have that ability to come in very late in the process and change the equation for a recruit.
Figure a Kentucky has a commitment from a top 10-15 kid who has a monster AAU season, vaults into the top 5, and suddenly is off to the G-League ‘Select’ instead. Now Kentucky pivots and dips into the top 30-40 range (our recruiting ‘top end’ seemingly) for a replacement very late in the game.
Tony usually seems to like to have his work done early on these kids, so again, probably wouldn’t actually impact us often, but I’m sure there will be ripple effects from year to year. Certainly no shortage of kids in recent memory that we were on for a long time who seemed to be ‘waiting’ for that Duke/UNC/Kentucky/etc offer.
Your post inspired me to think about this way too much and come up with a system I’d like based on the hockey system (apologies in advance for long post).
Seems like there is a lot of upside here:
I get that some wouldn’t like this because it would make the NCAA feel more like a feeder league to the NBA since there would be players on college teams that are already a “future New York Knick”. But it seems like we’re kind of already there with how sports media talks about players like Zion, and it seems like this would be both better for players and maybe overall result in more talent in the college game. Not sure how college coaches would feel about it. They might not want some kids to already have a future pro coach in their ear, and it’d create more uncertainty around draft time. But they also might get to keep more players / get new players they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Don’t really know how NBA would feel about it, and their cooperation would be needed to make it work plus find way to minimize instances of players being pulled out of college in mid-season to the pros.
Anyway, open to all the reasons it’s a terrible idea. But was fun to think about.
Looks good @MaineWahoo… but I still like the idea that you don’t even have to “declare” to be drafted.
So I was thinking about that, and the reason I think it might still be important is actually for the players. If you’re a raw second year college player with long-term NBA potential, you might prefer to be drafted in your third or fourth year so you can make it into first round since draft position has so much impact on your first contract. If you don’t have to declare, and an NBA team could draft you whenever they want, they could draft you in your second year at the tail end of the second round, meaning you’d be set up for a bad contract even if you got better in your third and fourth years of college. So seems like you want the player to have control over when they can be picked.
That said, could also deal with that by letting players be drafted in more than one draft, but seems like NBA wouldn’t let that happen. Although I don’t know enough about it - maybe it could work.
MLB rules are you keep their rights for 24 months or across 2 drafts… then you lose them. Perhaps use that?
Penny isn’t real happy about this G-League thing. Imagine that.
Shocker the guy who already saw his season blown up by one and dones and NCAA rules
Guys are including the G-League in their Final 5 edits now. One of those college coaches think they nearly have this stud reeled in, Imagine the reaction to seeing that.