The NBA is killing college basketball, and when is it going to stop? Sadly, I don’t think it will anytime soon. By now, people know that I can’t stand the No Basketball Association, but I think one of the root reasons why is what it continues to do to the sport that I love. The NBA draft and college entry processes need to be revised to better both entities.
What am I talking about? Well, lets just take a look at the Michigan basketball program. The Wolverines are coming off winning their first B1G championship in 26 years. It was the first one I have seen in my lifetime. After losing Morris, the expectations around Ann Arbor was for the team to be on the bubble for most of the year again. This Michigan team was never on the bubble. They locked up a post season bid early in the season. They began just playing for seeding, which turned out to be their highest in 15 years. The program has begun a dramatic incline in expectations, talent, and prestige. Just with a flash though it can be back to square one. Why? Because of a freshman point guard trying to choose either the NBA or college. While most teams have more depth and wouldn’t be so paralyzed if one of their players left early, Michigan basically needs one or two years to be in that position. They are still on the way to the top, and not there yet. While it is hard to be mad at Trey Burke if he does decide the NBA is what is better for his life. The kid has a chance to get paid to play a game. He doesn’t owe Michigan anything, and as fans we shouldn’t expect him to. What I am frustrated at is this whole early entry process. Basketball is unlike any other college sport, there are only 13 scholarship players. No other sport relies on individuals more than the round ball, which is one of the knocks of the sport I love.. but anyways I move on. Unless you are UNC, Duke, MSU, Kansas, and maybe 1 or 2 other schools, those bottome 5 scholarships are given to average at best players. There just isn’t enough playing time to go around, period. Instead of going to a D2 school and starring, some players would rather be the practice team on a high level D1 school. This leaves 8-10 realistic contributors to a basketball team. I have never seen a team that gives quality minutes to 11+ guys. Likely out of the remaining 8-10 players, there is a noticeable divide between the top 6 and the remaining 2-4. While these depth players are extremely important, they are not starters and likely not starters on rival teams either. Now we have whittled the team down to 6 players. If one guy, especially the quarterback on the floor, decides to leave early it can cripple a team’s progress. It is simply not possible to recruit every position in every incoming class. Most likely you can expect classes of 3-4 players every year.
Right now college basketball coaches have to risk which positions to focus on each year. They have to continue to build depth and always have players leaving early in the back of their mind. The major reason Michigan’s program has begun to rise is because of recruiting and player development. When a program is down, a coach has a harder time getting players to come there. This means that Beilein has to do a bulk of his recruiting extremely early and hope his scouting is correct. Look at all of Michigan’s recruits over this span, Morris committed early and Michigan was the only one interested until his senior year. Hardaway had the name, but not the offers. He committed as soon as possible to Michigan, and then us fans began to watch his stock rise. And this next class is an even better example of this. Stauskas and Robinson were barely in the top 100 recruits, and weren’t included on some rankings. Now Robinson is next in line to get a 5 star. Stauskas keeps rising and now is a unanimous top 70 player. This is how you recruit top notch players to come to rebuild a team. If Burke leaves early, Beilein has little to no time to find a replacement. Especially a top rated guy. Michigan will be lucky to get a depth player at that 8-10 range on the bench with this last player.
There needs to be changes to the current system. My opinion is that coming out of high school, players should be able to enter the NBA draft if they would like. Because the current system, if you know you are going to be a one and done player, you do not need to attend a single class the 2nd semester. You don’t need to worry about being elgible. That is not fair to the rest of the guys on the team who are working their tail off every day to make it as a student athlete. I think if a player wants to enter his name into the draft out of high school, then let him do it. If they don’t hire an agent, let them see their draft status. If they are drafted in the later rounds (where contracts are not guaranteed), let them make the choice to go back to school. This would mean the NBA draft would have to be expanded to 3 or 4 rounds. Now this is the important change, once a player has signed his LOI to attend a college they should not be able to leave to go pro for 2 more years. This will give coaches some insurance on recruiting. Michigan recruits a point guard every 2 years that they see as being the starter, and then somewhere in there they get a backup guy. The other way that this could be handled is to have the NBA draft replicate the NHL or MLB. Kids can be drafted after graduating, and then that team has their rights until a certain date. If the player chooses to go to school, then the draft is void… until the next year where they could be chosen again.
Right now I think it is a huge risk to leave college early if you have a chance to be a 2nd round pick. The current system is not helping college programs, but more so the players that do end up declaring early who end up in the 2nd round or not even drafted. Shouldn’t going pro help the players a little bit?
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