by Andrew on Thu Jul 12, 2018 3:28 am
I'm in favour of doing away with the age limit. We had a topic some years back where we looked at all the players who had come out of high school, and there were really only a few complete disasters. The major flops weren't really any worse than college busts, and some of them still had respectably lengthy careers. In fact, a majority of them fared OK, even if they didn't live up to the hype. Again, that happens just as much with players coming out of college.
Also, the G-League is now well-established as the official minor league and development system for the NBA. If players out of high school aren't quite NBA ready, they can be assigned to the G-League. There they can start earning money, further develop, and be properly prepped for the big time. While there was an obsession with drafting players out of high school and it led to a few high profile busts, it was never really that much of a problem back in the day, and should be even less of an issue now that there's a proper development league in place.
I think it's good for college as well. One-and-done didn't do anything for college programs, and probably led to more than a few instances of shady stuff going on with the SATs to get players into college. I imagine that was happening anyway, but once high-school-to-the-pros was prohibited, players who might have otherwise made the jump because college wasn't for them probably got involved with that just so they could be one-and-done. I'm not saying it'll clean everything up with the NCAA, but it'll surely help a little, if only weeding out players who were never serious about college and only went to mark time until they could declare for the NBA Draft.