NCAA should empower the Trae Youngs
Here in Oklahoma, we have been largely immune to the One-and-Done plague. College basketball players who go through the motions of attending English comp class while counting the days until they’re in the NBA is the charade of schools like Kentucky and Arizona and Duke. Not the Bedlam rivals.
And remarkably, when one of our hoop stars has had such a decision to make, they’ve gone against the grain of the
hardwood. Nine years ago, freshman Blake Griffin could have left OU for lottery land. Four years ago, freshman Marcus Smart could have done the same at OSU.
Neither did. Both came back for their sophomore seasons and, miracle of miracles, didn’t hurt their draft stock. Griffin even became the overall No. 1 pick and an NBA superstar.
Now Trae Young has the same decision to make, after OU’s Thursday loss to Rhode Island in the NCAA Tournament, and there is little optimism that Young will join the ranks of Griffin or Smart. Young seems likely gone for the NBA. And you can’t blame him.
The NBA has established the asinine policy of banning players until they reach an arbitrary age or school-class level. Then in a cruel twist, NBA scouting and draft trends demand that prospects get to the league as soon as possible.
The longer you stick around a college campus, the more your game is picked apart. Young is a prime example. He entered the season not that high on NBA radars and by Dec. 1 was considered a lottery pick. By New Year’s, there was talk of Young being a top-five pick. Then came the much-dissected Sooner slump, and Young’s draft status slipped back to mere lottery level. Now there’s talk that Young could fall outside the top 10.
And the same kind of sliding status has afflicted dozens of young prospects. The message is not lost. Get to the NBA as quickly as you can.
So the NBA absolutely is a villain in the Oneand-Done drama. But the NBA has an accomplice.
That would be the NCAA. College basketball itself has exacerbated the problem with its own self-serving rules.
The NCAA rules ineligible any player who declares for the NBA draft. You want to make yourself available to be drafted? Fine. You’re done on the collegiate level.
But a Pac-12 task force to clean up college basketball has proposed two prominent suggestions:
1) Removal of the NBA draft’s ban on players just out of high school;
2) Allow players to retain their eligibility even if they’re drafted.
The former is obvious but would require the cooperation of the NBA. The latter might be even more impactful and would not require the cooperation of the NBA.
Since the early migration to the pros began decades ago, the NCAA has been prioritizing the convenience for coaches over the best interests of the players.
Allowing prospects the option of retaining their eligibility, even if they go through the draft, would empower the players. So long as they don’t sign with an agent or sign with a pro franchise, why should players be dead to the NCAA? Baseball players routinely keep playing on campus after they’re drafted.
But basketball players are not afforded the same opportunity, and it’s clearly collusion between the NCAA and the NBA. Such freedom for the players would make the draft more dicey.
Without assurance that a drafted player would join the squad, a franchise would think twice about taking said player. Truth is, such a rule change would help the marginal prospect more so than the lottery talent. For every Trae Young, there are 10 college players who declare for the draft and either don’t get picked or go in the second round, where contracts rarely are guaranteed.
But it would help the Trae Youngs, too. Lottery picks would have more leverage, not necessarily with contracts, which are standardized by draft order, but teams would be more careful about picking a player. They would be more certain that a prospect wanted to be there.
Coaches don’t like giving the players the option of returning, because it makes recruiting complicated. If you’re John Calipari and you’ve got four freshmen having declared for the draft, how many scholarships do you save in case some want to return to Kentucky?
The answer, of course, is who cares? First-world problems. Figure it out.
How does Lon Kruger deal with not knowing until July 4 or so that Young could return? It’s a dilemma. And it’s a dilemma 95 percent of Division I basketball coaches would gladly take on.
Basketball has been making rules to benefit those in power. The franchises. The schools. Heck, even the agents.
Maybe it’s time we empowered the Trae Youngs and Marcus Smarts.