NBA Forced by Australia’s NBL to Make Changes to G League Program
By ALAN WALLS
Welcome to the fifth edition of The
International Basketball Opinion, the world’s newest and only blog specifically
dedicated to international basketball current events and news.
In recent weeks, with basketball fans on the
edges of their sofas waiting desperately for the NBA to start back up, the G League
has been making headlines with the signings of top American draft prospects to
their revamped professional pathway program.
This type of program
should have been implemented 20 years ago when the NBA Development League started.
And instead of being visionary, the NBA was forced to do it. More on that below…
Soon after, #13
ranked high school player Isaiah Todd, a 6’9”power forward from Virginia,
announced that he would be joining Green. Todd is expected to earn around $250,000.
Twice is a coincidence,
three times is a pattern… Then 5-star prospect Daishen Nix decided to join the
party. The 6’4” PG from Las Vegas reneged on his commitment to UCLA and joined the G League.
Who is next and will we
see more kids decommitting from NCAA programs? I believe so, especially with
the type of money that is now available and with the uncertainties regarding
college sports due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is great news,
but long overdue! So why now, why in 2020?
The NBA and the G League had no other choice!
They were forced to react
by the Australian National Basketball League’s similar two-year-old Next Stars
program that this past season lured top NBA Draft prospects LaMello Ball and RJ
Hampton with contracts hovering around $500,000 and the chance to play professionally
immediately rather than pretending to be college students for a year while making
zero money.
It is a good start
for sure, but more should be done.
I think the whole
system needs to be revamped. The NBA should take a page out of the Major League
Soccer development playbook with development academies, youth and U25 teams and
homegrown player contracts.
If the MLS can do it,
with much larger budgets the NBA can as well.
To reduce travel and
its associated costs, it could be organized into four regional conferences of seven
teams with an end-of-the-year G League Final 4 with the four regional winners.
The regular season would consist of six games against each conference member
for a total of 36 games, a similar amount as an NCAA DI schedule.
Will this impact
college basketball? Of course it will, yet I believe much more positively than
negatively. The college game will be much better overall and in the long-term with
more three- and four-year players and less one-and-dones.
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