re: UA Basketball Recruiting

Probably based on multiple factors such as offering six figure contracts to high school kids, the ability to personally coach these players individually as much as they want to, acclimating them to NBA style offensive and defensive basketball, four 12 minute quarters instead of two halves, life skills training relative to the NBA lifestyle, etc.

This Select Team is geared for and designed to develop players on and off the court for successful NBA careers. Why wouldn't the NBA think they could do that better than anyone else?

That's their selling point is that they can do it better but it's not been proven. What are they gonna say that they can't develop players as good as college but come anyway?

Obviously not many players are buying that the G league can do it better so far since the vast majority are turning down the six figure G league offers to go play in college.

quote:

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"The NBA seems to regard its constantly improving minor league system, the G League, as superior to the NCAA for developing premier talent. This is true even though the G League costs the NBA and its owners money."

You think it's a bad investment and you're willing to die on that hill for reasons I don't understand, while the NBA and its owners are taking the opposite approach.

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Exactly. Calling it a bad investment is like saying MLB shouldn't pay large sums of money to kids just to put them in the minors for a few years. It isn't about the money. It's about creating an in house player development program to weed out as many busts as they can early on at a fraction of the cost of a lottery contract.

So how many players do ya'll think go to the G league instead of college most years on average? I said 4 - 5 most years with the high side being as many as 8 some years, and you all seem to be disagreeing with me, so how many are you thinking? 15 a year? 20?

I am interested to see where RJ Hampton goes in this years draft.

247 had the top 3 guards ranked Anthony Edwards, Cole Anthony, RJ Hampton in last years class, all were ranked as top 5 recruits.

Most mocks have Edwards and Anthony being taken in the top 5 picks of the draft with Hampton going anywhere from 10 - 20, so it appears that going to the Australian league instead of college may have hurt his draft stock.

If Hampton goes 15th he possible cost himself about 3 million dollars a year by not going to college.

Well he was a top 5 recruit coming out of HS and was projected to be a top 6 or 7 pick in most preseason mock drafts so if he drops outside the top 15 on draft day then his stock has definitely dropped.

Before the season most mocks has Edwards, Anthony, and Hampton all going in the top 6 or 7.

If Anthony goes in the top 5 even though he was injured most of the year and Hampton falls out of the top 10, or possibly top 15 even that's pretty telling.

Well before the season Anthony and Hamptons draft stock was basically the same, Anthony was the 4th ranked player in the class and Hampton was 5th.

Some mocks had Hampton being Drafted before Anthony.

I think the NBA is playing the long game here. They’ve looked around and said the G league sucks, is losing money, and is failing at it’s intended purpose: develop players into NBA players. How do we fix it? They see what they want with the baseball minor league system. The system siphons most of the best players from high school and college and develops them for the major leagues in a farm system that doesn’t lose big money and weeds out the guys that can’t cut it. How do they emulate that in the G-league?

Start by signing the top players straight outta high school. Ok, they figured out how to do that. It’s not a lot so far, but it’s a start. And my guess is they will bust their arse to see that this handful gets groomed by the best coaches available and be given every opportunity to grow into NBA players. Repeat the process next year with a maybe 7 or 8. If they are successful, the program grows and the G-league becomes a true minor league system and college basketball will have to find a way to coexist with it the same way baseball has.

It can be done but it will be a disruptive process for a few years. If I’m right, I figure the NBA will be happy if they can siphon off enough players to make the G-league worth watching and competitive enough to develop players throughout the league, not just on the Select team. Something along the line of 25-30 players out of the top 50. If they can get that many and send 10-15 a year to the NBA, they got what they wanted.

If this argument lasts all offseason I might kill myself