Thursday’s decision by California prep star Jalen Green to bypass one year of college basketball to sign a developmental contract with the NBA’s G League could be a sign of things to come for the country’s top high school players.
In case you missed the news, Green, the top-rated prospect in the Class of 2020, agreed to a deal that will pay him somewhere in the range of $500,000 for the 2020-‘21 season, plus a full four-year college scholarship he can use at some point in the future. Including other benefits he’ll receive, the value of the entire package has been placed at over a million dollars.
While the NBA and the NBA Players Association continue to negotiate over the possibility of top high school players being allowed to go directly to the NBA at some point in the coming years, the league clearly wanted to come up with an alternate plan to keep American prep stars from going overseas to play professionally for one year before becoming draft eligible.
Likely 2020 lottery picks LaMelo Ball and R.J. Hampton both decided to play one season in the Australian NBL instead of going to college, following in the footsteps of past lottery picks like Brandon Jennings and Emmanuel Mudiay. The G League had offered to pay top high school players $125,000 before last season, but that clearly wasn’t enough to keep them from jumping overseas for much higher salaries.
Green wasn’t the only highly rated U.S. prep player to commit to the new G League option on Thursday. Top 15 prospect Isaiah Todd de-committed from Michigan earlier this week and will become a teammate of Green’s on a new developmental squad that will be formed in the Los Angeles area.
That team will be exposed to veteran coaches and former players who will help get the elite prospects prepared for the jump to the NBA, on both a professional and personal level. The developmental squad will play exhibition games against other G League teams that won’t count in the league standings, as well as games against international teams and potentially other NBA academies around the world.
So, will Green’s decision become the norm for high school stars looking to be paid right away while they wait to become eligible for the NBA draft?
First of all, Green’s financial package won’t be offered to all of the highly-rated prep prospects in future years. Our good friend Ricky O’Donnell wrote in his SB Nation column that one Western Conference NBA executive compared the athletic 6-foot-6 shooting guard to Kobe Bryant, saying Green might be as good as Kobe at the same age. Some scouts believe Green would be the No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft if he was eligible.
Secondly, the NBA is only looking for a small group of players for this developmental “select” team, which means high school prospects ranked outside the top-25 each year are unlikely to be included.
And third, the current one-and-done rule requiring players to wait until one year after their high school graduation to become eligible for the NBA draft could be eliminated in a few years if the league and the players association can come to an agreement.
Still, in the short term, Green’s decision is bad news for the NCAA. Division I universities make hundreds of millions of dollars off the success of their football and men’s basketball programs. Taking 8-to-10 of the top NBA prospects away from the college game could do some serious damage to television ratings and merchandise.
The NCAA might have to rethink its policy preventing college athletes from profiting from their name, image, and likeness. Otherwise, the competition for those G League select spots could lead to the formation of more than one team, further watering down the college game.
For fans of the Windy City Bulls, it’s unclear whether you’ll see Green and the other members of the G League select squad in an exhibition game at Sears Centre next season, but the idea is to get these young players prepared to move on to the NBA by facing the best possible professional competition.
Unless the one-and-done rule is eliminated in the next couple of years, you can expect more elite high school players to follow Green’s example and take the G League pathway to a productive and profitable NBA career.
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April 17, 2020 at 07:17AM
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NBA makes proactive move to keep top high school stars at home - NBCSports.com
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