By Bryan Barahona
Current NBA commissioner Adam Silver is looking into ways of revising or altogether eliminating the league’s “one-and-done” rule in the near future.
This would allow high schoolers to declare for the NBA draft immediately following their senior year, bypassing the NCAA and the need to play at least one year in college or overseas, an option that has become increasingly common for young stars over the years.
Silver has already met with NCAA officials in order to discuss the removal of this rule, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported on November 7, 2017.
Various high school prospects seek alternative routes to reaching the NBA such as playing overseas due to the apparent advantages it has over the NCAA system.
The biggest criticisms of how the NCAA is run surrounds the fact that their players have no (legal) way of making money playing for a program, whether it be prestigious such as Duke or relatively small like Louisville.
College athletes are banned from signing endorsement deals with any company that is willing to give them an offer such as Nike, Adidas, Puma, and more. The violation of this rule could put a players’ college sports career at risk, some whose college attendance relies on a sports scholarship.
“I think the scariest part of that though is the money that is given to a 17- or 18-year-old, like, $20 million dollars their first year at 19, I think that can be a very scary thing for a lot of people,” Connor Greenawalt, Program Director of Communications at NSLC, said.
NBA legends such as Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, and Moses Malone are great examples of the success high school draftees can have in the league; however, the epitome of this kind of success is Lebron James.
Business Insider reported that “Lebron’s first deal with Nike was for a reported $90 million, stunning for an 18-year-old with no experience.”
Since that initial signing, Business Insider continued, “James has since developed his brand into one of the strongest among professional athletes, a development that may have always been natural, judging by his intuition at a young age.”
Although the story of “just a kid from Akron, Ohio” seems inspiring to many, not all NBA careers have the same illustriousness as Lebron’s.
On the opposite side of the spectrum are players such as Kwame Brown, who get drafted out of high school with high expectations but fall out of the league- jumping between numerous teams, having low career averages relative to their draft order, and finding themselves out of the league prematurely, pursuing other opportunities such as the BIG3 League.
“If the NBA provided different financial aid or programs that’d help them manage and take care of their money that’d also be a big help,” Thomas Lobasso, an American University police officer, said.
A high school prospect’s abilities also play a role in such a decision as Lobasso also stated, “If I was a Lebron James type of talent in high school I’d go for it, but if I was a fringe-type of player I wouldn’t take the risk.”
Collaboration between the NBA and the NBA Players Association allows for the drastic increase in payment for its athletes and organizations in nearly all aspects- the draft, player contracts, cap space, trades, and much more, leading to a more prosperous career for their players.
Although not all rookies sign 90-million-dollar shoe deals before even setting foot on an NBA court, its Collective Bargaining Agreement enables these young athletes to make more money than what rookies in the past were ever able to.
As we’ve seen from commissioner Silver, the NBA is a league that embraces change and improvement, forever searching for a solution that could make both sides- players and organizations- happy.
As the league continues to change every year, many hope that the elimination of the “one-and-done: rule may be one of those changes. But only time can tell.