The debate over the NBA’s one-and-done rule was reignited when Zion Williamson’s shoe exploded. How is Zion not already in the league? What if a major injury ruined his career? Why should players be forced to go to college for one season? Those are all fair questions. And they could be answered soon.
The morning after Williamson suffered a right knee sprain in the opening minute of Duke’s loss to North Carolina on Thursday, USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt reported that the NBA submitted a formal proposal to the National Basketball Players Association to lower the minimum age for draft-eligible players from 19 to 18. Now both sides will negotiate with an eye toward the 2022 draft being the first to once again allow high school players to declare.
Former NBA commissioner David Stern once called it a “business decision” to change the age minimum to 19, noting that Congress has a minimum-age requirement, too. “I don’t know why our founders decided that age 25 was good for Congress, but I guess they thought that was about maturity,” Stern said. “For us, it’s a kind of basketball maturity.” Adam Silver, Stern’s successor, once supported the rule, too: In 2014, Silver told GQ that changing the age limit to 20 was “on the table” during collective bargaining negotiations in 2011. “More mature” players are better for the league, Silver said at the time.
But now the league is on the horizon of going the opposite way. In the wake of the formal steps to abolish the one-and-done rule, I talked to executives around the league and found that there is great skepticism about whether the proposal makes sense for business.
“When did we get to the point that all people care about is money?” Charles Barkley said last week on Inside the NBA about the possibility of Williamson shutting down his season to prepare for the draft. “I get so mad when people act like money’s the only thing that matters in the world.”
It’s not, which is why so few players go overseas (as did Brandon Jennings and Emmanuel Mudiay) to get paid before entering the draft, and no player has taken the $125,000 that the G League is now offering to “elite prospects” 18 or older. Some college teams illegally pay players too, but even playing for only a scholarship for a college team with cutting-edge facilities, private planes, and rabid fan bases might beat riding on buses through the snowy back roads of the Midwest to play in empty G League arenas, or living alone in a country where few around you speak your language. Barkley is right that it’s not all about the money, and that’s why the NBA and NCAA should develop a plan to give players a path to go back to college if they so choose.
Under the current rules, a player loses his college playing eligibility if he signs with an agent. But if these reform efforts have players’ best interests at heart, the NBA and the NCAA should come up with a system that allows them to return to school. Such an approach has already shown promising results in other sports. Since 2004, the NHL and NCAA have allowed players to be selected in the draft without losing college eligibility. As of last year, players can even return to school after hiring an agent. The agent’s representation must end before the player’s college career starts, and if the player chooses to return to school, teams can hold their rights for four years. Qualifying major junior players unsigned after two years can re-enter the draft a second time—as more than 40 players have done since the rule was enacted. MLB has had a similar agreement with the NCAA since 2016. Neither college hockey nor college baseball has been destroyed by letting drafted players return. College basketball probably wouldn’t be, either.
One reason for the NBA’s adoption of the one-and-done rule in 2006 was to give teams an extra year to scout prospects. The younger the player is, the harder he is to evaluate. That’s how a 14-year-old eighth-grader like Demetrius Walker goes from being dubbed “the next LeBron” to a college role player, or how an 18-year-old Cliff Alexander went from the fourth-ranked recruit to an undrafted free agent after just one season at Kansas. After toiling in the G League, Alexander now plays in Germany. Even worse, there could be another preps-to-pros victim like Korleone Young, who entered the 1998 draft as a vaunted recruit, but was selected 40th and flamed out after playing just 15 NBA minutes. Having the option to go to college may not have saved Young’s basketball career, but it could have sent his life down a better path. A rule change could provide players with a safety net like those the NHL and MLB have in place. Maybe a team takes a swing on a potential college returnee in the first round, or maybe he goes undrafted. Either way, he has options.
Teams would benefit from this type of rule, too. It’s common for NBA front offices to draft and stash prospects overseas so they can develop without franchises having to lose their draft rights and cost-controlled years. This change would have a similar impact, but instead of a draftee playing in Spain or Fort Wayne, Indiana, he’d have the option to go back to school.
While college basketball is imperfect, many executives prefer it to other methods of player development; the facilities are often top-notch, and a large number of games at premier schools have high stakes. Even Silver said in 2017 that “going to these great college programs is the better path to the NBA.” Teams and owners would naturally want their hands on prospects sooner, but in some instances, it may be more beneficial for the team if the player is stashed.
Development was a major topic of conversation with the executives I talked to. Various executives wondered how the NBA might intervene early to help promote positive habits in players. The AAU system has improved drastically this century, and perhaps more funding thanks to heightened interest could help it even more. USA Basketball is integrating players into its system at younger and younger ages, and shoe money is trickling down to the high school level, all of which helps players mature more quickly on the court. As for the NBA’s plan, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported last year that the league is designing ways to educate youth players on training methods, nutrition, and life skills using camps and tournaments. The league also explored the possibility of creating academies similar to the ones used overseas, but that received no traction. A sports agency could do it, though. Various executives I spoke with said they wouldn’t be surprised to see an agency start an academy for young players and provide professional-level training. Klutch Sports has already begun to challenge the current system. In October, Klutch signed Darius Bazley, who decommitted from Syracuse and passed on a year in the G League for an “internship” with New Balance, which included a guaranteed $1 million with incentives that could reach $14 million. Bazley is now projected as a late first-round pick in the 2019 draft.
Drafts are already trending younger anyway: The average age of a first-round pick was 21.7 in 1995, 20.8 in 2005, 20.1 in 2015, and 19.9 in 2018. With potential financial rewards in front of 18-year-olds, could a flood of high school prospects opt to enter the draft? Before the one-and-done rule was instituted in 2006, the last player selected in the first round out of high school was Gerald Green, who was picked 18th in 2005. Green earned $4 million over the first three years of his career. In 2022-23, the 18th pick will earn $10.6 million over his first three seasons, and the 30th pick will earn $7.3 million. Second-round-pick salaries will rise, too. In 2018, Chimezie Metu, the no. 49 pick, signed for $3.9 million over three years. Green cashed in, but what draft picks used to earn pales in comparison to what players earn now. Lucrative deals even for non-lottery picks could induce more players who aren’t NBA-ready, like Green was, to go straight to the pros.
The money matters to the teams, too. Executives are already dreading the extra time and money and difficulty it will take to scout high school prospects. Consider the story of John Riek, a 19-year-old Sudanese center eligible for the 2008 draft as a post-high-school graduate (similar to Thon Maker or Anfernee Simons, both of whom were drafted in the first round in recent years). Riek was hyped online as a top-10 pick, and scouts flocked to the Winchendon School in Massachusetts—an hour-and-a-half drive from Boston Logan International Airport. An executive working for a team that traveled to see Riek told me everyone in the gym felt like they had been duped. Riek was a basketball catfish.
Riek’s story is extreme, but it can happen when teams are looking into so many prospects. The difference now is technology—video exists, or can be captured, of virtually any player. While scouting in person allows for more detailed evaluations, video can at least enable a team to know whether traveling across the country to watch an unknown like Riek is worth it. Would popular YouTube high school basketball highlight channels like Ballislife, Overtime, and CityLeague consider adding a video scouting service to their businesses? If high-schoolers can go to the NBA, a new market will be created.
Some executives actually expressed concerns about how teams will interact with high-schoolers. Teams make promises to draft players as is—the Bulls did that with Chandler Hutchinson last year, and he immediately shut down his workouts. How will it manifest in high school? Would a high school senior stop playing if a team promises to draft him? And how can the NBA possibly police interactions between teams and players spread out among thousands of high schools, or teams and the advisers of those players? As of now, teams generally deal with the same college personnel each year to scout the NCAA. Adding high-schoolers from all around the country introduces a whole new set of unknowns. Some NBA executives would prefer a system that requires a player to spend three years in college, like in the NFL, so that players enter the league more seasoned. That won’t happen, though.
No matter how the scouting process changes, it will be more expensive. The Blazers and Nuggets don’t even have G League teams up and running (and the Pelicans haven’t taken control of the Erie Bayhawks yet), and now they have to pay for more scouts? Profitable teams or big-market organizations can throw resources at navigating the complicated high school scene, which could give them an edge—like the Spurs historically have had with overseas players. Small-market teams like the Pelicans may be put at another disadvantage, though: Even if they draft a star player, they’ll be stuck paying for one more year of development rather than production. Given all the recent consternation about star player movement following a trade request by Anthony Davis, changing the age limit to 18 could inevitably create more pressure on teams that draft top talents.
The issue of tanking continually got brought up during discussions about the age limit. Most executives scoffed at the recent half-measure solution of flattening the lottery odds at 14 percent for the first three spots in the draft lottery. Nothing has changed: Teams are still tanking. There is no clear-cut solution, but allowing high-schoolers to enter the draft could make it tougher for teams choosing at the top to land a marquee player. A draft with more high-schoolers means a draft with more steals and more busts. That’s how Kobe Bryant fell to the 13th pick, and conversely how Kwame Brown went first. A draft with more randomness could make it harder for bottom-feeders to rise, while also disincentivizing teams from tanking.
Reform has felt inevitable ever since Silver changed his tune about the age limit in 2017, but one large hurdle remains: The chief concern expressed by NBA executives is over medical information. In addition to lowering the age limit, the league wants to require all draft entrants to submit medical information that will be accessible to all 30 teams, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported in October. The NBA isn’t asking that each team have direct access to a player; rather, it’s seeking a system of shared information like the ones used by the NFL and NHL, which require incoming players to take medical exams run by a group of independent physicians. Teams already receive the medical info of most draftees, but 11 of the 69 players invited to the 2018 NBA draft combine declined to take a physical that would then be distributed to all teams.
The NBPA has long been resistant to this change, though, because access to medical records is one of an agent’s strongest negotiation tools to steer clients to a preferred team. One of the more prominent examples of this came in 2015, when agent Andy Miller didn’t give the Philadelphia 76ers access to Kristaps Porzingis’s medicals or an individual workout. The goal was to get him to the Big Apple, and it worked: The Sixers took Jahlil Okafor with the third pick, and Porzingis was selected fourth by the Knicks. Things in New York didn’t turn out as planned for Porzingis, but the draft-day maneuvering was still a success. The 76ers still could’ve picked him, but few teams would invest millions in a player without knowing the full extent of his health.
Some executives question why there would be different standards for medical information for high-schoolers entering the league than for current NBA players. When a free agent signs, he must pass a physical exam. When trades are made, teams are required to exchange all medical info that relates to the player’s playing ability. Draft entrants aren’t technically part of the players union, but this process is standard in other professional sports leagues. The draft is an inexact science as is, and high-schoolers have even more question marks. There is less reliable information—whether it’s a player’s statistics or intel from coaches.
A couple of agents admitted that the league isn’t exactly asking for a lot; teams already have access to medical information on most players, so the pushback is mostly about agents’ ability to retain one of their few bargaining chips. At the end of the day, though, the NBPA works for the players, not the agents.
Not all players will necessarily be happy about more teenagers entering the workforce, though. With only 450 roster spots and 60 two-way spots among the 30 teams, the influx of underdeveloped high school players could put quality veterans on the free-agent market if teams choose to use roster spots on raw prep kids. The NBA could curtail this by making the G League into a proper minor league system. This season, the most a two-way player can earn in a G League season is $77,250—or up to $385,000 if called up to the NBA for the maximum 45 days. All other players earn $35,000, unless called up for 10-day contracts. Raising G League salaries could allow teams to pay young players and keep them off the 15-man roster. It might just be a pipe dream, but it should be a goal.
Every decision the league makes should be about the enhancement and growth of the game. Maybe the league’s talent wouldn’t be diluted, which some executives worry about. Improved developmental infrastructure could enable more young talent to enter the league, which in turn could create a deeper pool of quality players and allow the NBA to more comfortably expand to 32 teams. The league is already laying a foundation in Mexico City, with plans to have a G League team there possibly by next season. Perhaps the league could someday add a 31st NBA franchise there, and then a 32nd franchise in a basketball-hungry U.S. city like Seattle.
There are more hurdles to jump through before a change, but the NBA and NBPA are working toward an agreement. While the game is growing globally and franchise valuations are rising, a recent dip in television ratings is a reminder that there’s always room for improvement. Changing the age limit from 19 to 18 seems simple, but it will fundamentally change the game.
