On one and dones

An issue that has been debated for quite some time now has been the rule requiring players to wait at least one year after their graduation to enter the NBA. A very small amount of players, like Jeremy Tyler and Brandon Jennings, will go over to Europe for a year and then enter the draft. For the majority of high draft picks however, that means they will attend a university for a year and then leave for the NBA. Here’s my opinion on these so called one and done players.

At first, the excitement of getting a highly ranked player is amazing and good for the fan base. Kentucky’s legendary recruiting classes (John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe, Daniel Orton or Anthony Davis, Maquis Teague, Kyle Wiltjer and Michael Kidd Gilchrist) are examples of this. Right now, Kansas fans, and most every other basketball fan in the nation, are ecstatic for the Andrew Wiggins era to start. That’s understandable he is possibly the best basketball prospect since this guy named Lebron James stepped on the scene in 2003.

It’s fair to say though, that the Andrew Wiggins era at Kansas will be a short one. Exactly one year to be exact. To be honest, Andrew Wiggins is good enough as he is now that he would go first overall in this year’s draft if he were able to declare, much like James did as a high school player in 2003.

In the mid 2000s, an epidemic of high school players started declaring early for the NBA draft. Some became big stars, James, Dwight Howard, Amar’e Stoudemire, Andrew Bynum and Monta Ellis are good examples. A lot of them though, were massive busts like the immortal Robert Swift, Ricky Sanchez, James Lang and Ndudi Ebi. The only time you will ever hear that last list of names is when people are making fun of bad NBA draft picks.

Because these kids were declaring so early, and a lot of them weren’t panning out, the NBA felt a lot of pressure to institute some sort of ban for high school players. In 2006, they wrote a new clause into their CBA forcing players to wait at least one year after their graduation year before declaring for the draft.

This became the start of the one and done epidemic. At first, college basketball fans were excited because it meant they got to watch top level basketball players play in university. When I day dream, sometimes I like to think of how unfair it would have been if Lebron James had attended Ohio State for a year and destroyed the competition. I mean it’s fun to see dominant players be dominant. Eventually though, that charm wears off a little bit.

Once the novelty of the idea wore off, we were left with the reality that there was a new way to build a team in the NCAA. John Calipari was the pioneer of all this, his idea was to recruit as many top level talents as possible, knowing they would all leave in a year, and then restock the next year. When he won his NCAA title in 2012, it legitimized his strategy.

There is nothing wrong with what Coach Calipari is doing, it is within the rules, he is smart to take advantage. The problem I have with the whole situation is that it ridicules the notion that these kids are “student athletes”, they are merely there because they have to be. The NCAA should push the NBA to dissolved their rule. If these players choose to declare for the NBA draft out of high school, it should be their choice. They get to make a conscious decision and if it doesn’t work out, they live with the consequences.

From a player’s standpoint, it isn’t fair. If a player who is really good, like Andrew Wiggins, goes to school because he has to wait a year and injures himself, what happens? Say his career is completely over because of the injury, where does all the guaranteed money he would have gotten from an NBA contract go? I’ll tell you where it goes, it disappears forever and the player fades away into anonymity, like many failed high school to NBA players have done. What is worst? Someone who overestimates his talent and jumps to the NBA too early or a legitimate NBA player hurting himself in school because he was forced to play a year of college ball?

Ultimately, I hope Adam Silver, the new commissioner once David Stern officially retires this year, looks into the rule and decides to get rid of it. It should be the player’s decision whether or not they want to risk missing an education over making money in the NBA. They shouldn’t be forced into making a choice they don’t want to make.