NCAA Basketball Recruiting: Analyzing five-star F Jonathan Kuminga’s top 5 teams

NBA G League

The G League option is still new with 2020 prospects Jalen Green, Isaiah Todd, Daishen Nix, and Kai Sotto but the appeal is obvious. Instead of playing a year in college without earning a salary, the G League will offer Kuminga six figures – he’d probably command something similar to Green’s $500K contract – plus endorsement deals.

However, Kuminga also gets the advantage of seeing those aforementioned prospects go through the program first. We’ll know much more about the program once he goes to make a commitment because, well, it’s impossible to know the impact of the G League program without anyone having gone through it yet.

The financial compensation is an obvious advantage, but what if those prospects see their draft stock slip in favor of guys that opted to play college basketball? What if one of them gets hurt and doesn’t have an insurance policy in place like ones offered by the NCAA? What if it’s just a total mess?

There’s also the chance it proves to be an advantageous option and tremendously helps those four “guinea pigs,” in which case it’d be hard to imagine Kuminga not picking it.

We know the financial compensation and opportunity to focus solely on basketball is appealing enough for Kuminga to seriously consider the G League. That said, how big of a factor that program will be in his recruitment (and, honestly, the recruitment of other top prospects in the 2021 class) will depend on how successful the program is in its inaugural season.