The 2017 NBA Draft was historic, it featured an eye-popping sixteen freshman drafted in the first round alone, and this is without including Terrance Ferguson, and Frank Ntilikina, one of whom is barely nineteen (Ferguson) and one of whom will only turn nineteen before the season starts (Ntilikina), as well as a record low two seniors. This proves once and for all, if the draft rules of the National Basketball Association weren’t a candidate for revision before, they ought to be now. This silly “One and Done” Rule, adopted starting with the 2006 NBA Draft, set the minimum age for a player declaring for the NBA Draft at 19, or one year removed from high school ending the practice of drafting players right out of high school.
Out of the so-called “prep to pro” group of 44 players who did get drafted out of High School there is one Hall of Famer (Tracy McGrady), three shoo-ins once they fulfill eligibility requirement (Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James), one probable Hall of Famer (Dwight Howard), and five other All-Stars. This is without mentioning Hall of Famer and three-time NBA Most Valuable Player Moses Malone, who played one and a half seasons in the defunct American Basketball Association of the 1970s right out of high school (this league gave us the San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets, the now Brooklyn Nets, and Indiana Pacers as well as the slam dunk contest and three-point shot). Beyond this cream of the crop there is a smattering of serviceable players such as JR Smith, Monta Ellis, 2015 Sixth Man of the Year Lou William, and of course the complete busts like Kwame Brown (1st Overall in 2001) and Darius Miles (3rd Overall in 2000).
Ignoring the refusal of the National Collegiate Athletic Association to compensate college athletes for promoting their universities and sports there are other problems with this rule. The first of which is that draft busts happened long before the explosion in prep to pro draft declarations led by Garnett from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s regardless of the age of the prospects. Examples of this include Kent Benson, who was drafted 1st overall in 1977 after completing his senior season at Indiana University. Benson became most famous for apparently being so cruel to Larry Bird when the later was a freshman that he transferred and for trying to play dirty against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in his first game, resulting in the normally placid Abdul-Jabbar throwing one punch and breaking Benson’s jaw. Benson is not the only senior to be drafted highly and bust out of the league either, LaRue Martin 1st overall in 1972 was widely considered the worst 1st overall pick until Anthony Bennett came along after 2013 Draft despite a stellar college career at Loyola, Illinois. Playing four seasons of college hoops does not guarantee that a player will be any better than a player who plays none or one.
The real tipping point is that the NBA suggests there are other routes available to prospects such as playing in foreign leagues of lesser quality (Brandon Jennings and Ferguson did this) that are options mostly in name only. Why would you as an eighteen-year-old prospect willingly move to another country away from your family to play lower quality basketball opponents? Instead of making these kids work for free in the NCAA or issuing ultimatums that say play in other leagues the NBA ought to scrap the age limitation and expand the G-League (formerly the D-League) to include teams strictly for younger players (we’ll say 18-23) in case these young players aren’t quite ready for the NBA out of high school. This could run concurrently with the regular G-League, while also providing financial advice as well as compensation that the NCAA would never offer because that requires compensating their stars with something other than “scholarships”. Raising the age limit as Adam Silver supposedly wants will not mean upperclassmen make a comeback at the top of the draft, it just means instead of 16 freshman it will be 16 sophomores next.
