During the past few years, we’ve been hearing more chatter about the NBA’s “One and Done” rule for college and why it should be eradicated to give players the opportunity to go pro if they choose to. Currently, players need to be one year removed from high school and 19 years old to be draft eligible.
With the NCAA scandal that happened this season and more players opting to go overseas instead of college, the NBAPA and the league are thinking twice about eliminating the rule for the near future.
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According to Woj, the earliest the league could implement the rule is 2020.
Condoleezza Rice, who leads the Commission on College Basketball, spoke in a press conference about this very subject and proposed the rule to be changed, as well as harsher penalties for coaches who break NCAA rules, and propose that players could return to school if they are not drafted. She also wants to allow agents and a change for summer ball.
Adam Silver responded to her press conference:
“The NBA and the NBPA thank Secretary Rice and the members of the Commission on College Basketball for their commitment to address the issues facing men’s college basketball,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and NBA Executive Director Michele Roberts said in a joint statement to Martin. “We support NCAA policy and enforcement reforms that will better safeguard the well-being of players while imposing greater accountability on representatives and programs that fail to uphold the values of the game. We also share the Commission’s concern with the current state of youth basketball and echo that all stakeholders—including the NBA, NBPA, NCAA, and USA Basketball—have a collective responsibility to help bring about positive change. Regarding the NBA’s draft eligibility rules, the NBA and NBPA will continue to assess them in order to promote the best interests of players and the game.”
As much as people will say that Kobe Bryant, Tracy mcGrady, LeBron James and Kevin Garnett made it from high school and went on to become Hall of Fame players, there were plenty of others who didn’t (see: Kwame Brown, Darius Miles, Jonathan Bender, Sebastian Telfair, etc.)
It’ll be interesting how this plays out for future draft classes and which players come out of high school with all the hype and don’t live up to it.