In 2005, the NBA modified its requirements for prospects to be eligible to enter its draft. Previously, top high school players had been permitted to jump straight from their high-school hallways to the league, a trend that began with Kevin Garnett making the leap, but with the mid-2000s change, these prospects were required to be one year removed from high school and be at least 19 years old.
This effectively led to the "one-and-done" era: players who clearly were ready to enter the league had to spend a year playing NCAA basketball because that's the best U.S. minor-league basketball system out there. Some top prospects, like Emmanuel Mudiay and Brandon Jennings, have chosen to play internationally, but they are in the minority.
Following the late-February announcement that the FBI wire-tapped Arizona head coach Sean Miller and allegedly caught him discussing a $100,000 payment to top prospect DeAndre Ayton, who is expected to go No. 1 in June's NBA Draft, the discussion has centered on the broken "one-and-done" system and the NBA's need to change its draft eligibility criteria.
Good news for those who hold to this belief: according to a new report from ESPN's Brian Windhorst, such a change appears to be in the works. Windhorst reports that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has considered several different options.
"A plan is expected to include the NBA starting relationships with elite teenagers while they are in high school, providing skills to help them develop both on and off the court," Windy writes. "It would ultimately open an alternate path to the NBA besides playing in college and a way 18-year-olds could earn a meaningful salary either from NBA teams or as part of an enhanced option in the developmental G League, sources said."
The G League, and why the NBA doesn't make better use of it as a developmental system, has always been a piece of this conversation, and it appears Silver is taking that path seriously.
The NBA and Players' Association both seem focused on enacting change quickly. As Windhorst writes, the two entities "are trying to work together on this so that amendments can be made in the short term and are trying to use the unrest in college basketball to find a way to make changes that can hopefully help the entire youth basketball environment."
As one high-ranking league official told Windhorst, the NBA is not yet sure which plan it will implement, but it does plan to make a change—because, the source said, "We all see the need to step in."
Read the full report here.
