Thaddeus Young doesn't remember the date from his freshman year, his only year, at Georgia Tech. He remembers the occasion, though. He and his classmates were involved in a basketball practice. There were four recruited first-year Yellow Jackets in 2007-08. Coach Paul Hewitt observed their various petty crimes against the game of basketball and called them all together for a discussion.
Or, more accurately, a harangue.
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"He told us, ‘All of your high school coaches should be in jail for child abuse, because they didn’t teach you anything,’" Young told Sporting News. "There was a lot of learning that first couple weeks when I got there."
You may not be aware, but Young is a pioneer. Now in his 11th season in the NBA, averaging 12.1 points and 6.0 rebounds for the pleasantly surprising Pacers, Young was part of the initial draft class affected by the league’s age-limit rule. He was one-and-done before we had a name for it.
There had been players before Young and his draft classmates who had gone to college for a single season and then entered the NBA Draft. Corey Maggette and Luol Deng did it from Duke, Marvin Williams from North Carolina, Carmelo Anthony from Syracuse and Chris Bosh from Young’s alma mater. However, not until the NBA made it mandatory for high school seniors to wait a year before entering the draft — they are not "forced" to attend college, as many inaccurately insist — did this become a controversial practice.
It has become a centerpiece of the college basketball conversation in the dozen years since it was introduced, devolving into what might be called polemic, as Kentucky coach John Calipari made such prospects the foundation of his rejuvenation of the Wildcats program, and later Duke legend Mike Krzyzewski fully embraced the practice of pursuing the nation’s top high school prospects.
It is so deeply ingrained in the game’s discourse that when NBA commissioner Adam Silver sat down for an interview in November with ESPN’s Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, they believed it to be compelling enough to include as a part of a conversation that involved such topics as resting superstars in regular season games and changes to the draft lottery.
That was no surprise. His response was.
"I think something has to change," Silver said. "It’s clearly not working for the college game … From our standpoint, if the players in that one year of college aren’t getting the kind of development we like to see them get coming into the NBA, aren’t playing in the NCAA Tournament, aren’t competing against top-notch competition, I think we have to take a step back and figure out if we’re better off taking those players at a younger age and working on their training and development full-time."
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There was much that was problematic about what Silver said that day, including his assertion the concept of one-and-done hasn’t worked for the college game. The 2017 NCAA Tournament was the third-most watched in 24 years, the Final Four saw a 21 percent increase in audience over the prior year and Division I attendance nationally has steadily held in the neighborhood between 27-28 million fans per season since the age limit was introduced.
It was what he didn’t say, though, that was most jarring. He didn’t say whether one-and-done was working for the NBA. That’s probably for the best, because his tone and the underlying theme of his message suggests a belief it has not been beneficial to the NBA.
In fact, one-and-done has been a bonanza for the league. Silver and the league’s owners should be aware of this before they tinker with something that has helped lead the league to its current prominence.
1. Scouting
When former commissioner David Stern introduced the concept of a 19-year age limit for draft entry in 2005, the league had gone through a decade in which roughly three dozen players had attempted to join the league after completing high school. Many failed to ever play a game. Some became solid NBA contributors. A few became Hall of Fame-level superstars: Tracy McGrady, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, most notably.
Stern’s message after the rule had been adopted centered primarily on this concept: "From the business perspective, it’s better for our teams to be able to see a player after he has played against harder competition … We just think that the opportunity to see those skills develop another year outside the NBA, and have our teams make wiser decisions about them, is important."
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