calipari has already said he doesn't expect to be at UK for.more than a decade...it was an ESPN article earlier this year..cant find it right now cause im on my phone
Well, in the end, what do you call the UK program anyway? Is it really college athletics, or is it a semi-pro program? I mean, the players stay only one
year or two at the most, concentrate mostly on B-ball, and mostly go to the pros. Do they count as real college students in any meaningful sense of
the word? The great thing about Duke basketball, is that usually (with some more recent exceptions) the Duke players are also actually real students.
They go to class, they (mostly) graduate, and they go on to other careers besides basketball. That to me has always been one of the great appeals
of the program. Now, it appears that keeping that up and winning too may get much harder. It will be very hard to resist the one-and-done Kentucky model
for long, especially as we've basically already started doing it with Kyrie (who admittedly was pro-ready) and Austin.
calipari has already said he doesn't expect to be at UK for.more than a decade...it was an ESPN article earlier this year..cant find it right now cause im on my phone
A few years ago- the talk was the way to win now is to keep guys until they are seniors, sprinkle in one star player and have the team develop. This is effectively tinkering with the mid major model. Butler was great because they had guys who played together and had a star player in Hayward. Duke also took that approach and won it with a senior heavy team in 2009. UNC took an experienced team and won it all in 2008. Now the one and done model seems like the way to go. What I saw yesterday was a good team with a difference maker on defense. Davis gave KY tons of opportunities - by blocking or altering shots and getting rebounds and starting a break. They won because of a phenom player. KY did not win because of one and done rule- they won because they had a unique player who excelled when it counted. If KY wins it again next year- I may chance my opinion- unless, of course, Davis comes back.
Here is my take on the Kentucky win which I feel, combined with the NBA age restriction rule, is bad for college basketball. Not necessarily because Kentucky won or that they won with a lot of freshman but because one and dones to me are devaluaing the college in college basketball.
http://dukesportsblog.com/2012/04/03...asketball.aspx
I'm no Kentucky fan but I have to give them credit. I'm definitely no fan of Calipari, but he did get his team to play very well despite all that talent and the egos that went with it. They were very good defensively and Anthony Davis obviously had something to do with that.
Congratulations to Kentucky for winning the championship. They had superior players at every position and a phenom in Davis. With that said, I wonder how it is that one program has landed so many top rated players two years running. Given that Calipari has recently coached two teams that had to give back wins due to rules violations, I wonder if something may come up to taint his current Kentucky teams. I hope not for college basketball's future. I guess time will tell.
The primary problem isn't necessarily with Calipari or the rule requiring high school kids to wait one year before becoming eligible for the NBA draft. The real problem is the NBA game itself, which ultimately values athleticism over basketball skills. The NBA game is so radically different from the college game that it does not value the type of coaching that players get at the college level. Fundamentals and basketball skills have almost no correlation to where a player will get drafted. Why would anyone continue in school when doing so adds no legitimate value to a professional career.
The secondary problem is that the entire concept of amateurism is outdated, if it ever existed in the first place. Look at the Eurpoean football model, or that of Golfers and tennis players. The idea that there is any correlation between post-secondary education and excellence in the sport has been completey dropped.
I agree...basketball skill has a great deal to do with success in the NBA. Teams are just having to draft based on potential since kids come out early after a year or two of college.
I don't know why any athlete would stay in school if they knew millions awaited them playing professional sports. I would sure leave early if I had the chance to make millions.
So do you favor eliminating the one and done rule, and letting the NBA draft kids directly out of high school? I sure favor that over the current situation. Maybe the baseball plan is best (go directly after high school, or stay in college three years). I would have to say that almost any plan is better than what we now have.
You may favor it, but the NBA doesn't. Why should they? They have the best of both worlds. If they get rid of the one year rule then they have a bunch of unknowns coming out of high school with zero marketability (except for the occasional freak phenom such as Lebron James). Would anyone but the diehard recruiting geek know anything about Anthony Davis or Kidd-Gilchrest last year? No. So they enter the NBA out of HS as unknowns.
However, now that they've played collegiate ball for one year in a D1 program and have been all over ESPN, and in the NCAA Tourney, which was watched by millions of people, and have received tons of press for their accomplishments, they enter the NBA as lucrative commodities from a marketing standpoint. The NBA is all about marketing its players. So by having the one year rule, the NBA is optimizing its product from a marketing standpoint, regardless of what's better for the NCAA, collegiate athletes, or the schools. That's not the NBA's concern nor, as a business, should it be. The NBA doesn't need to force the kids to stay 2 or 3 years for its marketing success, but having them play college for one year sure does help and makes sense from a business/marketing perspective.
I agree with you that I would prefer to see kids go straight from HS or unpack their bags and play college for 2-3 years. I hate the one year rule. But it's the NBA's rule and they have no incentive to change it.
Rich
"Failure is Not a Destination"
Coach K on the Dan Patrick Show, December 22, 2016
Can't say I've thought of it this way, but worth reading.
http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bask...vel-excellence
Bob Costas agrees with you
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/228251...45504#46945504
Let's see... The problem is that high schools are turning out a few basketball players each year who are good enough to go directly to the NCAA or, at the very least, are highly desired by the NBA after just one year of college. So the solution is not to let HS players go to college and play. Rather, they should sit out the first year of varsity competition. This is because they are too good? I must be missing something.
The "Freshman Ineligible" ship sailed decades ago, and it ain't coming back to NCAA competition.
sagegrouse
It would be great if Noel, Bazz, and Bennett all chose to play elsewhere. IMHO, Kentucky would still be a borderline 25 team though.
My solution to the one and done problem would be to make eligibility for the NBA draft three years removed from high school just like football. The difference is that the NBDL already exists (or so I hear). Players that don't want to go to school, fail out, or just can't get in go into a NBDL draft. They would get paid, but in the 5 to 6 figure range depending on draft position. This would eliminate the monetary risk of NBA GM's selecting an unproven commodity. Only 1 or 2 of these guys are NBA ready immediately anyway. Because there is not a NBDL team for every NBA team, a player would be eligible for the NBA draft once three years removed from high school. I think it would work because there are so few NBDL teams.
Imagine the popularity of the NBDL if John Wall, Kyrie Irving, Austin Rivers, Anthony Davis...all played in it.
Of course the reality would be that most of these guys would still be in school.
I agree with this completely. There are 345 Division I basketball schools, each of whom on average probably adds ~3 freshmen every season. That's over 1,000 kids every season who get to play (or at least be eligible to play) NCAA basketball as freshmen. Of those 1,000+, fewer than 10 - that is fewer than 1% - leave after a single season to go play in the NBA. Even if we assume that 10 freshmen leaving for the NBA is an affront to the system of NCAA basketball, stripping 1,000 kids of a season of playing college hoops as a reaction to those 10 leaving is the epitome of cutting of your nose to spite your face.
Just be you. You is enough. - K, 4/5/10, 0:13.8 to play, 60-59 Duke.
You're all jealous hypocrites. - Titus on Laettner
You see those guys? Animals. They're animals. - SIU Coach Chris Lowery, on Duke
OK, there are three principal actors here - the NBA, the NCAA, and the colleges. The NBA is, as you say, probably not going to act. A few of the colleges might act alone (eg, Ivy League), but the pressure on the administration by the athletic would be intense in big time schools. So, the real hope is the NCAA. They could act to at least enforce existing rules (such as the much-discussed but little understood) -- at least by me -- academic progress rule. I think the biggest problem is the person who gets into college (perhaps barely), skates by the first semester, and then stops bothering to make an effort. So college becomes sort of a showplace for new NBA talent. I favor treating college more favorably than that. Fortunately, Duke hasn't had many basketball players who fit that mold.
I just don't see that making much of a dent in the system. First, it's a vague standard and easy enough for an athletics department to overcome. Second, many of these kids are decent students. For example, I read that this year's Kentucky bball freshman class were all very good students and didn't have any issues academically. Doesn't mean they will (or should) stay in school rather than pursue their dream to play in the NBA.
Rich
"Failure is Not a Destination"
Coach K on the Dan Patrick Show, December 22, 2016