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View Full Version : "One and Done" survives the new NBA CBA



Billy Dat
12-15-2016, 09:21 AM
Looks like the one-and-done rule wasn't changed, setting the stage for Duke v Kentucky recruiting battles into the foreseeable future

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18280618/nba-players-union-reach-tentative-new-labor-agreement

SCMatt33
12-15-2016, 09:42 AM
One thing not mentioned that has been reported elsewhere (specifically by Adrian Wojnarowski) is that both sides agreed to continue discussion of the age limit during he life of the CBA so it is no longer an issue that will necessarily be frozen until the next agreement in 6-7 years.

JasonEvans
12-15-2016, 10:00 AM
We really, really, really need a baseball model where kids can go straight out of high school if they want but if they go to school they are committed for at least 2 or 3 seasons.

AtlDuke72
12-15-2016, 10:06 AM
One thing not mentioned that has been reported elsewhere (specifically by Adrian Wojnarowski) is that both sides agreed to continue discussion of the age limit during he life of the CBA so it is no longer an issue that will necessarily be frozen until the next agreement in 6-7 years.

It is hard to believe that either the players or the NBA are in favor of OAD. The players give up jobs and end up with a bunch of immature 19 and 20 year olds in the league. The NBA gets unproven players that are often a bust. The ones that come out rarely make much of an impact for a year or two. They give up basically a free training program which is what college ball is for the league. The rule has just about ruined college basketball for a lot of us. Baseball and football have rules that make a whole lot more sense.

BLPOG
12-15-2016, 10:24 AM
It is hard to believe that either the players or the NBA are in favor of OAD. The players give up jobs and end up with a bunch of immature 19 and 20 year olds in the league. The NBA gets unproven players that are often a bust. The ones that come out rarely make much of an impact for a year or two. They give up basically a free training program which is what college ball is for the league. The rule has just about ruined college basketball for a lot of us. Baseball and football have rules that make a whole lot more sense.

Huh? NBA establishment loves OAD. It's a way to filter out spectacular, but otherwise unproven, players through a year of play against better competition, while relying on colleges and sports media to hype up player brands.

Edouble
12-15-2016, 10:34 AM
It is hard to believe that either the players or the NBA are in favor of OAD. The players give up jobs and end up with a bunch of immature 19 and 20 year olds in the league. The NBA gets unproven players that are often a bust. The ones that come out rarely make much of an impact for a year or two. They give up basically a free training program which is what college ball is for the league. The rule has just about ruined college basketball for a lot of us. Baseball and football have rules that make a whole lot more sense.

It is hard to believe that either the players or the NBA are in favor of kids coming straight out of high school. The players give up jobs and end up with a bunch of immature 18 and 19 year olds in the league. The NBA gets unproven players that are often a bust. The ones that come out rarely make much of an impact for a year or two. They give up basically a free training program which is what college ball is for the league. The rule has just about ruined college basketball for a lot of us. Baseball and football have rules that make a whole lot more sense.

FIFY

Rich
12-15-2016, 10:38 AM
Huh? NBA establishment loves OAD. It's a way to filter out spectacular, but otherwise unproven, players through a year of play against better competition, while relying on colleges and sports media to hype up player brands.

Totally agree, this is a rule fully supported by the owners to protect them from themselves. They don't want players right out of high school because they are often busts, but they can't help but draft those same players on potential alone. One year of college helps them vet the players better and some kids end up staying in college longer because they then realize that they're not ready to turn pro.

The NBA can easily distinguish their situation from the NFL because (they rationalize) kids out of high school are still physically too small to play professional football and need a few years in college to mature. NBA owners do not have an incentive to change this rule, much to the chagrin of many of us who would love to see college players unpack their bags for at least 2 years.

SCMatt33
12-15-2016, 11:01 AM
It is hard to believe that either the players or the NBA are in favor of OAD. The players give up jobs and end up with a bunch of immature 19 and 20 year olds in the league. The NBA gets unproven players that are often a bust. The ones that come out rarely make much of an impact for a year or two. They give up basically a free training program which is what college ball is for the league. The rule has just about ruined college basketball for a lot of us. Baseball and football have rules that make a whole lot more sense.

On the topic of labor negotiations, your absolutely right no one wants it. The league would want two years and the players would want prep to pro. Neither side cares enough, however, to give anything in negotiations to get it. I think this is the main reason hey agreed to discuss it outside of CBA negotiations as it will continue to get buried by other issues if they didn't.

On the topic of other leagues rules, I've said this many times when he topic comes up, but the baseball rule (or a version of it) would be terrible for basketball. Most people when envisioning a world with a baseball type rule think of a scenario where the obvious lottery picks go and everyone else stays two or three years. The reality is that in the final years of prep to pro, you had double digit high school players declaring every year, prompting the change in the first place. Now imagine if you told people that if they turned down the draft, they'd have to wait 2 or 3 years. That number would easily jump up to at least 15-20 and certainly some of those would fall to the second round or go undrafted. Furthermore, neither the NBA or NCAA has an incentive to open up the draft to players deciding after the draft whether or not to go to college, like they do in baseball. In baseball, even first rounds picks are total gambles and won't reap benefits for several years. In the NBA, a first round pick is way too valuable to risk losing entirely because a guy turned you down. From a NCAA perspective, teams would be left hanging in the balance until July waiting on NBA draft decisions which would cause all kinds of chaos they don't want.

There's also too many players that we've seen turn into one and done guys who weren't necessarily locks to be drafted in the first round out of high school. A guy like Justise Winslow was ranked in the teens out of high school and maybe could have been a first rounder, but turned himself into a lottery pick in one year. If he goes to college, why should he not be able to enter the draft when he was a) clearly a lottery pick and b) clearly ready to contribute to an NBA roster as a rookie.

I've always advocated the league go to something akin to the MLS Superdraft and Adidas Nations program in which top players are signed by the league prior to draft and guaranteed a certain level of compensation regardless of draft position. The catch is that players not invited are not allowed to enter early. In a hypothetical NBA version, the league would invite a select number (not a fixed amount year to year) of high school seniors, freshman and maybe sophomore depending on if you want two or three years befor unregulated entry. Those that sign are immediately pros, but they are all guaranteed 1st round compensation, even if they drop out of the first round of the draft. This allows the NBA to get potential superstars in, keep guys with no shot at being drafted out and allows college teams to know by spring which players are showing up.

AtlDuke72
12-15-2016, 11:17 AM
Huh? NBA establishment loves OAD. It's a way to filter out spectacular, but otherwise unproven, players through a year of play against better competition, while relying on colleges and sports media to hype up player brands.

If one year helps filter out unproven players and build up player brand , two years would be even better for the NBA. They still make plenty of mistakes after one year.

BLPOG
12-15-2016, 12:22 PM
If one year helps filter out unproven players and build up player brand , two years would be even better for the NBA. They still make plenty of mistakes after one year.

Choices are made at the margins. It doesn't matter if two is "better" (better proof/brand on some absolute scale of measurement), it matters if two is worth it (extra benefit of reducing false positives compared to foregone gains that year from the new stars) and achievable during bargaining. The first year provides more information than the second.

SCMatt33
12-15-2016, 12:45 PM
Choices are made at the margins. It doesn't matter if two is "better" (better proof/brand on some absolute scale of measurement), it matters if two is worth it (extra benefit of reducing false positives compared to foregone gains that year from the new stars) and achievable during bargaining. The first year provides more information than the second.

That makes sense, but it's not the only reason he NBA would want a "two and through" rule. They certainly like to talk about player evaluations, but like everything else, money plays a big role. The longer you keep players in college, the older they are by the time they can hit free agency and make big money.

ChillinDuke
12-15-2016, 01:22 PM
<snip>

[P#1] On the topic of other leagues rules, I've said this many times when he topic comes up, but the baseball rule (or a version of it) would be terrible for basketball. Most people when envisioning a world with a baseball type rule think of a scenario where the obvious lottery picks go and everyone else stays two or three years. The reality is that in the final years of prep to pro, you had double digit high school players declaring every year, prompting the change in the first place. Now imagine if you told people that if they turned down the draft, they'd have to wait 2 or 3 years. That number would easily jump up to at least 15-20 and certainly some of those would fall to the second round or go undrafted. Furthermore, neither the NBA or NCAA has an incentive to open up the draft to players deciding after the draft whether or not to go to college, like they do in baseball. In baseball, even first rounds picks are total gambles and won't reap benefits for several years. In the NBA, a first round pick is way too valuable to risk losing entirely because a guy turned you down. From a NCAA perspective, teams would be left hanging in the balance until July waiting on NBA draft decisions which would cause all kinds of chaos they don't want.

[P #2] There's also too many players that we've seen turn into one and done guys who weren't necessarily locks to be drafted in the first round out of high school. A guy like Justise Winslow was ranked in the teens out of high school and maybe could have been a first rounder, but turned himself into a lottery pick in one year. If he goes to college, why should he not be able to enter the draft when he was a) clearly a lottery pick and b) clearly ready to contribute to an NBA roster as a rookie.

[P #3] I've always advocated the league go to something akin to the MLS Superdraft and Adidas Nations program in which top players are signed by the league prior to draft and guaranteed a certain level of compensation regardless of draft position. The catch is that players not invited are not allowed to enter early. In a hypothetical NBA version, the league would invite a select number (not a fixed amount year to year) of high school seniors, freshman and maybe sophomore depending on if you want two or three years befor unregulated entry. Those that sign are immediately pros, but they are all guaranteed 1st round compensation, even if they drop out of the first round of the draft. This allows the NBA to get potential superstars in, keep guys with no shot at being drafted out and allows college teams to know by spring which players are showing up.

Really interesting post. I was not aware of the MLS/Adidas concept.

Your first quoted paragraph first. I think I agree with you that a carbon copy of the MLB rule wouldn't make sense - especially with the timing aspects and players that are drafted but opt for college. But I think when most people advocate for a "Baseball Rule," they are advocating a straight out of college OR after two years option, at the player's discretion. That's it. I certainly wasn't envisioning a scenario where a first rounder could then opt back into college. Perhaps others were thinking that. So you could put your name in the NBA Draft either in Year 0 or after Year 2, but once your name is in there's no going back. My assumption is that people like this option because it's both player beneficial and college beneficial - players benefit from optionality of the best being taken straight out of HS into the NBA, the schools benefit from increased roster consistency and presumably a better product on the court as the result of a (presumably) older average roster age. However, I'm not sure I see where the NBA definitively benefits from this. They could benefit under base case scenarios (i.e. the best actually are the best and go straight into the NBA where they belong). But history has shown that base cases don't play out consistently enough to support such a construct. Getting more directly to the question I'm raising, how does implementing a Baseball Rule continue to protect GMs from themselves when they reach/gamble on unproven talent too early? The theoretical answer is that they'd gamble less on HS talent, knowing that certain fringe players will be available in 2 years. But I'm not sure I buy that, and I'm not sure history would imply that.

Now to your second paragraph, couldn't agree more that that's the obvious achilles to this Baseball Rule. This would essentially shift the oft-used argument from "oh requiring a kid to go to college for a year is ridiculous/unfair/illegal/uncapitalistic/unamerican/etc" to "oh requiring a fantastic freshman player to stay in college a second year is ___". I'm not sure how to ever solve this issue, other than the fact that countless professions institute these sort of requirements. We always bring up that fact around here. But does that make it OK? My personal belief is probably yes, but I concede that it's uncomfortable at times.

Finally on your third paragraph, can you elaborate a bit here as I'm unfamiliar with the rule and I'm interested. Does MLS decide who is being invited? Or do the teams? If MLS, that's interesting. I assume the benefit here is not inviting the guys with clearly no shot and potentially not inviting fringe talents (Winslow being a good example). But how does this protect the GMs from themselves? In other words a Justin Jackson gets invited straight out of high school and gets signed to a large deal. Ruh roh - GM gets sad. Or is selection so strict that only a, say, Josh Jackson/Jayson Tatum gets invited? I guess what I'm getting at is MLS' solution (again, I'm assuming a lot here since I'm unfamiliar) appears to solve the issue presented in your 2nd paragraph: getting a game-ready player into the league at the right time, whenever that time may be. However, it's not clear to me that it solves the issue raised by me in my first paragraph: protecting GMs from overcommitting (draft pick and/or monetarily) to a player that ends up being a bust.

- Chillin

crf30
12-15-2016, 01:37 PM
If they go back to allowing players to go pro straight from HS, will they allow the high school players to enter and then potentially pull out based on feedback like college players now can?

JasonEvans
12-15-2016, 03:45 PM
I think it is worth noting where the two sides stand on all this. I have been fortunate enough to discuss this issue with NBA journalists, guys who are close to players (agents and trainers that I know), and even a friend who is part of an NBA ownership group.

The Player's Association is in favor of fewer restrictions on player movement and getting players to big bucks free agency faster, so the PA wants players to be allowed to enter the NBA whenever they want, including directly out of high school. In my conversations about this, I have pointed out that the PA represents the current players and the current players should want less competition and therefor be opposed to high schoolers entering the league. But, the response is that the main thing the players want is more freedom so they are perfectly willing to go against their own interests on this issue. The truth is that letting high schoolers into the draft would only impact maybe 15 veteran players, at the most, so it is not like the entire union would be hurt by it. That said, the union has pretty much given up on restoring high school draft eligibility and is not even really pushing for that. Their current position is that the draft system is working and should not be changed.

As for the owners, they are the ones who want to keep players in college. Most conversations I have had indicate the owners would like a "2 years in college" rule. The owners really do not like drafting straight out of high school because there is so much more uncertainty in the draft picks. Sure, there are sure things coming out of high school but if the NBA could draft high schoolers there would likely be somewhere around 5 guys a year who would get first round money but be worthless players. The NBA owners also vividly recall situations like Tracy McGrady -- entered out of high school; drafted by the Raptors; barely played for a couple years while he matured and figured out NBA basketball; finally began to get it in his third season; left the Raptors via free agency after 3 years; finally became a super stud in his 4th season but the Raptors never reaped the rewards of drafting one of the NBA's best players. The owners don't want to be in the business of paying 18 and 19 year-olds to learn how to play basketball. Plus, the owners love the notion of players becoming free agents at even a slightly older age. some have argued that keeping players in college longer enhances the marketability and public awareness of those players but I am told that the NBA owners don't give a hoot about that. They (correctly) believe that NBA performance is what generates stars, not college success.

I know one thing the owners really want is to tie rookie contracts/team control to college experience. So, if you are 1 and done, the team that drafts you gets to keep you from free agency for 5 years. If you have played 2 year of college ball, team control lasts for 4 years. 3 or more years in college and team control drops to 3 years. Doing this would provide some incentive to keep players in college a little longer as they would be running the clock on free agency. From what I hear, the players are not completely opposed to this, though they will ask for other concessions to make it happen. The problem is, the owners are not so gung ho on making this happen to give ground on other issues more important to them.

-Jason "despite many folks (including me) advocating for it, the baseball model (HS or 2) ain't happening. I think the options are 1-and-done or 2-and-through and that is it. My bet is that if we see any change, it will be in the rookie contract lengths but that they will not chance 1-and-done" Evans

SCMatt33
12-15-2016, 04:22 PM
Really interesting post. I was not aware of the MLS/Adidas concept.

Your first quoted paragraph first. I think I agree with you that a carbon copy of the MLB rule wouldn't make sense - especially with the timing aspects and players that are drafted but opt for college. But I think when most people advocate for a "Baseball Rule," they are advocating a straight out of college OR after two years option, at the player's discretion. That's it. I certainly wasn't envisioning a scenario where a first rounder could then opt back into college. Perhaps others were thinking that. So you could put your name in the NBA Draft either in Year 0 or after Year 2, but once your name is in there's no going back. My assumption is that people like this option because it's both player beneficial and college beneficial - players benefit from optionality of the best being taken straight out of HS into the NBA, the schools benefit from increased roster consistency and presumably a better product on the court as the result of a (presumably) older average roster age. However, I'm not sure I see where the NBA definitively benefits from this. They could benefit under base case scenarios (i.e. the best actually are the best and go straight into the NBA where they belong). But history has shown that base cases don't play out consistently enough to support such a construct. Getting more directly to the question I'm raising, how does implementing a Baseball Rule continue to protect GMs from themselves when they reach/gamble on unproven talent too early? The theoretical answer is that they'd gamble less on HS talent, knowing that certain fringe players will be available in 2 years. But I'm not sure I buy that, and I'm not sure history would imply that.

Now to your second paragraph, couldn't agree more that that's the obvious achilles to this Baseball Rule. This would essentially shift the oft-used argument from "oh requiring a kid to go to college for a year is ridiculous/unfair/illegal/uncapitalistic/unamerican/etc" to "oh requiring a fantastic freshman player to stay in college a second year is ___". I'm not sure how to ever solve this issue, other than the fact that countless professions institute these sort of requirements. We always bring up that fact around here. But does that make it OK? My personal belief is probably yes, but I concede that it's uncomfortable at times.

Finally on your third paragraph, can you elaborate a bit here as I'm unfamiliar with the rule and I'm interested. Does MLS decide who is being invited? Or do the teams? If MLS, that's interesting. I assume the benefit here is not inviting the guys with clearly no shot and potentially not inviting fringe talents (Winslow being a good example). But how does this protect the GMs from themselves? In other words a Justin Jackson gets invited straight out of high school and gets signed to a large deal. Ruh roh - GM gets sad. Or is selection so strict that only a, say, Josh Jackson/Jayson Tatum gets invited? I guess what I'm getting at is MLS' solution (again, I'm assuming a lot here since I'm unfamiliar) appears to solve the issue presented in your 2nd paragraph: getting a game-ready player into the league at the right time, whenever that time may be. However, it's not clear to me that it solves the issue raised by me in my first paragraph: protecting GMs from overcommitting (draft pick and/or monetarily) to a player that ends up being a bust.

- Chillin

First, on the baseball rule. I think that the ability of players to be drafted but then pull out and go to college after the fact is the main reason that system works. Players know in advance how much money they're turning down bad can make a clear choice. That has no chance of happening in basketball and would be not so great for everyone beside the players. Because that sort of thing can't happen, I think it would be terrible for players to have to choose 0 or 2 in advance as you end up with too many players slipping through the cracks. Whether it be a kid that says he'll go pro seeing the big bucks, then goes undrafted and makes nothing, or the kid who skips the draft only to find out he doesn't qualify academically and now has to figure out what to do for two whole years.

On the MLS thing. I don't actually know how they decide who gets invited, but they also have different motivations. The MLS wants to grow its league and try to keep American players at home and out of Europe. As part of this, the Generation Adidas Players actually make more money than other rookies. The NBA doesn't have this problem. I would expect in this scenario that the NBA would probably send out some kind of survey each year to teams on potential candidates, but the league would ulitmately make the call based on recommendations they receive from those surveys. The NBA would proabably then only tell us who's in (not who turned them down or who didn't get in invite after consideration. But either way, this would be a big hurdle to figure out before implementing such a system

Kdogg
12-15-2016, 04:34 PM
It's the rookie salary scale (and the hardish cap in general) that's the source of the problem for college basketball. Before the scale and cap rookies could make whatever the team was winning to pay. Teams were less likely to pay big money longer term deals (contracts were 7, 8, 10 years) for unproven talent. The rookie scale limited financial downside but lead to the influx of high school kids looking to get the clock started for the second contract. NBA had less financial risk but still unproven players. With one and done it fixed the second problem to an extent. I'm sure the NBA would like a two and through rule but are happy with the current peace.

superdave
12-15-2016, 04:44 PM
The Player's Association is in favor of fewer restrictions on player movement and getting players to big bucks free agency faster, so the PA wants players to be allowed to enter the NBA whenever they want, including directly out of high school. In my conversations about this, I have pointed out that the PA represents the current players and the current players should want less competition and therefor be opposed to high schoolers entering the league. But, the response is that the main thing the players want is more freedom so they are perfectly willing to go against their own interests on this issue. The truth is that letting high schoolers into the draft would only impact maybe 15 veteran players, at the most, so it is not like the entire union would be hurt by it. That said, the union has pretty much given up on restoring high school draft eligibility and is not even really pushing for that. Their current position is that the draft system is working and should not be changed.


Thanks for the notes on your conversations, Jason. This is helpful to understanding the positions.

I would have thought that the players union - run by veteran players - would be looking out for the job security of veteran players, and would support an additional year of college. But the freedom idea makes a lot of sense. I totally get the players wanting to get to free agency and bonanza contracts a year sooner.

You did not cover this in your post, but I would be interested in what kind of feedback, if any, you have heard on the players/owners thoughts about the different levels of max deals. There's different levels based on re-signing with your team, years of service, as well as All-NBA/All-Star/MVP awards. It seems to have smoothed things out and not clustered b-level stars at the top of the salary heap, but my impression could be wrong.

niveklaen
12-15-2016, 05:14 PM
I think it is worth noting where the two sides stand on all this. I have been fortunate enough to discuss this issue with NBA journalists, guys who are close to players (agents and trainers that I know), and even a friend who is part of an NBA ownership group.

The Player's Association is in favor of fewer restrictions on player movement and getting players to big bucks free agency faster, so the PA wants players to be allowed to enter the NBA whenever they want, including directly out of high school. In my conversations about this, I have pointed out that the PA represents the current players and the current players should want less competition and therefor be opposed to high schoolers entering the league. But, the response is that the main thing the players want is more freedom so they are perfectly willing to go against their own interests on this issue. The truth is that letting high schoolers into the draft would only impact maybe 15 veteran players, at the most, so it is not like the entire union would be hurt by it. That said, the union has pretty much given up on restoring high school draft eligibility and is not even really pushing for that. Their current position is that the draft system is working and should not be changed.

As for the owners, they are the ones who want to keep players in college. Most conversations I have had indicate the owners would like a "2 years in college" rule. The owners really do not like drafting straight out of high school because there is so much more uncertainty in the draft picks. Sure, there are sure things coming out of high school but if the NBA could draft high schoolers there would likely be somewhere around 5 guys a year who would get first round money but be worthless players. The NBA owners also vividly recall situations like Tracy McGrady -- entered out of high school; drafted by the Raptors; barely played for a couple years while he matured and figured out NBA basketball; finally began to get it in his third season; left the Raptors via free agency after 3 years; finally became a super stud in his 4th season but the Raptors never reaped the rewards of drafting one of the NBA's best players. The owners don't want to be in the business of paying 18 and 19 year-olds to learn how to play basketball. Plus, the owners love the notion of players becoming free agents at even a slightly older age. some have argued that keeping players in college longer enhances the marketability and public awareness of those players but I am told that the NBA owners don't give a hoot about that. They (correctly) believe that NBA performance is what generates stars, not college success.

I know one thing the owners really want is to tie rookie contracts/team control to college experience. So, if you are 1 and done, the team that drafts you gets to keep you from free agency for 5 years. If you have played 2 year of college ball, team control lasts for 4 years. 3 or more years in college and team control drops to 3 years. Doing this would provide some incentive to keep players in college a little longer as they would be running the clock on free agency. From what I hear, the players are not completely opposed to this, though they will ask for other concessions to make it happen. The problem is, the owners are not so gung ho on making this happen to give ground on other issues more important to them.

-Jason "despite many folks (including me) advocating for it, the baseball model (HS or 2) ain't happening. I think the options are 1-and-done or 2-and-through and that is it. My bet is that if we see any change, it will be in the rookie contract lengths but that they will not chance 1-and-done" Evans

I love that idea. But do you think though that NBA teams might be even less likely to draft upperclassmen because they would have their rights for shorter periods of time?