They just need to bring back Tubby and all will be good. In all seriousness, there is plenty of talent out there that and it's about putting the right pieces together, not having the best five guys on the court (just look at Wiscy). Also, look at Duke. Duke, in my opinion, is a better team than Kentucky but Kentucky has more talent (and NBA talent that is). The machine will break down eventually as nothing lasts forever.
There are three things holding UK's recruiting machine / season long NBA pre-draft camp together:
1) Coach Cal - he is from the NBA, has connections, etc. The top players with no interest in school love that. He wants to be their one-year trainer, and those kids only want to be there one year.
2) The NBA Players Association - until they let kids jump out of HS again, the system plays into UK's hands.
3) The NCAA - specifically, their policy surrounding the APR. The APR does nothing to deter the one and done phenomenon. Cal's system would collapse tomorrow if the NCAA enforced even a 50% graduation rate (GPR) over a four year cycle. The whole thing would crumble.
What the NCAA / NBA should do is work together to better the game.
Step 1: The NBA should expand the D-League so that there is one farm team per parent team. That would help establish a big piece of the MLB model, a critical piece that could help close the talent gap Kobe screams about so much. In fact, if I were the league I would be grooming some of the wealthy former players into future owners by recruiting them as investors/owners in the D-League.
Step 2: The NBA opens the draft to HS kids and adds a third round. The 1st rounders are guaranteed League contracts, the second rounders are guaranteed a 1-year D-League contract, if they don't make the parent team, and third rounders / undrafted guys have the option to go back to school if they are 20 or under and have not finished their sophomore years.
Step 3: The third round player or undrafted player who doesn't land a contract has until August 1st to re-apply to their school to be immediately eligible for the current year's season. With admission, they are now bound to that school for a minimum of two more years. If they apply to a different school than the one they attended, then that will be considered a transfer, and the athlete must sit out the mandatory one-year per NCAA policy.
Furthermore, they will still be eligible for the financial "stipend" the NCAA approved. To protect the schools and their APR's, the student athletes must maintain good academic standing. Should they fail out of school during the two years, they will have to pay back the equivalent of one-year's scholarship to the school.
If players took any money from agents, endorsements, etc., they must declare said $$$, which can be used to purchase insurance and/or be put into a short term trust the player nor player's family can touch for two years, or until they finish their two-years of "amateur" competition at their school.
I'm not a lawyer, of course, but something like this needs to be done to protect the athletes, the schools, and the game. I'll leave the legal verbiage to the people who went to school for it.
It seems to me that there is a way to fix the current system if the NBA and NCAA can work it out. That is if the NCAA really cares about 'student' athletes.
