Reply to thread

Message

[QUOTE="jncuse, post: 2321503, member: 1969"]
The NBA has no issue spending additional money on player development if they think it will help them.   In the past the thought was that it is silly as the NCAA does just as good a job.   Free development.  But many people no longer think this way, which is why they are now revisiting things.

The NBA can certainly find a way to pay more than NCAA teams.  This is a priority of Adam Silver and there is a committee looking into it, as many NBA executives feel they can develop elite players better outside of the NCAA. Now whether that is the ultimate conclusion is unknown.   They certainly want to improve the value they are getting from the D-League.

Here is a simple scenario that the NCAA would find hard to compete with.

Step 1 - High School Draft to get in the D-League -- the 30 players are each paid $200,000 in their first two years.
Step 2 - NBA Draft Eligible after one year in college or one year in D-League - each player drafted from the D-League gets an additional $1,000,000 bonus.

Say 15 players are drafted from the D-League in one year.  That is a shared cost of $700,000 per team for the year.  Given that elite draft prospects will make the D-League a more viable TV product, they will be able to recover not all but some of the costs.   But if they truly believe they are developing these kids player that is a small cost to pay.  They have some work to do on the D-League as a whole, since many teams are not yet committed.    But in my mind, if a high schooler got drafted by the Toronto Raptors and played for their D-League team, they will develop better than going to Syracuse or any NCAA program.
[/QUOTE]

Verification

What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?