Ok, I see your thinking here, if that’s the way it is structured.
Give me the “G-League Select” team against the NCAA Champions every April!
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I think “quality of play” is rather far down the list of why most college basketball fans like college basketball (relative quality - ie how good is my team vs others, absolutely)
I tend to think this won’t matter much for viewership/money in college basketball.
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This is a hell of a package put together by the G League if they do this for the rest of these other elite prospects that join them.
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It might make evaluation a lot easier if all the top guys play for the same team.
He still could.
Initial thoughts here, and biased toward college basketball because I love it:
-this is an experiment. For it to be sustainable for years, it has to be on TV and for it to draw ratings it has to be actually interesting sports. Could easily end up being some new version of the Globetrotters vs. the Washington Generals. That’s not TV-quality fare. Could end up a useful version of Big Brother for NBA scouts as well. We’ll see.
-the NCAA will soon be allowing the same kids who can get into the G Select program to profit off their image/name/etc. The NCAA is already popular and televised.
-either way, college basketball will survive. But it could make you wonder if for some coaches a plum NCAA job loses some lustre compared with the NBA. Guys like Izzo and Cal and K are college guys, but those like Juwan who might have a future in the NBA might change how they feel. Not saying Juwan is immediately shifting to get back in the NBA, but over time it could have increased appeal.
Disagree with your first statement: The WNBA, an NBA money loser, has been on TV for years as non-interesting sport.
"and for it to draw ratings’’. Everybody involved wants eyeballs on screens, and the NCAA delivers that. The women of the WNBA do not have that option, and the WNBA’s continued existence isn’t a given.
I was just joking about the WNBA. This is going to be a home run for NBA TV and any network they make a deal with to show the Select games. Imagine if Zion would have had this route to take? Every single game would have been primetime on ESPN.
I don’t really think the NBA’s endgame is to make lots of money on this. They’ll definitely try to put the games on NBATV but not sure there will be anyone else clamoring to watch. This is what the nba has to do if they’re gonna keep the age limit. Someone tweeted (I don’t remember who) that this was accelerated because the age limit talks stalled
Could “G-League Select” do a college exhibition tour? If so, would you want Michigan to schedule them? I tend to doubt they would. I don’t think they’d want to risk the embarrassment.
The NBA also doesn’t want the NBL to become the professional path for prep players. There’s an advantage to creating your own path and bringing it in house. Even if you lose money for a decade.
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That will be something to see. It was a lot easier for Zion to be a star attraction playing for Duke who were already drawing good ratings. I don’t think Ja Morant was drawing huge ratings even when he was touted as the likely #2 draft pick. The number of people excited to watch Green play can’t be very large.
The question is for how long will they want it to lose money, and will it continue to attract talent after the NCAA adjusts. It does make sense in response to the overseas trend, certainly. But Zion Williamson would have gotten a fraction of the exposure playing in Oz, or in exhibition games with zero stakes. Once the NCAA allows players to profit from their public profiles, that’s a great equalizer. They’d still have to go to school for a bit, or at least pretend to or whatever going to school means at various places, but that’s your tradeoff for getting the exposure only the NCAA can offer until you make it to the NBA. There are tons of basketball organizations in this world, and the only other one Americans bother with beyond the NBA is the NCAA.
If NIL comes into play in any real form, sure. Would expect the NCAA to duck that for as long as it can though.
And there are players being compensated as one and dones right now anyway, albeit under the table.
I just think using Zion as an example is silly because not everyone is Zion. What about Anthony Edwards? What did he gain at UGA for a year? Millions in marketing? Is he somehow way ahead of RJ Hampton because he went to college instead of playing in the NBL?
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Dunno. Good questions. What’s clear though is that if you want people to watch – and extrapolate from there about the benefits – you have one option for your pre-NBA year. Maybe that truly just won’t be that big of a deal for the McDonalds All-American level prospect, but that’s what the NCAA offers, and it would have to be an incredibly inept organization or collection of them if it were to fail at using that to its advantage. I think the sport itself will be fine, if a little less athletic at the top end.
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I would guess Edwards’ notoriety looks different if he went to a team that anyone cares about. Georgia might as well be the NBL.
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We sure he got less money than Hampton?
We are not.
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