Tre’Jean Watkins
College basketball roster building has evolved in many ways from the days of the 80s and 90s.
We started with traditional high school recruitment, building rosters solely from high school basketball players with dreams of higher education, playing college basketball, and reaching the NBA.
Then came the international player pipeline, a significant diversion from the traditional, single-high-school basketball recruitment strategy. This wave began in the early to mid-2010s, as the “one and done” era began to ravage the upper echelons of college basketball.
This had left rosters, especially the schools that were the main orchestrators of this movement, like Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina, etc., pretty young, except for a few upperclassmen who stayed and maintained their roles as junior and senior leaders on their respective teams.
Plus, not all true freshmen were ready to play and dominate in year one, which left some coaches scrambling to find solutions so they could perform and keep their jobs. They eventually landed on the international player route, which meant bringing players from overseas and slotting them into their lineups.
This was and still remains a viable option for roster building because it allowed coaches to bring in younger international players, of college age, of course, who had previous professional experience overseas.
This meant no overreliance on younger true freshmen and added experience in a section of college sport that continues to get younger and younger.
Win-win, right?
Well, yes, but no, there’s another problem. Some schools have begun to introduce a new form of roster building, but this time it doesn’t solve a problem; it creates another one.
G-League players in…college?
Yes, G-League players can now ditch the G-League experience and play college basketball. Well, at least some of them can.
The NCAA is allowing some G-Leaguers to play college basketball if they’ve graduated high school within the last five years and/or if they haven’t gone through the NBA Draft process or declared for the NBA Draft.
Granted, this entire movement is a case-by-case sort of thing, in which the NCAA has to retrace your professional experience and comb through a number of other factors to make this entire scenario plausible.
But at the end of the day, this is a real possibility for some 21-22-year-olds who pushed college away years ago.
Which feels…so weird.
This needs regulation
On one hand, I understand why this is happening and why these 20-year-old players are taking advantage of the opportunity. The differences between amateurism and professionalism aren’t really there anymore, except for the most obvious ones.
College players are getting royalty treatment in the form of dollars and sponsorship opportunities, which in turn has completely flipped the notion of a college player being in the realm below professionalism, which again feels so weird.
NIL is a direct reason for this, too.
If a G-League player is fumbling around in the G-League and continues to remain well short of the life-changing money they desire, likely, why would they stay there when millions of dollars are being offered to them?
Sure, you’d have to take classes and be a normal student athlete, but this is life-changing money you can receive while getting another chance to show off your skills in front of a national audience, depending on your destination.
You can’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same.
But while this entire charade has its benefits for players, there needs to be regulation to curb this sort of circus. I know the NCAA is taking this development seriously and is determining eligibility on a case-by-case basis, but there needs to be further safeguards in place before it spirals out of control.
This isn’t to say the NCAA can’t do its job and handle the new world we’re living in, but it’s just an extra layer of caution so things don’t go crazy, like the initial introduction of NIL and the transfer portal.
I’m sure we all remember how chaotic those times were, right?
I believe this ordeal won’t spiral out of control, since it’s an isolated case affecting a few players and there’s no indication that more players will take advantage of it.
But you can’t be too careful.
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