Depending on whom you ask the current status quo with the NBA and the NCAA leaves something to be desired. When you look across the sports landscape you immediately see that all things are not equal. How come baseball can have a draft, court and draft high school kids and no one bats an eye, but basketball has so many issues with drafting that they had to implement a rule that forces players to either go to college or play overseas for at least a year before joining an NBA team? For one reason or another, baseball has avoided a great deal of headache and I think the reason is that they have a painstakingly developed farm system.
High school players can be drafted but still go to college and play college ball as long as they don’t officially sign with the team that drafted them in baseball. That’s a bit of an oversimplification but I think you get my meaning. Baseball seems to have a better system for dealing with their young talent than other sports and I believe that the minor leagues are the key.
The NBA recently debuted the Developmental League as a form of minor leagues for basketball. With the demise of the latest version of the CBA it’s only fair to call the D League an experiment. Personally I think the only way to make sure the experiment is a successful one is to model it after something that is currently viable, the MLB farm system.
