Written by Allan Johnstone
In recent years, college basketball programs have been overrun with scandals revolving around boosters or the programs themselves paying for highly touted recruits to attend their school.
In 2017, the FBI began a probe looking into the NCAA and college basketball programs and all of the corruption scandals surrounding it. Collegiate athletics had never seen anything like this before, all of a sudden programs dirty secrets were brought out into the light, elite coaches were fired and some coaches were even arrested because of information brought up by this probe.
This was just the most recent story to reignite the question inside the basketball of, “Why can’t elite players just go straight to the NBA?”.
It is one of the most controversial and talked about rules in the NBA and is popularly known as the ‘one and done’ rule. It was implemented in 2006 and makes it a requirement for NBA hopefuls to be 19 years or older before they can join the NBA. To be clear they didn’t have to go to college, they have other options including going overseas for a year or signing with a D-league team (now G-league), but the most popular is going to college for a year. This effectively created ‘the one and done’ era for college basketball.
Some schools have flourished under the rule, creating national championship contending teams centered around an elite player, the first that comes mind is Kentucky. Kentucky has been able to recruit players like Anthony Davis, Devin Booker and DeMarcus Cousins who all played only one year in college before leaving for the NBA.
Before 2006 high school players, if talented enough, could be drafted straight out of high school. This led to notable players like Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Kevin Garnett, Amar’e Stoudemire, Tracy McGrady and Dwight Howard never suiting up in a college jersey instead going straight from high school to the NBA.
Current NBA players have voiced their disagreement with the rule giving the simple explanation, “If you’re good enough to play, then you should play in the NBA”.
The current commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver, has also made it clear that he wants the rule to change to and recently has started to make moves in that direction like expanding partnerships with the NCAA and USA basketball to get high school players more prepared for the NBA.
It might not happen this next season but a lot of experts expect that by the 2021 or 2022 season the one and done role might be no more, which will drastically change not only the NBA and the NCAA especially at the college level.