The 2023 NBA Draft shows how the NBA really feels about college basketball
The NBA draft is coming soon and college basketball is officially on hiatus now that March Madness is over. Basketball fans everywhere for any team that is not playing for a championship are right about now, are paying attention to any player who is officially declaring their name for the NBA draft. But Victor Wembanyama is the consensus #1 draft pick, and he’s never played a game of basketball on American soil, let alone in college. And Scoot Henderson is #2, yet he plays for the G League Ignite team, choosing to skip college basketball voluntarily. So let uss be brutally honest about how the NBA really see college basketball. Because the NBA game is changing and college basketball has been very slow to change with it. They are clearly not the first place they are looking to find talented players anymore. But college basketball serves a purpose and here is what that purpose in 2023 actually is.
College Basketball is a free minor league
College basketball is today and has always been a free minor league for the NBA. The problem is they have little to no control over how it functions. College basketball is run by the NCAA who has very different interests than anything the NBA is focused on. Division 1 basketball basically has to play by the same rules as D2 and D3, even though they will attract potential NBA prospects, and the others won’t. So as a result, they continue to play a 30 game regular season with a single elimination national championship tournament. D1 basketball has over 360 teams and that means that even if the best player from each one entered the draft, that would still be 6 times as many players available to be drafted, than there are spots available! College basketball creates a space for the absolute best players to prove themselves, but those stars have to shine really bright in order for them to get noticed with so many teams to choose from for an NBA scout.
The truth is that most NBA prospects are already being tracked before they hit college. Their play at that level is proof that they are worthy of being drafted, not the thing that attracted attention in the first place. Which is why players leave for the draft the first chance they get, because the longer you stay in college now, the more likely it is that scouts will begin to spot problems in your game, and use them as an excuse to take another, younger prospect.
College Basketball is not true preparation for the NBA
If we are going to be brutally honest, even high level D1 basketball is not true preparation for the NBA. Because the NBA is not in the basketball business, they are in the entertainment business. The NBA product, including all of the rule changes in the past 20 years are intended to prioritize making the fans happy, and make more money. In the 1990s it was more isolation play for players like Michael Jordan to dominate. In the 2010s it became freedom of movement for Steph Curry to drop three point bombs from all over. College basketball is stubborn, because they are not in the entertainment business like the NBA. College coaches today run very similar schemes to what we saw 20 or 30 years ago.
Ironically the college came is way more similar to what you might find in international play both in style and its rules. College players rarely score large amounts of points, especially on the top teams. Remember it was John Wall, Demarcus Cousins, and Eric Bledsoe who shared the same court at Kentucky, alongside at least 4 other players who would play games at the NBA level. They weren’t going to each score 20 points per game. So NBA scouts had to study them differently knowing that big time stats alone wouldn’t make any of them stand out. Some NBA players like Marvin Williams at UNC and Dion Waiters at Syracuse didn’t even start on their college teams, yet they became lottery picks in the draft. So we know it wasn’t their college play alone that made coaches take the leap.
College Basketball players are mostly not NBA players
The biggest truth of all about college basketball is that if you play college basketball, you will be playing with college level players. To put this bluntly, college basketball players are not as good as NBA players. No disrespect to South Alabama, College of the Holy Cross, the Virginia Military Institute, or the University of St. Thomas, but the basketball players there are not anything close to NBA level. So even scoring a bunch of points in college isn’t a clear sign that you belong in the league. NBA scouts have to work really hard to decipher if whatever skills they see in college can translate. Think of it this way, the player who plays at the highest level for the longest amount of time, against the best competition, will stand out as the best prospect to an NBA team. Tosan Evbuomwan of Princeton was the Ivy League player of the year. But only after he led his team to the Sweet 16 in March Madness, did he even crack the second round of any mock drafts. Scouts know which players they are watching. So any player they weren’t paying attention to, who can have success against those players in a game that matters, will have a chance to get NBA attention, but what’s even harder than getting that attention is keeping it.
The Bottom Line
College basketball today isn’t what it used to be. Four of the top five prospects in this year’s NBA draft never played in college, and there are way more opportunities for players who want to go to the league than ever before. But just as the high school to NBA era didn’t stop NBA teams from drafting college players, the new era of Overtime Elite and G League Ignite won’t stop it either. College basketball isn’t going anywhere, and neither is the NBA. But D1 basketball is like a grown adult aged child that they have absolutely no control over. The G League Ignite is however, the NBA’s baby. Even Overtime Elite is a toddler at best, and backed by NBA personnel. So college basketball will just have to get used to getting a little bit less attention than they are used to, like it or not.
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