This article from Jay Bilas is disappointing, considering the fact that he is ESPN's best NBAdraft pundit. Maybe that says more about ESPN than it does him. Reading like he had nothing worthwhile to write about this week, Bilas sets his sights on the evil NBA:
This is not an excuse. It's a fact. The NBA has distorted everything in college and high school basketball, and it has been a nightmare for college coaches. On most every campus, there are players thinking about the making it to the NBA, rather than making their teams and teammates better. When a coach tries to teach or gives an assignment, the player is often more concerned about how it will affect his development and his timetable for making it to the League.
I'm not denying this happens, but is Jay just realizing this now?
Because I agree with him. Get the kids who want to attend college and play college basketball, not just want the NBA. Of course you know what that means though. Letting them enter the draft early (even, my god, skipping college), and having the NBA create a true developmental system.
An old saying said by...some old people is that 'college is wasted on the young'. In my world, its wasted even more on the young at just want to be basketball players.
But those steps would pretty much relegate college basketball to the status
that college baseball has wouldn't it? I don't personally think that's such a
terrible thing, but for Bilas and ESPN, who know that college hoops butters
their collective bread, I'd think they'd rather complain about the problem than
truly rectify it.