NCAA Basketball: Parity Should Not Be Blamed On One-and-Done Players

Leave it to national talking heads to ruin a great game.

Minutes after Duke won a thrilling 61-59 contest against a group of Butler Bulldogs to capture the national championship, the tandem of former college basketball coaches Digger Phelps and Bob Knight hopped on their high horses and soapboxes to rail on the one-and-done college basketball player. 

Phelps, the head coach at Notre Dame for more than two decades, said the one-and-done practice has hurt college basketball and should be stopped.

Knight, who was the sideline general at Army, Indiana, and Texas Tech before stepping down at the end of the 2007-2008 season, went on a rant about how the integrity of the game was being compromised because of "the one-and-done garbage schools have to contend with."

The NBA requiring young athletes to spend a year in college or seek opportunities in Europe before entering the pro ranks is a bad idea, I do agree with the grumpy old men in that regard. It is bad for the student-athletes, and to a degree for the NCAA as well.

There is not a legitimate reason to restrict talented players from pursuing an NBA career if everyone from basketball beat writers to mock draft experts are projecting their lottery positions shortly after graduating from high school.

There is even less of a reason, however, to lament only freshmen for forgoing the next three years of higher education, considering they are not the only class of student-athletes bolting for NBA threads.

Since the 2006 NBA Draft, when the age rule requirement was implemented, 27 of the last 240 picks have been freshmen. Would anyone be surprised to learn that in that same time period more sophomores and juniors were selected by NBA franchises?

Approximately 29 second-year college players and 47 juniors entered the draft the last four years, prompting one to believe that the one-and-done athletes are not the problem. Maybe the spike in parity is due to two-and-dones and three-and-dones wanting to get a head start on a professional career.

Is it really a freshmen problem, or is this practice used as an excuse by coaches and the press to explain parity? Gordon Hayward was a baseline jumper and a 45-foot shot from leading Butler to a national title.

Because of that there are those who make a habit of emphasizing the dying breed of seniors who should be celebrated for spitting in the face of NBA pursuit to toil in college.
Chicago Tribune scribe David Haugh did as much in a recent article by referring to Duke guard Jon Scheyer as "the proper side of the hyphen in student-athlete."

"After all, Scheyer is a 6'5", 190-pound NCAA commercial for all that's right about college basketball. He is this year's senior citizen of the NCAA tournament who most deserves your respect and attention, a student-athlete who stayed four years and emphasized the proper side of the hyphen," Haugh wrote.

No doubt about it, Scheyer was a solid college basketball player. One of the best shooters in the sport.

But is it far-fetched to say that if Scheyer was a projected high first-round pick in the NBA Draft, he wouldn't have stayed at Duke all four years?

In response to an Indianapolis Star newspaper sports page illustration of him being depicted as the devil himself, head coach Mike Krzyzewski responded to the "haters" by stating: "We've got great kids that go to school, they graduate. If we're going to be despised or hated by anybody because we go to school and we want to win, you know what? That's your problem. Because we're going to go to school and keep trying to win. You don't like it? Keep drawing pictures."

Coach K used the word school three times in that short statement as if to tell the assembled press that no Duke player would ever think of leaving the prestigious academic university before graduating just to play in the NBA.

Well, why did Luol Deng, Jay Williams, Carlos Boozer, Gerald Henderson, Corey Maggette, Mike Dunleavy, Jr., and Elton Brand all depart early from Duke for the NBA Draft in recent years then? I'm quite sure those guys cared about going to school and winning, right?

Or was it because it was not out of the realm of possibility that someone familiar with evaluating NBA talent relayed the message to them that being a lottery pick was in their immediate futures?

Now before those last few paragraphs get construed as Duke hate speech, it is far from such. I was not too keen on the lauding of several upperclassmen-laden programs just because they featured athletes who were not quite good enough to be drafted after one or two years at the collegiate level.

And there is nothing wrong with four-year starters getting credit for becoming great ambassadors for college basketball.

Those student-athletes deserve that once-in-a-lifetime adulation, but those rose petals should not be thrown at the feet of the veteran college performers, while also disparaging kids who have been blessed with the basketball skill to make millions after only two semesters on campus.

The NCAA and people associated with the sport are sending messages to the student-athletes and fans alike.

So it is fine and dandy for a head to coach to garner a six-figure salary and, in some cases, millions of dollars to tutor amateur athletes at a game first played with a peach basket, but it is not OK for a young stud athlete to go pro?

It is acceptable for a coach to violate NCAA rules on multiple occasions, even in some cases where entire seasons are wiped out as result of backroom chicanery, and still be offered jobs by so-called upstanding institutions?

But we are not so sure that 18-year-old basketball players can jump from high school to the NBA?

It is cool with the masses that CBS, its sponsors, and the fans can make several truck loads of cash directly and indirectly off student-athletes during the NCAA Tournament, but we demand that McDonald's All-Americans—the very best high school basketball talents in the country—wait a couple of years before earning a salary.

That is overlooked, however, just like many have overlooked the fact that less freshmen have entered the draft compared to their sophomore and junior counterparts since the NBA age limit was put into effect.

The time is now for all to start the re-evaluation process.