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Paid Basketball League to Compete with NCAA?

Besides not getting the top kids. It sounds like you are for bringing in kids whose lives will be thrown away for small salaries and fake dreams. The kids you talk about won't care about HS. Some won't graduate from HS before playing in this league.

Few, if any, decent coaches will run teams as they can't get paid much and by taking these jobs they will be spitting in the faces of the NCAA and NBA.

The only good thing this idea can do is to drive the players and owners into making a new agreement about NBA eligibility.
 
Doggus said:
I'm not so down on it as an idea. Some kids will prefer a paycheck to having to go to class and make grades. There won't be any academic standards/ qualifying scores to adhere to. It's an alternative to the idea to going to Europe to play (like Brandon Jennings) or maybe even JUCO for some. I guess potentially, he could have kids play that are younger than 18 too. Not sure how many kids he could get in this league and obviously huge questions exist about arenas, coaches, fans, etc.
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I think one of the big issues that this league would have to deal with is that it would be relying upon the decisions of 18 year old kids for its livelihood. That is a scary proposition for an investor. Additionally, who is going to enforce the rules within the league? What is the governing body? Who elects that governing body? If Lavar Ball is the one creating and enforcing the rules, good luck with that. What is your audience? Who is going to pay to see unknown 18 year olds play for a team that nobody cares about? There is a market for a pre-NBA pro league, but I am not sure how you develop the following for it. You will also be competing with the G-League for your audience, and those players are not only most likely better than your players (almost certainly better), but are directly connected to the NBA which gives them some inherent fan and financial advantages.

So basically this league would have to operate on a shoe-string budget, with lesser and unknown talent, would have to develop their entire fanbase, and would have to do so under the governmental direction of Mr. Lavar Ball.

Sounds like a winner.
 
The folks interested in developing these one and dones, and getting to them first, are the sports agencies and advertisers. Partner with them for financial backing. Big Baller should be a team, like Nike and Adidas, not the entire league.

Gatorade Gators
Powerade Power
The Creative Artists
Boras Boors
Wasserman Wassups
Nike Victors
Adidas Dreamers
The Big Ballers

What would NCAA basketball look like if the top 50 kids went to this new league?
 
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The Top 50 kids won't go to that league. The pay sucks. If they want to make money and are good enough, there are places that would pay them.
 
awaken said:
The folks interested in developing these one and dones, and getting to them first are the sports agencies and advertisers. Partner with them for financial backing. Big Baller should be a team, like Nike and Adidas, not the entire league.

Gatorade Gators
Powerade Power
The Creative Artists
Boras Boors
Wasserman Wassups
Nike Victors
Adidas Dreamers
The Big Ballers

What would NCAA basketball look like if the top 50 kids went to this new league?
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A lot better than it looks now. I'd love to see that. But not holding breath.
 
RJKarl said:
The Top 50 kids won't go to that league. The pay sucks. If they want to make money and are good enough, there are places that would pay them.
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Seriously? The pay from the league won't matter one bit. Some of you are completely missing the whole point here. I don't even know why the league would even bother to pay them. The agents and the shoe companies etc will pay these guys directly in order to get them signed. That's the whole point of the league fellas. These kids won't be under the NCAA, and therefore can accept money from anyone. Which is why they WILL go play in this league. You guys got it all wrong.

Depending on how you look at it, the junior league crap will either save college basketball or ruin it.
 
So this league will possibly consist of legit 18yo players who haven't yet made the NBA age requirement and then a bunch of scrubs who were not NCAA eligible for stealing shit in China etc.
 
Yeah there will be like 7 legit players in this league and the basketball will be AWFUL. Most of the top kids are going to still go to college.

1. College is pretty frickin awesome
2. Education does matter to a lot of parents.
3. College girls are also fun
4. Exposure will still always be better
5. If they aren’t a one and done they have a fall back option of continuing school.

Wait for a the majority of the kids who join this league to NOT be drafted (which is the most likely scenario) and then see how many kids choose it over college.

Additionally, the best basketball minds are still going to be in college basketball. Development is extremely important for 99% of the players who are drafted.

I would love to see this league happen because I would love to see Lavar Ball make a fool of himself.
 
Wrangor, I get it and everything you say makes sense. It's all totally logical. But that's the issue. You are assuming that 17-18 year old kids with often times dreams well-above their reality and parents and hangers on who want money and want it now, will make logical decisions. Won't happen. There are signs everywhere already that the majority of kids in this situation will not make sensible decisions. Even the guy running/founding this league doesn't make sensible life and basketball decisions and he's 50.

The league may take a couple of years for kids to see what happens with it, but as soon as a couple of top 3 level players go in the rest will.

I want Lavar Ball to fail too. But I'm afraid the league will end up working. Although I think Ball's involvement will soon be finished and someone else with some brains will make a success out of it.
 
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This seems like a poor "solution" to a "problem" that only impacts a handful of high school players.

The real issue is the broader impact on NCAA & NBA basketball from this arbitrary NBA age limit that forces guys to play one year of college hoops (or go overseas)... My money is on the NBA to figure out a solution (probably through the G-League), not Lavar Ball.

The NBA could crush this potential league by making an easy eligibility change if it ever actually stood a chance of happening.
 
DeacsATS said:
This seems like a poor "solution" to a "problem" that only impacts a handful of high school players.

The real issue is the broader impact on NCAA & NBA basketball from this arbitrary NBA age limit that forces guys to play one year of college hoops (or go overseas)... My money is on the NBA to figure out a solution (probably through the G-League), not Lavar Ball.

The NBA could crush this potential league by making an easy eligibility change if it ever actually stood a chance of happening.
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That's exactly right, and that's what will happen. The NCAA and/or the NBA will make a rule change that will implode the junior league within it's first year.

Or - maybe it will be one of the shoe companies or the like - some large company with skin in the game will pony up big $ to start a competing league.
 
I'm with RJ. What a disaster for the kids. Think about it. That is just what high school kids need - easy money, but not a lot, just enough to get in trouble, with a league headed by an individual you most likely pick in your top 3 of people you would NOT want to mentor young kids. Add in all the crap shady coaches and hanger oners who will act as the mentors and "coaches" for these kids and all I can imagine is LOTS of TROUBLE for these kids who won't be able to undo the trouble they get into - just famous enough for these infractions (clubs, guns, women, police scuffles, ad nauseum) to haunt them for most of their adult lives.

Horrific idea.
 
Yeah, because the NCAA is all about the welfare of the kids.
 
The other thing it will do is make recruiting impossible. For the big time programs. Kids will commit to a college, straddle it and the junior league for a while, and make a last minute decision which way to go. I don't know how college programs will deal with that.

It's a disaster
 
guitardeac said:
Seriously? The pay from the league won't matter one bit. Some of you are completely missing the whole point here. I don't even know why the league would even bother to pay them. The agents and the shoe companies etc will pay these guys directly in order to get them signed. That's the whole point of the league fellas. These kids won't be under the NCAA, and therefore can accept money from anyone. Which is why they WILL go play in this league. You guys got it all wrong.

Depending on how you look at it, the junior league crap will either save college basketball or ruin it.
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The only thing that will help college basketball is the NBA CBA changing.

The shoe companies won't pay anyone other than superstars. Players may get free gear, but the vast majority won't sniff long-term deals.

The shoe companies will absolutely tell the players they want them to play on national TV and in front of large, devoted crowds rather than in front of a few people and with a league that has little viewership. One year at Cal or Northwestern or Wake is far more valuable to a shoe company than playing in a league like this one.

Agents won't pay anyone other than locks to make the lottery. Otherwise, they will lose money.

I'd also guess that unless the league came to a cable network with advertisers signed up, they wouldn't get much, if any, deal. What is most likely is they would get a co-op deal where they would get share of revenue. Much more likely is the league would have to buy the time on the network and sell advertising to get their money back.

Only very serious basketball fans would know more than one or two of the players. Thus the teams would need massive marketing budgets to get started and every year. It would have to come out of the owners' pockets.

The teams would have little to no ties to the cities. It would be rare to get local stars and then they would be gone the next year. Thus building a brand team will be unbelievably difficult.
 
Wrangor said:
Yeah there will be like 7 legit players in this league and the basketball will be AWFUL. Most of the top kids are going to still go to college.

1. College is pretty frickin awesome
2. Education does matter to a lot of parents.
3. College girls are also fun
4. Exposure will still always be better
5. If they aren’t a one and done they have a fall back option of continuing school.

Wait for a the majority of the kids who join this league to NOT be drafted (which is the most likely scenario) and then see how many kids choose it over college.

Additionally, the best basketball minds are still going to be in college basketball. Development is extremely important for 99% of the players who are drafted.

I would love to see this league happen because I would love to see Lavar Ball make a fool of himself.
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This.

I also agree the basketball in this league will be bad. He is just trying to showcase his boys so they don’t have to play in Lithuania, or wherever. He will ruin lives by keeping kids from an education so that 1-5 in the league can get drafted. The man is trash, it is all about him.
 
CantStandYa said:
Yeah, because the NCAA is all about the welfare of the kids.
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Haha. Who would you rather have mentoring you college-age kid? Danny Manning or L Ball? Hell, Coach K or Roy or L Ball? Bruce Pearl would be about the only div 1 basketball coach I would entrust less than whomever is going to be coaching these teams. Not to mention the tutors and counselor apparatus that is in place in almost all scholarship programs.
 
A few months ago, you could rationalize Lavar Ball as a dad trying to do right by his kids. His oldest turned out to be an elite college player and good kid as far as I can see. Lonzo should be at least a solid pro if not a star. He had a plan to keep them close to home at UCLA. Start a family business to keep unscrupulous businessmen away. That's just a protective dad right there. He even exposed some NCAA hypocrisy.

But the fame clearly got to his head and the China incident made it worse. If he had just encouraged his kid to apologize and just dealt with the blowback, he could have weathered it. Maybe even figured out a way to use it to help build the brand. He's way too far gone now. He may have done irreversible damage to his youngest sons careers. I think that's helped Lonzo though. It's kept Lavar distracted and not meddling in Laker affairs as much.
 
PhDeac said:
A few months ago, you could rationalize Lavar Ball as a dad trying to do right by his kids. His oldest turned out to be an elite college player and good kid as far as I can see. Lonzo should be at least a solid pro if not a star. He had a plan to keep them close to home at UCLA. Start a family business to keep unscrupulous businessmen away. That's just a protective dad right there. He even exposed some NCAA hypocrisy.

But the fame clearly got to his head and the China incident made it worse. If he had just encouraged his kid to apologize and just dealt with the blowback, he could have weathered it. Maybe even figured out a way to use it to help build the brand. He's way too far gone now. He may have done irreversible damage to his youngest sons careers. I think that's helped Lonzo though. It's kept Lavar distracted and not meddling in Laker affairs as much.
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Probably correct. I have to admit, I have gone out of my way to ignore Ball. He seems like an arrogant, mean, untalented, unprepared individual on first blush and as a direct result of President Trump, I am aggressively ignoring all people who I consider talentless and unprepared. Has made work-life difficult but so far so good.
 
jaybone said:
Haha. Who would you rather have mentoring you college-age kid? Danny Manning or L Ball? Hell, Coach K or Roy or L Ball? Bruce Pearl would be about the only div 1 basketball coach I would entrust less than whomever is going to be coaching these teams. Not to mention the tutors and counselor apparatus that is in place in almost all scholarship programs.
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You make a fair point, but let's not pretend that guys like K, Roy, Cal, etc have kids' best interests in mind all the time either.
 
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