College basketball is experiencing a problem: players are leaving school early for the NBA draft.
I will give the NCAA and the NBA their due – over the last decade they took a step to relegate this problem by making high schoolers go to college for at least one year.
This has given fans an ability to view elite talent like Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose, Anthony Davis, Nerlens Noel and Kyrie Irving at the college level.
Many players this year are leaving early for the draft; whether they should or not is subjective. Players like Jabari Parker, Julius Randle, Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid have already declared they are leaving for the draft early, which means it seems the years of the Doug McDermotts, Tim Duncans, Shabazz Napiers and Damian Lillards exhausting their eligibility and possibly gaining a college degree are waning.
We may not see another Doug McDermott for a long time. The days of a player of his talent staying all four years and accumulating as many accolades as he did may be long gone. Players nowadays want to make that immediate jump – they want to make the big dollars right away and skip arguably the greatest four years of their lives. By doing this, they skip out on college and being the heroes of small college teams like Creighton or Weber State.
Many players who leave early end up being NBA busts. Examples of these kinds of players are Shawn Williams, Deshaun Wagner, Brendan Wright and Kosta Koufos. These guys were great players at the college level, left early to find pro ball glory, only to ride the bench and have a very abbreviated NBA career when they could have dominated the court at their colleges.
Great players enhance the game of college basketball. Doug McDermott’s career was fantastic and enjoyable to watch for fans of all teams. The touching moment he had with his head coach, his father, and the preceding locker room speech was a spectacle savory for a college athlete who decided to keep his amateurism. Shabazz Napier’s run to a National Championship was only made possible by him staying at school.
More players should and need to stay at the college level. Their bodies and games are usually not mature enough for the professional level, let alone their minds. College is built around the 18-22 year old and that 18-22 year-old creates an atmosphere that makes college so great. Exceptional college players enhance the game of college basketball and should stay for as long as they can. In short, these players should stay kids as long as possible and enjoy their time at college.
