NCAA College Basketball: Remaking the game - Part two

NCAA College Basketball: Remaking the game - Part two
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (11-15-13)

[Part one - League of Children]



TODD:
I don't think you quite understand the term "win-win." It is not a win for college basketball that this is happening. Sure, this one season they will have transcendent freshmen all over the nation. But what about next year? This draft class is a once-in-a-decade type deal, maybe even more rare than that. And is this one year in college actually helping the growth of these guys once they turn pro? I haven't seen the statistics but I wonder how much better the one-and-dones have been as compared to the guys who were coming straight from high school years ago. Obviously both groups have huge successes and huge failures but overall, both the NBA and NCAA make us think this is working. I'm not sold.

To your point that college basketball has become a proving ground for future pros, this is both correct and wrong. It is correct factual, in that it is actually happening. It is wrong morally though, in that it should not be happening.

Many have suggested an MLB-type declaration situation to solve this problem. A prospective pro coming out of high school can either enter his name in the draft right away or, if he decides to go to college, he must stay three years. I like this solution on the surface but it wouldn't have saved college basketball. Remember how eight of the top eleven draft picks are incoming college freshmen? Well, with that draft rule in place, all eight of those guys would have entered the 2013 NBA draft. So instead of having one year of them, the NCAA would have gotten none.

The only solution is to go all-out and throw our cards on the table. College basketball is an inferior product; everyone should agree on this, even the staunchest defenders. No one can argue the basketball being played on the court is better at the collegiate level than at the pros. That would be ludicrous. So why not adopt the 'high school or three years' draft rule with a caveat? Anyone entering the NBA draft out of high school plays their first year of basketball in the NBDL, the developmental league. Right now the asset that is the D-League is being wasted. A player dropped down to it is deemed a disaster or a failure. Remove the galling stigma attached to the NBDL by making it a young man's learning league. All the best 18 year olds in the world will be learning on the fly against guys just short of NBA talent. This would be better for them than a year of college. It would also be better for the NBA by avoiding the flood of high schoolers who aren't ready for the professional ranks just yet that occurred when the old draft rules were in place.

But what about college basketball you ask? Well, CBB gets dumbed down because there is no win-win option here. It loses the elite talent that would otherwise play one season. But what it gains is better: players coming who want to be there, want to learn and want to play for a school. It will grow consistency and the overall product on the floor will be better, even if the top level is slightly worse. College basketball is never going to be as exciting or athletic or as powerful as the NBA game; why try to force it?


DAN:
There is no way to force an NBA level product out of college basketball. There is not nearly enough talent to go around. If there were THAT many NBA level players, we'd have 100 teams in the NBA. So we can safely throw that hope, prayer, ignorant folly out the window. And you're right, improving the NBDL by having draft picks who skip college spend a year there will ultimately hurt the college game. It would also take a huge effort on the part of the NBA to make this work. Can you name me a single D-League player or team? Where are they, who is playing and when do they even play? I have no idea. Talk about a lot of money needed to sell an invisible product. I'm chucking that idea in the trash too. I'm also against forcing three years of college upon someone obviously ready to make millions of dollars. Trashing it!

I love your ingenuity, your willingness to change and find a new model that can potentially elevate both the NBA and college basketball. But I think you're avoiding the obvious. If a player wants to be in college, stay in college, and play for his school for two, three, four years, there is absolutely nothing stopping him. These elite freshman don't have to enter the draft after one year of college basketball. They are choosing to. They have a choice. And you know why all eight of them will most likely make the choice to leave, because all of us in the public and the media would consider them stupid to say in college. Take your money when its on the table. Don't risk injury. Blah, blah, blah. They would get lambasted for going back. Andrew Luck practically did, but because college football is held in such high regard and there is less money in the NFL draft now, it wasn't deemed such a bad decision.

I agree, having the freshman earn their stripes against NBA bench players is better for their careers than playing in college. But the glaringly obvious truth you've missed is that college basketball has changed. The whole reason you want to 'fix' things is because you can remember a time when it was great. When players played in college and rivalries were real and school spirit meant something. That era is dead. Money and a booming NBA killed it. Accept this fact and move on.... Are you good now? Tears all dry? Cool, now we can have a real debate.

NCAA basketball can be improved. The quality of play has been reasonably consistent over the last ten years. The best coaches have excellent teams and the superstar players stand out when they exist. They are the anomaly. We have at the very most, ten of them sprinkled over fifty or more schools every year. Remove them from this equation. I think the biggest thing holding back the college game is a lack of scoring. They've made strides to address this, but more should/can be done. The best parts of March Madness are when a game gets tight down the stretch, with under two minutes to play. Those games are often 60 to 55 or something ridiculous like that. You get your 70 and 80 point games, but do you see the problem? NBA games are 90 and 100 point affairs. Scoring 80 or less is a fire-able offense. I think some rule changes are in order! Good thing the NCAA already made some. I smell debate.

Let's first address the changes made heading into this college basketball season. You're the perfect man for this job. Did the NCAA do enough with the current changes? I realize we have yet to see the full results, but they only did tweaking as far as I'm concerned; was it enough? I want to increase scoring and remove the annoyance of two minutes at the end of a game taking nearly thirty minutes of my time. Cut that down to ten or fifteen and I'm good. And I'm not talking small changes like shortening the shot clock. That's a good start, but we need BIG game changers. What about adding a line at NBA three point range that would count for four points? Or removing time outs in the first half entirely, except for injury. Light a fire under college basketball.


TODD:
Your complete dismissal of my D-League idea is very pigheaded of you. My idea solves the one problem you touched on. No one knows anything about the NBDL or follows it in the least. This will change instantly if all the best NBA rookies play there. Every season, half a dozen or so D-League guys get called up to the majors. Now, people will follow the progress of their team's top rookie as well as hear about/watch some other potential rotation players that might be on the way as well. The only downside to this is logistically; the NBDL is not setup like minor league baseball. NBA teams do not all have D-League affiliations...yet.

Your defense of the current rule is also disappointing. You stood by it claiming these guys have a choice; they don't have to leave after one year. That statement is obviously true, but the top players do not have a choice when they want one: coming out of high school. At that point, their control in the matter is squished, as they are not allowed to enter the NBA draft even if they want to and are ready to. So why not actually give them the choice when they graduate from high school? Either enter the NBA or go to college with the intent on staying for a few years and learning. There's your choice.

But since you killed off old college basketball, I am glad you brought up the rule "changes." Changes is in quotes because the biggest alteration wasn't really a change to any rule, just an emphasis on enforcing an old rule correctly. No more hand checking or arm bars or two hands on an offensive player. No more slowing down offensive player movement and progress. No more wild running through the lane in basketball, the equivalent to running a gauntlet machine in football practice. This was obviously smart and necessary. It will increase scoring in two distinct ways: more free throws while guys get used to the whistles and better shots on offense since ball handlers can't get checked and held as much.

However, the NCAA did absolutely nothing to help that last two minutes business you mentioned. This is the real killer of all basketball games to be honest, pro included. And there is really no simple fix; anything would be drastic. You could get rid of some of the timeouts available, but that would change the entire coaching philosophy of final possession basketball. You could penalize intentional fouls more harshly, but this would almost completely remove the possibility of late-game comebacks. I think the only change that could even occur would just be a simple shortening of timeouts. Make them all 30 seconds, or even 20 seconds. Or allow a timeout to be used as an advance of the ball to mid-court, like in the NBA, but have there be no stoppage of time at all. These are just small nuanced switches that could be implemented. As sad as it sounds, I see no feasible move that could fix the problem without changing the sport.

I know people would be up in arms, but how would you feel about limiting (or eliminating) timeouts near the end of games? It would reduce a coach's usefulness almost to zero and force the players themselves to make calls and adjustments in the final seconds. It would make things more interesting I assume, but interesting can be both good and bad.


DAN:
I admire your D-League idea, but do we really follow players in baseball through the minors? Really? We keep track of the absolute top prospects when they are close to being called up, but we don't follow their performance, only the date in which they will make their major league debut. And how many minor league games are televised? If the idea is to showcase the rookies, we need to be able to watch them. And we need to care about the teams they play for. This is by no means impossible, just a larger mountain than I was prepared to climb.

On the flip side, I'm all for any rule change that can speed up the dreaded thirty minutes of thirty seconds of play at the end of games. If eliminating, or limiting, time outs accomplishes this, then hell yes! I honestly believe that for regular season college basketball to be interesting to the national public, something drastic must be done. March Madness has held its own, thanks to gambling, but its by no means safe. Change the damn sport. Without top level talent, year in and year out, its going to die anyways.

[If you missed Part one - League of Children]

NCAA College Basketball: League of Children - Part one

NCAA College Basketball: League of Children - Part one
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (11-11-13)



TODD:
The college basketball season tipped off just a few days ago. Early season games are being played between ranked teams and November records seem to mean more than ever before. In fact, tomorrow #1 Kentucky faces #2 Michigan State and #4 Duke plays #5 Kansas. Not bad for the first week of the season.

But that is not the story for the start of the year. The story is related to this:

1. Andrew Wiggins
2. Julius Randle
3. Dante Exum
4. Jabari Parker
5. Marcus Smart
6. Joel Embiid
7. Aaron Gordon
8. Andrew Harrison
9. James Young
10. Dario Saric
11. Wayne Selden

Those are the projected top eleven picks in the 2014 NBA Draft according to ESPN draft expert Chad Ford. Nevermind the fact that six of them play for either Kansas or Kentucky. That isn't the story either. (...Well, it kind of is.) Of those eleven men, the BEST eleven pro prospects mind you, only one had played a single second of college basketball prior to this week, and that is Marcus Smart (who is a returning sophomore). The other 10 of 11 prospects are either freshmen or from overseas.

Let's let that sink in for a second.

Need more time?

We good? Okay.

So eight of the best eleven prospects in the world (according to ESPN's Chad Ford) are freshmen who had never played any collegiate basketball before. Two come from overseas and one lone man, who plays his basketball at Oklahoma State, is the only elite prospect with any kind of college experience. This is fascinating; it is unbelievable; it is uncanny and, to be honest, rather embarrassing.

Now I realize many have talked about the famed 2014 draft as possibly the best ever. People were looking ahead and realized this potential a year ago. Truth is, this might be the best that some of these guys ever look. It's possible at least a couple flame out as freshmen and their NBA stock drops a bit, or they return to school (HAHA, yeah right!). But taking this early mock draft at face value, the bottom line is this: the landscape of college basketball is kind of a joke.

Take a look again at those games being played on Tuesday. Kentucky is #1 in the country. Arguably their five best players are all freshmen. Kansas is #5, led by a couple freshmen, and even the Duke Blue Devils have a freshman as their best player. (Hell is freezing over, sell all your stock, buy that fancy car you've always wanted.) So not only are nearly all the top NBA guys freshmen, but many of the top teams are littered with players who will be leaving after just one season. This happens every year, but not like THIS.

Putting the specific 2013-2014 freshmen class aside, doesn't something need to change here for the product that is college basketball? Fix it my brother. Fix the sport.


DAN:
I need more time! Thinking.... thinking.... okay I concede. What's happened to college basketball?

Let me get my annoyed ranting out of the way first, because this NCAA season is both stupid and amazing. Personally, I find college basketball to be down right exciting, especially during tournament time. The holiday tournaments are usually top notch and competition for the top 25 is fierce. Yet the best eleven players are freshmen, unknowns, children with ridiculous amounts of talent and little game tape. I'm calling them children, not because of age, but because of their basketball experience. You need time with a top notch coach (collegiate level or higher) and a competition level rivaling your own to gain the intangibles needed for the NBA. Sure, you can compete and score, but you're still a kid until you've put a couple seasons under your belt.

So we now enter this NCAA basketball season full well knowing that Kansas and Kentucky are odds on favorites to be in the Final Four, if not the title game. Why? Because they own six of the top eleven players and everybody knows you only need one transcendent guy to run the table. They are all freshmen. Seriously! How did college basketball get itself in this position? What has cornered the sport into this inescapable situation? The NBA did this. Its popularity growth, especially overseas, has made college basketball inconsequential. Everyone wants to watch the best players, but they want to see them in a Knicks or Suns uniform (teams picked randomly, most people would probably not pick either of those teams). They want to see the best play the best, in the NBA, not the best clobber other inferior players until they run home crying. This is not actually a problem. Let that sink in.

The best thing about NCAA basketball has always been March Madness. That hasn't changed and knowing your team's best player will only compete in the tournament one time makes every game that much more special. Ultimately the one and done, with freshmen dominating the college game year after year, is great for the sport of basketball overall. It hurts the college game slightly, while boosting the NBA in incredible ways. I'm actually excited to see these eleven players play, knowing they will represent the top eleven in the NBA draft next year.

The NBA is becoming more synonymous with college basketball and vice versa. The college game is the proving ground, more so than ever before, with only a single season to show your worth. College sports is about the team name and logo on the front of the jersey, not on the back. So fans of a university will be excited no matter what. What drives a sport is the casual fan, the guys who want to watch for the top tier talent. And college basketball is going to have a ton of that this season. I say win, win.

I'm going out a limb here and saying you disagree. Yell at me some more and I'll give you your 'fix.'

[Part two - Remaking the game] 

NBA Draft 2013: Repairs & Reactions - Part two

NBA Draft 2013: Repairs & Reactions - Part two
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (6-28-13)

[Part one - A dull affair with Real consequence]



TODD:
So we agree the NBA draft is flawed, but how does it get fixed? I personally like the idea of instituting the baseball rule. A player can enter the draft out of high school if he wishes. However, if he decides to go to college, he must attend for at least three years. So the studs will enter out of high school and teams will drool all over them. The rest of the guys will gain the proper seasoning and experience during three years of major college basketball. We will get to know them; their games will improve; the NBA and NCAA products will both improve because of it.

Was there anyone in this year's draft you're even excited about? There are a few guys I like but no one that stands out to me. If I were a GM, I'd have been content to have a pick in the teens. There you can take the player you have the best feel for, without having to take one of the top guys with major flaws. Reaching for a player at 15 is no big deal. However, if you are Cleveland or Orlando and you pass on Nerlens Noel because of all the red flags (which they did), and he then becomes the next Tyson Chandler, you are in deep shit.


DAN:
The MLB rule for entering the draft works great in baseball, but the NBA had its chance to institute something similar and instead opted for a required one year in college. The reason is pretty obvious, Minor League Baseball is a huge entity and every single drafted player goes to the minors for at least a month or six. So coming out of high school is a null issue. The NBA doesn't use its development league in this way, hell it barely markets it. They addressed their biggest issue, all be it haphazardly, high school players getting drafted and not being ready for the NBA. In hindsight I think the NBA would make it a mandatory two years in college. The goal was to ensure top talent is NBA ready, bodies fully developed, skills honed at least a little bit. I don't think they've quite achieved this and the hype machine has certainly fallen flat in the last few years when the draft roles around.

So a draft fix? I'm taking your suggestion one step further. Actually use the damn D-league! The biggest hype in a draft is for the stars and nothing is bigger than a high school super star. These kids are all hype, since most of us fans have only seen clips of them play, if at all. So why not let them get drafted? Let the fans drool over hope and the future. Then send them to the D-league for a season and make money off those games too. Its not complicated. The MLB already has a model in place to follow. Come on man!

As for the draft that took place last night, here's hoping we get a star are two out of the bunch. No one excites me, just like no one stole the show during March Madness this season either. I wish this was a bigger deal, but its not. I'm still WAY excited for the NBA this summer. Doc Rivers is now the Clippers coach! Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett are no longer Celtics! Dwight Howard is a free agent AGAIN. And what will CP3 do? I'm even excited for Ray Allen's contract decision. The NBA is chock full of stars. It doesn't need the draft, but they could really spice things up by having the current stars interview the potential newbies. I liked what Shane Battier brought to the table, but something was still missing. I want on camera hazing baby!


TODD:
I can't get with you on using the D-League like that. Basketball isn't the same as baseball as far as minor league development. There are way too many basketball players, the vast majority, who are ready to play in the NBA year one. They may not be ready to start or play big minutes. They may not be ready to hit an important shot at the end of a game. But they are ready to compete and contribute. So why send them away? If you're saying that just high school players should go to the NBDL, then we get into logistical problems of high school players who are ready to play right away versus college players who are not. Where is the line drawn and should a high school player then skip the draft and go to a year of college so he can avoid playing in the D-League? The list goes on.

We'll have to take another look at this problem next year when the crop of players is much better. Perhaps we're looking through whatever the opposite of rose-colored glasses are. Is the NBA draft really that horrible when there are potential franchise guys involved? This year there just isn't anyone like that.

You have to believe Cleveland is pretty upset, internally, about getting the number one pick this year versus a different season. They decided to go with Anthony Bennett, as I predicted they would last week in my mock draft for College Sports Madness. I was also spot on when predicting the Nerlens Noel drop. I had him going fifth and he lasted even longer than that.

I know you wanted to talk draft fixes, but last night pissed me off! The trading is AWFUL from an entertainment standpoint. Every trade happens after the picks are made and no trade is official; they are all pending league approval and "according to multiple sources." The guys narrating the draft react to each pick not knowing if a certain player will play for the team that chose him. They then react to each trade rumor and then react again when a proposed trade is supposedly agreed upon. After that, they are forced to react when a team is selecting someone with a pick involved in a previous proposed trade! It is cuckoo.

Some of the action from last night was actually fun. The "proposed" Jrue Holiday trade was exciting news even though we had to listen to everyone talk about how Noel would fit with Anthony Davis and then ten minutes later he was no longer a Pelican. Overall, the NBA draft is such a poor product for so many reasons and it's disappointing.


DAN:
I have a brilliant idea! What if, instead of putting on the hat of the team that drafted you, each player had to dunk a basketball with its new team's logo on it. Make the hoop a bit shorter, since the guys are in suits, and have them dunk over a stuffed animal of their new team's biggest rival. The photos of exceedingly tall men in suits dunking over large teddy bears would be amazing!

Final thought, I can't read the sentence "And then ten minutes later [Noel] was no longer a Pelican" without chuckling. Sure, they were the Hornets, but somehow a hornet is at least a little bit threatening of an animal. Pelicans are one step above storks and storks deliver babies. I'm not getting over this.

[If you missed Part one - A dull affair with Real consequence]

NBA Draft 2013: A dull affair w/ Real consequence - Part one

NBA Draft 2013: A dull affair w/ Real consequence - Part one
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (6-24-13)



TODD:
Everyone loves the NFL draft; it is an EVENT. The same cannot be said for its professional basketball counterpart. The NBA draft has no zeal, no luster, no...excitement. This happens for many different reasons. Mainly, people don't care as much about the NBA as they do professional football. More fans equals more eyes. But there are other reasons the two drafts are not peers. And the whole thing is counter intuitive; the NBA draft should really be the bigger deal.

There are exponentially fewer players on a basketball roster; thus, one highly drafted player will/should have much more impact on his new team than one, lone footballer. This is simple math, as well as how the sports operate. Unless you're drafting a top flight quarterback, one football pick won't reap huge dividends. It is about roster building, team dynamics, coaching philosophy, etc, etc. However, one basketball player can make all the difference. In this year's NBA Finals, each team was led by a studly, number one overall draft pick: the Spurs in Tim Duncan and the Heat in LeBron James. A single pick can literally turn a franchise around! So then why, if a single player can turn around the hopes and future of an entire franchise, is the NBA draft such a bummer?

The answer lies in who gets drafted. NFL drafts feature seasoned, famous amateurs getting taken through round two and often later. Big name quarterbacks and skill position players still generate interest in the middle and later rounds. These are guys we've seen mature and develop on and off the field for at least three years in college. Compare that to basketball prospects. The top guys are, more often than not, freshmen one-and-dones. They are certainly the most talented players, but we don't know them; their games are raw and under-developed; we watched them for one semester essentially. If they played for a certain university, we might hate them (cough cough Duke). Otherwise, they mean nothing to us; a hired gun set to play a season and bail for greener pastures. These are the men (boys?) that make up the NBA draft. So why should we pay attention?

There is another reason the draft stinks, along those same lines. These guys are not ready. They've only played one season above high school competition. And even the sophomores and juniors that come out are usually not ready to compete at the NBA level. The NBDL is not a minor leagues for the NBA. It might be awesome if it were, but the league is not setup to support such a proposition. So instead of a 19 year old starting off in the d-league, they are thrown into the big time and do not have the bodies nor the experience to play up to their potential. Thus, those top talents put up middling statistics or, even worse, barely get to play. So why watch them get drafted?

With the NBA draft this week, on Thursday, who will go number one? But, more importantly, why should we care?


DAN:
The NBA draft should be the bigger deal, logically, as compared to its NFL counterpart, except it 100% isn't! And you missed the biggest reason entirely. I'm stunned really. First off, the NBA draft was once cooler and more fun than any other draft around. The top two guys were almost guaranteed to be stars in the NBA the following season, but as you noted, with the best players leaving college after one year, fewer and fewer are ready for the NBA on day one.

The SINGLE biggest reason the NBA draft stinks like dirty socks is the draft lottery. I understand the logic behind holding the lottery for the top three picks, it helps curb tanking down the stretch of the regular season. But it hasn't prevented tanking. It just smoothed it out over a larger swath of crappy teams. The NFL is amazing and sells hope for its crappy franchises because every single fan knows that if your team has an awful season, then you are getting a top ten pick. A top ten pick in the NFL is equivalent to a top three pick in the NBA, since rosters are smaller and depth is much less. But in the NBA, if you are the worst team in the league you might get the fourth pick or you might get the first pick. That could be the difference between LeBron James (1st pick in 2003) or a solid role player like Lamar Odom (4th pick in 1999). One is franchise altering, the other is a just a nice pick up. You are not guaranteed the top pick, and as a fan this sucks the life out of you. Hope is not nearly as strong and what has ultimately happened is that the NBA Draft Lottery is actually a bigger deal than the NBA Draft itself!

The other reason the draft stinks is because no one stays in college any more. You mentioned this, but weren't nearly angry enough. The NBA fan who is only a casual college fan, like myself, doesn't know anyone outside the top five of the NBA draft. In the NFL, where players are in college for two or three seasons at least, even casual fans get to know the top guys. Players can transcend this issue, but overall they haven't. They've actually perpetuated it and in recent years have completely killed the buzz surrounding the NBA draft! Super star college players like Adam Morrison from Gonzaga have stunk it up in the NBA. He was a rarity and played a few years in college, we all got to know him and his success, and then bam, he stinks. And the top players who are 'great' enough to leave after one year; they haven't been physically ready and got hurt, a la Greg Oden. Who can we trust to succeed?

A star will be a star. Kevin Durant was a star from day one in the NBA. But the majority of players are not Kevin Durant and need more time in college to mature their game and grow a national audience for themselves as a product. When nearly every superstar in the NBA was drafted in the top three to five, you'd think at least the first half hour of the draft would be fun to watch. You would be wrong.


TODD:
Yeah, I agree the lottery is hogwash. It does not prevent tanking in the least. We only escaped that fate this season because there was no college player worth tanking for. Watch out next year though. If Andrew Wiggins has himself the freshman season everyone is expecting, there will be tanking galore! He's the best high school player since LeBron and it's not even close. The race for last might be more exciting next May then the race for the final playoff spots.

Is the NBA draft fixable for its audience though?

[Part two - Repairs and Reactions]