Bobby Knight Sounds Off

I can't believe I'm actually about to agree with something Knight is saying. Generally I don't care much for this loudmouth jackass, but what can I tell you, he's got a great point here. Read this Knight quote, from ESPN:

"...now you can have a kid come to school for a year and play basketball and he doesn't even have to go to class. He certainly doesn't have to go to class the second semester. I'm not exactly positive about the first semester. But he would not have to attend a single class the second semester to play through the whole second semester of basketball."

Wow, good call. I never thought about it like that, but this new rule really does shit all over the NCAA's eligibility standards. What's more if a player does this, intending to jump right to the NBA draft, and then suffers some sort of setback (injury, personal, drugs, etc.) and is forced out of the draft, they've probably blown their scholarship, eligibility, or both in the process. Essentially screwing their whole career right from the start. The thing is Stern intended for this to send more players to the D-League, making it a hot-ticket item like Minor league baseball. So he wasn't really thinking of the adverse affects on NCAA standards. I think that's the only real answer; if you're gonna go straight from high school, do a year in the Development League instead of a year at college. It's arguable which would better prepare you for the NBA. The proportion of players who'll make it, at some point, to the NBA is probably about the same. But in college you'd probably run a higher probability of actually facing a future NBA star. Either way I'm shocked Knight is back in the news for giving us something interesting to ponder, rather than for throwing a chair at a toddler.