Brandon Jennings is why the NBA needs a true minor league system

Brandon Jennings is looking into doing something high school basketball players should have been doing the moment NBA Commissioner David Stern decreed that the league would increase its minimum age requirement.

The Arizona recruit is considering playing professionally in the Euroleague for a year instead of going to college.

Granted, the reason he’s doing so is because of standardized testing issues, not because he felt slighted by the NBA’s policy not to accept kids straight out of high school.

Jennings sorta feels he’s good enough to play in the NBA now (mentally but not physically, he says). However, the best route to the NBA for American kids appears to be not undermining the established system the NBA and the NCAA have in place: go to school for a year and have some fun, and then hit the (draft) lottery. If you’re good enough, of course.

That appears to be the best route, because, well, anything different than that — now that high schoolers can’t go straight to basketball’s highest league — is uncharted territory.

Speaking as a fan, I don’t mind the idea of an age limit in the NBA. I agree with the idea that college ball puts players in a position to be smarter and better-developed players when they make themselves draft-eligible. I also think that tends to lead to better overall basketball once they get to the league.

NBA-ready high schoolers like LeBron James are one-in-a-zillion. There have been plenty of high school-to-NBA all-out busts, but even many of the prep-to-pro successes like Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett weren’t initially that great when they hit the league. Good? For the most part. Acceptable? Absolutely. Great? Not by a long shot. They developed to who they are now on the job.

However, speaking as a person, I hate the idea of an age limit in the NBA. If a person can go make a living as a professional basketball player, and they’ve shown they’re capable of doing so — even if at only the high school level — why shouldn’t they be allowed to?

Basketball is a game, and sure you can learn more things about its nuances and intricacies while playing it in college, but it’s nothing like obtaining a specialized degree to go work a career after college.

The way the system is set up now, though, with the requirement that players be 19-years-old and a year separated from high school before becoming draft-eligible, they’re pretty much forced to go to school.

What about the kids who simply don’t want to go to school? Afterall, college isn’t for everyone, right? We tend not to have too much sympathy for them, thinking they should just suck it up and go, and not waste their opportunity.

But how about the kids who struggle academically? Should they be subjected to academic ineligibility, the temptation to cheat, or have someone pull some strings behind the scenes to keep them eligible and their NBA dreams alive?

I mean, rather than dealing with all that, they could already be making a living doing what they’re good at.

Ideally, they would tough it out and try to enrich their minds through a college education, but that’s not reality — even for many of the kids who already attend college on athletic scholarships.

I’m not of the mindset that college kids should be paid to play ball, regardless of how much money the NCAA makes off them. That’s not to excuse the NCAA for treating kids like cash cows. However, anyone with student loan debt can tell you how ridiculous college costs are these days. Scholarships should be enough of a payment.

The NBA, for its part, though, needs to stop being complicit in the NCAA pimping these kids and it should stop pimping the NCAA as its developmental system.

As long as Stern remains stern on the NBA’s minimum age requirement, he needs to do what he can to expand the NBA’s current developmental league to a full, true minor league system, and let the kids who don’t want to go to college get paid to play, even if they have to wait a year to crack the big show.

The NBA has the NBDL — the D-League — but just about as many veteran NBA re-treads, journeymen, and failed prospects seem to land there as young players trying to crack the league in the first place, although no straight-out-of-high schooler has ever attempted to jump straight there, despite more lax restrictions on NBDL eligibility.

The varied development level of D-League players makes it kinda like a mix between Single-A, Double-A, and Triple-A baseball, except with way less teams. As it’s currently configured, most D-League teams are affiliated with two NBA teams.

That’s the opposite of how it should be.

Basketball rosters aren’t as big as baseball rosters, so three (or more) levels of NBA minor league tiers might be overkill. Each NBA team should have two minor league affiliates: a rookie-level team and a sub-NBA level team.

To its credit, the NBA has been adding more NBDL teams each year, though the minor league still seems to have no clear-cut direction. Among its newer teams, the D-League even assimilated a few Continental Basketball Association teams a few years ago. As a side note, the longer-established CBA could also be an option for those who’d rather sidestep college, but the competition level has been dropping since better non-NBA players go to the D-League for exposure or the Euroleague for better pay.

Current NBDL teams draft and own the rights to nearly all of their own players, but NBA teams can demote first- or second-year players down to their shared affiliate team while maintaining the rights to those players. Any D-League player whose rights aren’t owned by an NBA team can be signed by any NBA team.

It would make more sense if the NBA expanded the NBDL and then expanded the NBA Draft so each NBA franchise could stock its own, exclusively-affiliated D-League teams with the players it wants and implement its own offensive and defensive systems so their minor leaguers can be ready should they get a call-up.

As it stands now, each player on each NBDL team is playing for himself and his own personal motives, and faces the possibility of losing playing time to an NBA-owned player who gets demoted in order to spend time developing rather than suffering a lack of playing time at the NBA level.

The Utah Jazz and the Detroit Pistons are prime examples of teams taking full advantage of allowing players to grab playing time in the D-League rather than wallowing on the bench.

Pistons GM Joe Dumars relegated F Amir Johnson to NBDL duty for the greater part of his first two seasons after being drafted, rather than subjecting him to plenty of pine time behind the team’s established veterans. In 40 career D-League games, Johnson averaged 20.3 points on 64.2 percent shooting, 9.5 rebounds, and 2.7 blocks.

Obviously, those numbers don’t translate directly to the NBA, but Johnson was more game-ready this past year when he did get off the bench and down the stretch played a role as a key reserve for Detroit.

The Jazz sent SG Morris Almond, their first-round pick from last summer and a flat-out scoring machine from Rice, to the D-League this past year. He got some call-ups with the Jazz, but Utah was pretty set at shooting guard, so they just sent him there to stay fresh. He dominated, by the way, setting league single-game scoring records. He finished the year at 25.6 ppg in 34 games.

The way Almond played down at the D-League, I wouldn’t be surprised if other teams were trying to trade for him, much like MLB teams try to obtain prospects, despite the fact that Almond is signed to a slotted, NBA guaranteed multiyear rookie contract.

If things don’t pan out for Jennings at Arizona and he hops on a plane for Europe to play ball, there are no assurances he’ll even get playing time or that he’ll do well if he does. The same can be said of if he attempted to play in the NBDL, although if he goes to the Euroleague, he might at least come away with maturing more quickly for having been on his own in another country.

However, even if Jennings goes to Europe and doesn’t do well, David Stern should do what he can do accommodate kids who don’t want to go to college, rather than shoving it down their throats — if they’re academically eligible, that is — and also instead of helping the NCAA line its pocketbooks.

Not doing so is admitting that the NBA can’t sustain itself without fans becoming attached to at least a few college players before they crack the NBA.

So if accommodation doesn’t include lowering the age restriction, it should mean expanding the D-League and letting individual NBA teams develop the should-be-freshmen as young basketball professionals.

If not, Stern and the NBA should expect more and more kids to do like Jennings and at least consider circumventing the current system by boarding planes to head overseas after they graduate high school.

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Tags: NBA, NCAA Basketball, basketball, University of Arizona, Brandon Jennings, College Basketball, High School Basketball, International Basketball, Euroleague, David Stern, NBDL, CBA, D-League

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