NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has stated that the NBA needs to reassess the G-league Ignite because of the introduction of name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals by the NCAA, ESPN’s Tim Bontemps reported.
Silver addressed this alongside a host of other issues during his annual press conference at the All-Star Game on Saturday. The G-League Ignite was created in 2020 to enable draft-eligible players to earn money playing basketball due to the league’s age limit on players.
Here are his exact words:
“Now some of those same players didn’t want to be one-and-done players because they felt it was unfair and they wanted the ability not just to earn a living playing basketball but to do commercial deals that weren’t available to them at college, to hire professional agents, an opportunity that wasn’t available to them at college, they now — all of those same opportunities have become available to them.
I’m not sure what the future of Team Ignite will be, because before there was a hole in the marketplace that we thought we were filling before doing that, and now my focus is turning to earlier development of those players.”
Adam Silver Unsure About G-League Ignite’s Future Due to NIL
The G-League has been Productive
The G-League Ignite is in its fourth year and has already produced some high-end draft picks. The latest example is Scoot Henderson, who the Trail Blazers drafted 3rd overall last year. He became the youngest professional basketball player in US history when he signed to the Ignite as a 17-year-old in 2021.
Other top prospects developed by the program include Jalen Green (drafted 3rd in 2021), Jonathan Kuminga (7th in 2021), and Dyson Daniels (8th in 2022).
Time for Change?
The Ignite has struggled this season, going 6-31, despite having top prospects like Ron Holland and Mark Buzelis for the upcoming NBA Draft.
The NIL became effective on the 1st of July 2021 and Adam Silver is right saying that there is some form of redundancy to the Ignite team with the NIL in practice.
The landscape pre-NIL made the Ignite innovative and a viable route for exciting prospects to prepare to enter the NBA while earning money playing basketball at the time. Now that the NIL exists, the Ignite experience is no longer unique.
Collegiate programs do not pay athletes. However, players can sign NIL deals with companies and earn significant compensation.
The NBA is Shifting Focus
The NBA is looking to instead focus its efforts on younger player development, according to Silver:
“If you’re seeing now, what we’re seeing in terms of that close to 30 percent of the league, players born outside the United States, it’s clear that the development is very different in many of those programs outside the United States, more of a focus on practice, less of a focus on games, which seems to be the opposite of many of the youth programs in the United States.
I think that now we’ve begun discussions with the NCAA, the vast majority of the top players will play in college and never play in the NBA, of course, so we have a common interest in just improving the game, developing players, developing – players, there’s no question, they’re coming into the league incredibly skilled, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to being team basketball players. And then what I’m hearing from some of those same coaches that may be complaining about their inability to play defense is that these players are not as prepared as I’d like them to be, particularly as very high draft picks.
So I think there’s an opportunity for us to be part of the community that’s developing younger players, elite players, and also, as I mentioned before, in terms of increased participation numbers, of just us being a more active participant in getting kids active, boys and girls, with our Jr. NBA and Jr. WNBA programs.”
The American Athletic Union (AAU) is currently the leader in developing talent between the ages of 8 and 15. There have been complaints in recent years about the operations of the AAU due to its match-centric approach where youths play as many as 3-5 games over the weekend.
Research has linked the stress of playing so many games at the amateur level to NBA players dealing with a lot of injuries. Also, with the influx of foreign players and their dominance in the league, the way basketball is played at youth level in the US has to be questioned. The last MVP raised in the US was James Harden in 2018. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid have won the premier award since. At youth level, there have been calls to focus more on practice sessions to develop proper winning habits rather than play so many games. Its interesting to see the innovative steps Adam Silver and the NBA takes to address this issue.
