Josh Pastner believes time has come for one-and-done rule
Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner believes that there will at least be one change coming to his sport in the wake of the FBI investigation that led to the arrests of 10 individuals with ties to college basketball and perhaps more coming. Pastner believes the one-and-done rule is coming to an end.
“I think what this will do is probably eventually change the one-and-done rule,” Pastner said Thursday at his team’s media day. “I think it’s going to get eliminated. I don’t think there’s any question about that.”
The one-and-done rule, created by the NBA and the league’s players’ union, requires players to be either 19-years-old or one year removed from high school to be eligible for the draft. Most typically, it means high-school stars who once might have gone directly to the NBA out of high school instead attend college for one season. In June, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said he wanted to see the rule changed, as he felt it wasn’t working for anyone, but he wasn’t sure how.
For college basketball, as it pertains to the impermissible payment of high-school players by shoe companies to attend a certain college, the logic of getting rid of the one-and-done requirement is that the best players will go straight to the NBA. For shoe companies like Adidas, which had a marketing executive arrested for organizing payments to families of top-flight prospects to ensure they attended Adidas-sponsored schools, there would seemingly be less motivation to arrange these matches. The prospects that they wanted in their shoes, presumably, would already be going to the NBA and could be negotiated with above board.
Josh Pastner confident of 'no wrongdoing' in FBI investigation
The rule “has been great for the college game and it’s probably been good for the pro game, but to force somebody to go (to college) if they don’t want to go, letting them go (to the NBA) is probably the best way to do it,” Pastner said.
Some in the college game who have endorsed striking the one-and-done rule have proposed a rule similar to baseball – players are free to turn professional after high school, but those who attend college can’t be drafted until they have been there for three years or are at least 21-years-old.
“I don’t really have a strong opinion on that either way,” Pastner said. “I just think that, at this point, they should just eliminate the one-and-done.”
Thursday, Pastner was joined by Kansas coach Bill Self, who reiterated his support for the elimination of the rule. One problem is that it's a rule created by the NBA and the players' union, not the NCAA, although college representatives will likely have input on any changes. Even if Pastner and other college coaches see wisdom in eliminating the rule, the NBA and the players' union likely won't change it unless an amendment serves them.
When Silver made his comments about the rule, he said that the league’s position is that it would like to see the entry age increased to 20, while the players union wants it reduced to 18. Silver said the reason for wanting to raise it is because teams have complained that one-and-done players haven’t received “the kind of training that they would expect to see among the top draft picks in the league.”
About the Author
Ken Sugiura is a sports columnist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Formerly the Georgia Tech beat reporter, Sugiura started at the AJC in 1998 and has covered a variety of beats, mostly within sports.
