The G League

Quality Hoops

We went to a G League game last night. I had never been. It’s at Dollar Loan Center in Henderson, Nevada. The minor league Silver Knights play there too. The place seats 5500 and frankly, it is a pretty nice arena. It would be a good place to see a concert.

One crazy thing about Las Vegas is all the small and large arenas they have here for events. I think there will be 8-10 separate men’s and women’s college conference tournaments around the city in the coming weeks.

It wasn’t very crowded last night and I didn’t know what to expect. But, I will tell you this. The quality of the basketball being played was very very good. The players were talented and quick. Better than a typical D1 college game. The score ran into the 100s so there wasn’t a lot of defense being played.

Vegas had some kids on their team that could have been at D1 colleges. They knew they didn’t want to play the “game” and be a one-and-done and they made the right decision for themselves to play a higher quality and more competitive game in the G League. Will they play themselves into a draft position? Maybe. The team had a couple of players last year that were drafted.

Suppose you are a kid in high school that is a top player. If the NIL money isn’t there for you, the G League is. You obviously won’t make as much but the goal is to get to the league isn’t it?

Another thing I like about the G league is that the players aren’t captive to the NBA team. The Minnesota Wolves sponsor the Iowa Wolves but unless Minnesota signs you to a two-way contract you are free to leave the Iowa Wolves and play for any NBA team. That does a couple of things. It increases competition for players and it makes players in the G League play harder. They could take a spot on any NBA team, not just 1 team which is different than minor league baseball.

I still think that kids don’t realize they probably won’t be playing in the NBA. If you go to any D1 school in America, there are a lot of kids on every team that thinks they will be going to the big-time league or at least playing pro somewhere in the world. The truth is they probably won’t. They are better off with an education.

Funny thing, the elites might look aghast at the kid that gets a degree from Alcorn State instead of Harvard but the data says if the kid gets the degree from any college they do better in life than if they didn’t get the degree. From what we are seeing today, cheating is so rampant during classes at the Ivies they really don’t make a difference anymore. Do you want to hire a cheater?

There is no tougher sport to make it as a pro than the NBA. In the history of the NBA, roughly only 4500 players have played in it. There is no “equity” in the NBA. Either you are good enough to make it, and you have to sustain your play at a high enough level to stick. The average career is 4.5 years. Median earnings for that career are just over $8MM.

Heck, when I played on playgrounds in the 1970s, there were tons of guys that couldn’t make their high school team that thought they had a shot at the NBA. When I played in Chicago leagues after college, we had a lot of D1 players but we had a fair amount of people that played in the old CBA too. The CBA guys were much better than the D1 guys.

However, the real truth is that government-run schools in America have failed generations of children. So, you can’t blame them for abandoning a fake education at some college for a shot at the pros.