College basketball is on the precipice of a potentially monumental change. Should the NBA get rid of the one-and-done rule, something that could potentially happen by 2022, the NCAA would be in an awfully weird spot, as the best high school players in the nation would presumably skip out on college and go get paid.
Mike Krzyzewski, as someone who has a vested interest in college hoops being good, sees a problem with this. His issue isn’t with players going pro, but rather, with the NCAA not seeming to have a plan in place to keep themselves from falling way behind the eight ball.
Coach K spoke to the media on Saturday, one day after his Duke Blue Devils survived a scare in the Sweet 16 against the Virginia Tech Hokies. When asked about the changing landscape, Krzyzewski bluntly said that college basketball would be in serious trouble if this happened sometime soon.
“The NBA will be well prepared,” Krzyzewski said, according to David M. Hale. “The NCAA is not prepared right now. They need to be in concert with the NBA in developing a plan that is specific for men’s college basketball. And that should include what an athlete gets, how he’s been taken care of, whether or not there’s a reentry if something — really, it’s deep. And if we only look at it shallow, then we’re doing a disservice to the kids.”
Just dealing with the consequences of the NBA making this decision is the worst thing college basketball can do — a great way to fall way behind as major changes occur is to sit back and pretend they’re not happening, and unless some conversations that Krzyzewski doesn’t know about are occurring, the NCAA would ostensibly be happy to let that happen. The NCAA is a gigantic corporation that cares about its bottom line above all else at the end of the day, but you can guarantee that nothing would hurt the association more than college basketball becoming obsolete because it doesn’t have the best interest of those who play it in mind.
