Vincent Frank
The NBA and National Basketball Players Association are reportedly meeting Friday ahead of the opt-out deadline for their current Collective Bargaining Agreement.
According to ESPN NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski, “there exists a determination on both sides to reach a new long-term Collective Bargaining Agreement.” While there’s confidence something will get done, “there’s no agreement and work left to do.”
The opt-out deadline comes Friday after being delayed a couple times as both sides work on a new long-term agreement.
According to Wojnarowski, these conversations do not include an end to the NBA minimum draft age rule, which would end the one-and-done era around the Association and allow high school players to become draft eligible. It’s surprising given that the NBPA had been pushing for a rule change during CBA negotiations.
“The union is pushing for conditions that would facilitate veteran players providing tutelage and orientation to the high schoolers entering the league. The players union wants to maintain the presence of veteran players and not allow newcomers to replace them, especially in the cases of teams with high school prospects who enter the NBA,” The Athletic’s Shams Charania back in February.
This has been a major focal point between the two sides since back in 2005 when a rule was included in the CBA precluding prospects under the age of 19 to become draft eligible.
Most-recently, some of the game’s top prospects have opted for the NBA G-League as an alternative to playing college basketball. Just looking at the 2023 NBA Draft alone, there’s a few potential first-round picks who chose for the G-League path. That includes Scoot Henderson and Leonard Miller.
Overall, four first-round picks over the past two NBA Drafts played in the G-League rather than go one-and-done in college.
There has obviously been a major concern from the Players Association’ about the aforementioned age requirement. In fact, when the current rules were put in place back in 2005, the NBA had to negotiate better terms with the union in order to include the “one-and-done” rule.
On the other hand, the last NBA Draft that included high schoolers didn’t necessarily turn out well. Martell Webster (No. 6), Andrew Bynum (No. 10), Gerald Green (No. 18) never really panned out.
It’s an obvious debate given that the likes of LeBron James, Dwight Howard, Amar’e Stoudemire, Tracy McGrady, Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant opted for the high school-to-pro path and excelled in the NBA.
