Invite to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe hereto get it provided to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your concerns, remarks and issues through this quick reader study. Now, here’s Mike Sykes
Pleased Friday, folks! Invite back to Layup Lines. Thanks a lot for joining me today. I hope you’ve had an incredible week.
Let’s talk a bit about Thursday’s NBA G League Ignite news. Soon after it broke, I popped a fast explainer about the league’s choice on the Ignite group and what triggered it.
Basically, Adam Silver and the business chose that the group didn’t have function any longer. With NIL handle college sports and the Overtime Elite league being another choice for young hoopers, the NBA chose it didn’t require a group simply to pay the gamers any longer. That’s the reasoning behind the closure.
I ‘d press back a bit on that. That was never ever actually the point of the Ignite group. Paying gamers became part of the inspiration, sure. The NBA desired to develop its own prep-to-pro pipeline that guaranteed more gamers were coming into the league all set to play NBA basketball.
This is still an issue in Adam Silver’s eyes– especially with American-born gamers. Paradoxically enough, when he mentioned canning the G League Ignite team a couple of months back, he stated on that specific point. The next objective for the NBA appears to be enhancing that procedure.
Some intriguing remarks from Adam Silver on the state of basketball, youth advancement and the NBA’s function because. Is he foreshadowing some kind of NBA Academy type program in the United States? Plainly, he’s not delighted with the method some Americans are going into the NBA. pic.twitter.com/jMWNVSiFUo
— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) February 18, 2024
“If you’re seeing now, what we’re seeing in regards to that near 30 percent of the league, gamers born outside the United States, it’s clear that the advancement is really various in a number of those programs,” Silver stated. “More of a concentrate on practice, less of a concentrate on video games, which appears to be the reverse of a number of the youth programs in the United States.”
Silver continued, “I believe there’s a chance for us to be part of the neighborhood that’s establishing more youthful gamers, elite gamers.”
To me, this sounds a lot like a pivot. Rather of focusing its resources on gamers transitioning to professional, Silver appears to wish to focus more on guaranteeing gamers are gotten ready for the NBA before they start to consider that procedure. A minimum of, that’s how I check out that.
The NBA currently has its Jr. NBA and WNBA programs. An NBA academy pipeline currently exists and has a lot of success stories. Possibly Silver sees a method to enhance it that we’re not privy to.
