Three years ago, the NBA changed rules regarding the draft so that players were no longer allowed to enter the league straight out of high school. Since then, the men's college basketball scene has changed a great deal, though the change has not been for the better.
In the first year of the rule change, we saw an Ohio State team, who might have otherwise struggled under the leadership of seniors Ivan Harris and Ron Lewis, cruise into the national championship game on a 22-game winning streak. We saw an unheralded Texas team rise up to contest for the Big 12 title. Last year, Michael Beasley took a mediocre Kansas State team to its first NCAA tournament since 1996. This year, Blake Griffin is doing the same with Oklahoma.
All this success is thanks to a handful of freshman who, deep down, likely did not want to be playing college basketball.
Back in 2007, Thad Matta would have said the new rule by the NBA was good for college basketball. He got Greg Oden, Mike Conley, Jr. and a trip to Atlanta for the Final Four. Rick Barnes would have probably backed him up. After all, his team would not have even made the NCAA tournament if Kevin Durant had not been shooting 26 points and hauling in 11 rebounds every game.
But what has happened to Ohio State, Texas and Kansas State since their one-year wonders high-tailed out of the college ranks after a single season? Ohio State's conference record dropped from 15-1 to 10-8 from 2007 to 2008, and the team went from national runner-up to not even making the NCAA tournament. Kansas State went from making its first tournament in 12 years—knocking off O.J. Mayo and his top-notch USC Trojans in the first round—to a subpar 21-10 season this year in which they have a 9-7 conference record, no signature wins, and probably will not make it back to the tournament.
The only team that has experienced some success since their one-and-done star left has been Texas. But to be honest, their 28-6 record at the end of last season had a lot to do with D.J. Augustin, who had lots of time to grow and develop during the 2006-'07 season when opponents were far more fixed on Durant.
Now, the Longhorns are sitting at seventh place in the Big 12—even worse than Kansas State—and rumor has it that the retirement of Durant's number two weeks ago was a ploy to attract more players like him. Which is a shame really, because what good will that do? Oden, Durant and Beasley made it clear that you cannot build up a program if you have kids that come and go after just one year.
Furthermore, what good did playing in the NCAA do for those freshman? They played college ball for a year. Big deal. They obviously did not do it to get a good start on an undergraduate degree. They did it because that was their only ticket into the NBA. It was a six-month exhibition to show why one player should be drafted over the next.
But had these players gone straight from high school to the draft—like they should have been able to do—anyone with an ounce of familiarity about Oden, Durant and Beasley could have told you roughly where they would go in the draft. We do not need them to play against college athletes just to figure out how good they are because it was rather obvious already.
And when you know from day one that they intend to high-tail it out of campus as soon as the NCAA season is over, it is very hard to believe that they are seriously interested in helping to build a program. Having players like Oden, Durant, Beasley and Griffin in the NCAA only enforce a ""win at all costs"" mentality. It's just not good for college basketball.
If you think college basketball benefits from the one-year wonders, e-mail Andy at avansistine@wisc.edu.
