Rockets Legend Bobby Brown Evaluation of teammates Jalen Green & Kuminga

Yes, either route is fine.

The gleague route isnt just about the money? The NBA pitch is about accelerating your development. No different than MLB strongly advocating HS pitchers not do NCAA over their better care in the minor leagues.

I think we will see the importance of this more with the HS players who dont get offers from the elite schools.

Even thebig recruits, as Green says in the interview, it really helped him to be forgotten by the media and out of the spotlight that college ball would have wildly thrown at him. Ofc, not everyone is the same, justing repeating what Green said as an example.

 

Seriously??? I bet the competition was better than playing Rice or Murray State....come on

 

I agree on that. Right now I think there are plenty of reasons to opt for either route. We may start to see front offices wanting prospects to go to the G League for easier evaluation in the future. We'll see.

I think the take I responded to saying that a prospect choosing 500k over "getting exploited" by the NCAA or whatever means that the prospect is smarter than a prospect who goes to college is a lame take, though.

 

If you have a career ending injury at college you get nothing.

Though there is a strong argument for brand value

College sports has more eyes on it than Australia or the G League.

 

Yeah I get that too. 500k is a potentially life changing amount of money for many of these guys if they somehow can't play pro ball because of an injury or something of the like.

But there's also other things. Like what if someone busts and really wasn't ready to go in the draft the next year? On the one hand it would be nice to have the cash, but it could also make it harder to get back on track.

Like Quentin Grimes is a guy who might have gotten an Ignite invite coming out of high school. If he'd struggled in the G League like he did his freshman year at Kansas and not gotten drafted, his career could have derailed instead of finding a good spot to rehab it like he did at Houston and rehabilitating himself into an NBA caliber prospect again.

In any event, I want dudes that are hungry and have zero self doubt. If they make a responsible financial decision to bank 500k (less taxes) while they can, that's cool and understandable but it's not going to move them up my draft board based on their financial risk management assessments.

 

The Rockets are his team. He is going to get his number retired at some point.

 

College is the better route if you're looking to build a personal brand and live the life of a mini celebrity.

Without question g-league ignite is a legitimate threat to NCAA, so NCAA will do everything they can to pump up their athletes to be superior and better products, and I wouldn't be surprised if they put in extra work with the media to talk about NCAA prospects more than g-league prospects.

If the Rockets take Green over Mobley, the Rockets are essentially pioneers in the sense that they would be the first team to evaluate and select a player based on g-league performances. Green actually has a lot riding on his shoulders as well, because if he performs well (or better than his peers that went to NCAA), I can see a serious push from teams to get prospects into the g-league. I can also see a lot more money and media funnelling into the g-league.

The Rockets are in a very interesting spot, which is funny, because the last time they had a top lottery pick, they also selected a guy that changed the basketball landscape (Yao). If they pick Jalen Green, and he performs well, there will be a serious change in the NCAA landscape as well.

 

Baseball does it, hockey does it, soccer does it, no need for college if you are good enough to go pro.

DD