This past week, a judge ruled in favor of extending college eligibility from four years to five. While college sports, especially basketball, are already in an incredibly weird state with international players and former NBA players returning to college, this ruling left many even more confused.
Despite the option for the NCAA leader in assists to return to his alma mater of Purdue, Braden Smith will instead be pursuing his playing career as a pro with the Indiana Pacers, foregoing the fifth year he was offered.
There was some worry that Smith would leave the ranks of the NBA. After all, he is still not signed to a contract, one of the few remaining players drafted to be in that situation.
Smith was taken with the 38th overall pick just a few weeks ago. The Pacers gave up Kam Jones and two pick swaps to bring in the diminutive guard prospect in hopes he could be a third-string replacement for TJ McConnell if needed.
They are basically the same height at least.
The 5'10 guard did not settle in as expected at the Las Vegas Summer League, however. While the Pacers were not expected to make any real noise, their 2-3 record came down to a sheer lack of real NBA talent. Smith, unfortunately, fit that bill.
While the Boilermaker legend will spend most of the next year or more playing for the Noblesville Boom, the G-League affiliate for the Pacers, he could prove to be a difference-maker. It may seem unlikely now, but summer league success has not been a good indicator of NBA talent.
As for what this means for the Pacers and college basketball, there is a dark precedent being set.
Delaying and dilluting the talent pool
There is no end in sight to whatever is happening in college basketball. Former first-round picks are suiting back up for teams that they played against nearly five years ago. There are men in their late 20s coming over from Euroleague play to make some money through NIL deals. There are recently drafted prospects pulling out of the NBA to return to college for a year.
It's a crazy situation.
What this means for both the Pacers and the NBA at large is that the talent pool that teams can draft from in June is shrinking, and it is doing so rapidly.
In simpler words, the NBA draft middle class has disappeared completely.
Many will see this as the end of the one-and-done era and as a return to the multi-year commitment to a team that college commitments once carried, but it is simply an evolution of that.
The best players will enter the draft to become lottery picks, and to achieve their dreams of playing professionally. The former late first rounders and early second rounders will no longer be one or two year players looking to find the big deal and a good landing spot, but instead players that have aged out of college eligibility.
Ironically, this makes lottery picks more valuable, while making late firsts functionally indistinguishable from their second-round counterparts.
It is either the end of the NBA draft sleeper, or the end of age as an important part of the evaluation process.
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