The top-turning information of Baylor including 21-year-old huge man James Nnaji, a 2023 NBA Draft choose, has reverberated round school athletics. It isn’t simply that Baylor is bringing on somebody who was drafted 30 months in the past, it is also that he is eligible instantly and will make his collegiate debut this Saturday when Baylor faces TCU in its Huge 12 opener.
Whereas a lot of packages have plumbed into the G League and worldwide pipelines so as to add gamers in latest weeks/months, Baylor paved a brand new pathway when it went to the NCAA and requested it to clear the 7-footer with greater than 4 years of EuroLeague expertise. By no means till now had somebody who was chosen within the NBA Draft been permitted to play school basketball.
So far as I can inform, nobody had ever even tried. With good cause. The notion of rostering knowledgeable athlete runs counter to the very essence of what the NCAA purported to face for since its inception virtually 120 years in the past. However these pillars have crumbled to rubble at this level, and as we flip to 2026, the NCAA has however only some guidelines left which may face up to any viable authorized challenges.
Nonetheless, even when Nnaji’s case is allowable, that does not imply it is accepted and even feels correct. I reached out to almost 10 coaches on Monday to get a grasp on how they felt about it. Most had no downside with Baylor coach Scott Drew doing what he felt he wanted to do as a result of none of it’s impermissible and since different colleges (BYU, Oklahoma, Washington, Dayton, Santa Clara, Louisville), have carried out the identical as of late.
How Baylor landed ex-NBA choose James Nnaji and what coaches are saying concerning the controversial acquisition
Kyle Boone
Many of the coaches I reached out to Monday morning received again to me comparatively shortly, however essentially the most notable of all of them did not reply till Monday evening.
That particular person simply so occurs to be the person who’s arguably the face of faculty basketball.
I texted Dan Hurley and requested for his ideas on the state of affairs at Baylor and the state of faculty hoops because it sees its rostering guidelines up to date virtually by the week. The UConn coach left me a virtually three-minute lengthy voice memo, and as a substitute of chopping up all of the quotes and dispersing them all through the story, I need to current what he stated in full. Hurley was introspective, direct, largely unedited and fully earnest about what he believes school basketball wants proper now.
Primarily based on conversations I’ve had in latest days and weeks, these ideas additionally replicate the sentiments and intentions of quite a lot of his fellow coaches.
This is Hurley to CBS Sports activities:
“I might simply say with the gamers, clearly with all of the G League (guys), I simply had no concept that that was even an choice. I believed it was really a joke after I noticed it. I simply assumed that while you keep within the draft otherwise you get drafted that you’d forgo your school eligibility. I used to be not conscious of the loopholes in it. My largest factor I might say is, hear, participant empowerment’s nice. Gamers must do what they’ll to be sure that they’re doing what’s of their greatest curiosity. They’re profiting from these alternatives now with NIL and the portal. The coaches are clearly all the time gonna do what’s of their greatest curiosity if they’ll seize a participant from someplace. It is gone on eternally. Coaches have cheated in recruiting for years. They’ve paid gamers. I imply, the coaches are gonna discover methods to make their crew the most effective they are often.
However I might say my largest factor is: who’s looking for the protect, the faculty basketball (protect)? Who’s defending school basketball, probably the most particular issues we now have in sports activities. School basketball, March Insanity, the second largest annual sporting occasion yearly. We’d like a commissioner. We’d like guidelines, we’d like pointers.
The irritating half is all of us are keen to adapt and play this new recreation on this new period of, I suppose school sports activities, or whether or not it is G League — I do not know what we’re in precisely proper now — however it’s a irritating recreation to play when you do not know the principles and guidelines are being made up as you go and there isn’t any communication and there isn’t any management. So, I believe school basketball wants a commissioner. A (Roger) Goodell. A David Stern. Any person that is gonna make choices and begin making strikes which are in the most effective curiosity of faculty basketball, not simply having coaches and gamers do what’s in the most effective curiosity of them.”
Hurley understandably lands on the receiving finish of quite a lot of criticism and commentary for his sideline habits at instances, or for what he’ll typically say on a microphone. However in my expertise, I discover his ardour and devotion to varsity basketball as earnest and enormous as any coach within the recreation.
If you happen to’re a university basketball fan studying this, somebody who simply loves the sport to its core, know that Dan Hurley is wired identical to you. He not solely loves it as a result of he is a coach, he loves it as a result of he grew up on it. He’s a university basketball junkie.
It is a man who may have left UConn after back-to-back titles, when he was on a throne on the mountaintop of the game, to take the Lakers job.
He may have left NIL and the portal and the mangled mess of insurance policies and non-policies which have plagued school basketball and the NCAA increasingly more and extra lately. It might have been very straightforward to do and nobody may have critiqued him for doing it.
However he got here again.
He stayed at UConn.
He selected school basketball.
Hurley stayed for lots of causes, in fact. Excessive on that record of causes is his perception that school basketball is a superb American sport. There’s a spirit to the sport that’s unmatched. Hurley believes media firms — and even lots of the coaches themselves — have failed at correctly advertising and marketing the sport prior to now 5, 10, 15 years.
He needs extra for it. He needs it to be higher. Believes it will possibly and must be. The game is already superb, however it might be a lot greater if it was dealt with and promoted the best way school soccer and the NFL are.
Hurley’s pitch for a commissioner is not new, and it may not be sensible in follow, however when a coach of his stature speaks out, everybody who claims to care concerning the well being of the sport ought to hear. Learn his assertion once more and perceive that he is simply asking for actual steerage and actual management. School basketball and school soccer want collective bargaining as quickly as attainable. Actuality is, that is not taking place for a really very long time. Even nonetheless, we should not let the hope of that longterm purpose stunt progress. There are pragmatic methods to redefine the rulebook of faculty basketball on this precarious subsequent period for the game.
When a former NBA choose could make the selection to play school basketball, that is not the fault of the participant or the coach. That is the fault of the system and all of the individuals on the NCAA who’ve failed it alongside the best way — for many years. And whereas Nnaji’s dedication to Baylor does not threaten school basketball’s existence, it’s the newest occasion to present the muse of the game its largest crack but.
Numerous these adjustments, quite a lot of these cracks, have pushed among the largest legends out of the sport on an accelerated timeline prior to now 5 years. Now one other one is sounding the alarms, and if actual change does not occur in 2026 and 2027, Hurley and others like him in school basketball (and school soccer) may discover their means out of the NCAA enterprise quicker than anybody who loves school sports activities needs to confess.
