THE "GEE" LEAGUE

 

               You’ve probably never heard of Jalen Green or Emoni Bates, but chances are you will sometime soon. Green is a 6-foot-5 wing player out of Napa, California, who was ranked by some observers as the best basketball player to come out of a U.S. high school last year. Bates, from Ypsilanti, Michigan, is a 6-foot-8 forward who was similarly regarded in this year’s senior class.

               As you might expect, both young men were intensively recruited by institutions of higher learning even though neither was expected to stick around in college for more than a year as they turned 19, the current minimum age for a National Basketball Association contract. That would have placed them in the notorious “one and done” category that really is a misnomer because kids thusly dubbed almost always leave school after completing only a semester, or half-year, in academe. Green was said to be leaning toward Kentucky as his landing place, Bates had declared for Michigan State.

               But Green never graced a college classroom with his presence and neither will Bates because both signed up with the G League, the NBA’s minor-league affiliate. That means they will be paid across the table rather than under it as they make their final preparations for their game’s Bigs. They will have played more games than they would have as collegians and, mostly, against better opponents or, at least, older ones, and under NBA rules with coaches schooled in NBA tactics and techniques.

 Green averaged about 18 points a game with the G League’s Ignite team based in Walnut Creek, California, in the just-concluded season that was truncated by the pandemic. The team’s coach was Brian Shaw, the ex-head coach of the big-league Denver Nuggets. Green is a sure-fire first-round choice in the NBA’s July draft, probably a lottery pick. Bates, touted by some as a best-in-10-years prospect, is expected to follow the same path.

 The emergence of the G League has been basketball’s most significant development of the current century, albeit one that’s largely gone unnoticed. In its evolved form it offers to make honest men of kids whose aims in life have little to do with formal education and who take up college space that might otherwise be filled by actual students.

 The G-League option won’t stop the ones-and-dones even after the NBA returns its entry age to 18, as it’s expected to do; that path still will be available to players not willing to try their luck in the pros at such a tender age.  But, importantly, it will smooth the path to college for athletes who, wisely, can look past their noses and see their skills as a passport to the education that will lead to a more fulfilling and prosperous life. Further, having more players willing to stick around for the full four years would be a boon to the college game.

The league was started by the NBA in 2001, mostly as a place to park superfluous players who might someday be worth a call-up. It was called the National Basketball Developmental League then, and had eight teams. In 2005 it shortened the name to the NBA Developmental League and officially added the nickname “D League.”  Reasoning again that shorter is better, in 2017 it renamed it the NBA G League, the “G” standing for the sports drink Gatorade, which had stepped in as a sponsor.

In 2019 it had 29 twelve-man teams playing a 50-game, November-through-March schedule in places like Canton, Ohio, White Plains, New York, and Birmingham, Alabama. Each NBA team save two now has a G League affiliate, the exceptions being the Phoenix Suns and Portland Trailblazers, which can stash some of their fringe players with other clubs. The 2020-21 season was reduced to 18 teams and 15 games by the pandemic and played under the same sort of “bubble” conditions the big teams used.  A 50-game card and full team participation is expected to be resumed next season.  TV coverage will come via the ESPN and NBA channels, either streamed or on cable.

Players fit into a number of categories besides teenaged whizzes. These include ones who were drafted but not signed to big-league contracts, ones recently waived by NBA teams but seeking a way back, foreign prospects, tryout-camp winners and older Americans returning to the U.S. after playing in foreign pro leagues. A few are so-called “two-way” players under contract to both leagues who can be called up or back without a limit on times.

Players sign contracts with the league instead of with individual teams. The base annual salary is $35,000 plus housing, insurance coverage and $100 a month in Lyft tickets. The top salary, which Jalen Green reportedly earned and Emoni Bates reportedly will, has climbed to $125,000, and players are free to corral whatever outside income they can. Players also have free access to on-line college courses at Arizona State University, which they can take during or between seasons. In all, it’s not bad recompense for semi-skilled labor.

The roster of players who have made the NBA after stints in the G League or its predecessors is long. It includes Khris Middleton of the Milwaukee Bucks, Pascal Siakam of the Toronto Raptors and Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz, all of whom have earned NBA All-Star Game selection and the monster salaries that go with such honors. Middleton’s contract this season reportedly is worth $33 million, Siakam’s $29 million and Gobert’s $26.5 million.  There’s nothing minor league about those figures.