Winners and Losers of the NBA’s potential relaunch of the Preps-to-Pros Draft Era

The NBA’s preps-to-pros pipeline was welded shut nearly 20 years ago by the late Commissioner David Stern due to NBA general managers’ drafting tendencies beginning to resemble Leonardo DiCaprio’s dating preferences. The narrative that preps-to-pros prospects were too young, too unproven, and that teams were wasting their picks on players who washed out before they could legally drink won out.

However, rumors about lowering the draft eligibility age have proliferated since Stern named Adam Silver his successor. As negotiations over the next collective bargaining agreement have progressed this summer, abolishing the 19-year-old draft eligibility rule has finally risen to the forefront. The player’s union or the NBA can opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement as soon as Dec. 15, which would result in the current agreement expiring on June 30, 2023. Here are the winners and losers if the NBA’s preps-to-pros route re-opens.

On Monday afternoon, The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported that the two sides were expected to agree on lowering the draft age from 19 to 18 as soon as 2024. Unfortunately, that means Bronny and the Class of 2023 just barely miss the cut.

It wouldn’t necessarily make it less likely that the last active player to be drafted straight out of high school, LeBron James, wouldn’t stick around and hoop with or against the next generation of American-born preps-to-pros stars. His youngest son Bryce has sprouted in Bronny’s shadow and will be draft-eligible in 2025. Lowering the NBA draft eligibility age from 19 to 18 years old would grant him eligibility in 2024, the same year Bronny would be draft-eligible for the first time.

The current age limit altered an entire generation of basketball. It resulted in one-and-done prospects getting creative in their NBA prep by heading to Australia overseas, latching onto startup leagues such as Overtime Elite or the creation of G-League Elite, which will go by the wayside if the draft age is reduced posthaste.

R.I.P. to the G-League and OTE Elite. All the well-funded developmental leagues that have bubbled up in recent years are about to see pop like a balloon. College basketball will live on because it has a built-in fan base consisting of hundreds of universities and their local fans or alumni around the country. However, there probably won’t be many top-5 recruits taking the college route even if NIL money is waiting at the end of the tunnel. There are too many obstacles that could sink a prospect’s draft standing in one season for a highly-touted prospect to choose college over the NBA.

If the 18-year-old age limit were in place today, 2023 phenoms Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson would have been the top two players selected in the 2022 NBA Draft instead of having to endure another season of on-the-job training in France and on the G-League Ignite, respectively.

Opening up the draft to high school seniors in 2024 means there will also be a flood of prospects from the 2025 class rushing in alongside them. All those one-and-done prospects from the previous class will have to compete with an extra dose of talent for a limited number of draft slots.

2024 prospects like Tre Johnson, Naasir Cunningham, Jayden Williams, and Ian Jackson may be among the first players drafted, but in the event of a “double draft,” a handful of their peers, who would otherwise be first-rounders in 2024, are bound to tumble into the second round as teams gamble on highly-touted 2025 players as well. That includes draft entrants who are juniors and seniors in college whose upsides are more limited by the time they get drafted. It will be harder to draft “sure things,” but the sound organizations will make wise decisions while the rest will flounder.

A prevailing concern NBA front offices had about drafting high schoolers in the past was the uncertainty of prospects who haven’t been evaluated against elite competitions. High school prospects are a mystery box, full of potential and they generally don’t go No. 1.

Before they’d gone through the gauntlet against their peers, upper-echelon competition, and upperclassmen, the NBA waged a war against tanking teams for most of the last decade. Prospects aren’t spending three years in college anymore, but in one season of play, talent evaluators noticed that Zion Williamson was superior to R.J. Barrett, the top high school player in his class. That won’t be the case anymore. Future drafts will be even more of a crapshoot at the top.

For that reason, the NBA should consider accelerating the implementation of the “18-and-over” system. If they want to discourage tanking, teams should have no choice but to gamble on unproven prospects or go the safe route and settle for proven collegiate players with lower ceilings.

On Monday evening, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, who typically serves as the unofficial megaphone for NBA front office perspectives, splashed cold water on the possibilities of the draft eligibility being lowered to 18 by reporting that the one-and-done rule will be rolled back slowly so that teams who have hoarded future first-round picks under the assumption they’d be drafting 19-year-old virtuosos instead of 18-year-old unknowns won’t have to alter their strategies.

However, it’s utter nonsense. The Utah Jazz recently exchanged first-round picks in 2029 in the Gobert trade. So, congrats to the prospects in 2030. Or teams who don’t want to draft in an “18 and over system,” can trade their picks. It’s a simple solution.

Woj’s report sounds like a stall tactic from the league’s owners which will quickly be shot down by the NBPA. When the draft eligibility age was raised in 2005, there was no grace period. It began almost immediately and teams owning future picks didn’t skip a beat. The league’s general managers will adjust on the fly like they always do. First-round picks are still first-round picks, no matter what environment teams are drafting in. There are no asterisk picks, just like there are no asterisk titles. Good general managers are going to find the gems whether they’re 18 or 19, while mediocre teams perennially drafting in the top 10 like the Sacramento Kings will select Marvin Bagley over 18-year-old EuroLeague MVPs.