NBA: 5 Potential Impacts Of Global Basketball Academies

Improved NCAA Product

There’s no real debate over the interest and the excitement that can be generated by NCAA basketball, but discussions about the quality of the play and the grounding that the college system can give young players is currently a different question.

Although it’s currently the platform from which the majority of the NBA’s top players springboard themselves into the league, the mixture of talent levels and the imbalances in terms of recruitment clout don’t make for perfect preparation for the consistent quality that can be found at the next level.

With the goal of the academies being to not only hone the basketball skills of foreign players, but also to bring their education up to NCAA eligibilty standards, all of a sudden college basketball could have a new look to it.

With more talent to go around, the NCAA could become less about power-house programs and see a greater parity among the teams competing. In its current construction, the NCAA is designed to thrill with underdog stories, yet if the gap between the top of the pack and the rest was never so big to begin with, the league’s entertainment could make something of a shift from pure narrative to top class play too.

Like we see in the NBA when international players come on the scene, they also add an injection of new play styles and flavors. Coming from different backgrounds, players bring something different to the table in terms of approach and performance. In the NCAA’s case, that should lead to an improved competitive balance and in even simpler terms, just better players overall.