By Marcus Shockley

Part of being an effective sports scout and sports writer is the ability to be objective. As the fans curse the referee from the stands and call for his head on a pike, an objective observer might see that the player was indeed shuffling his feet; when the fans cheer a no-look pass, an objective observer might see that the player hurled a dangerous bomb from the corner when he had a timeout in his pocket and a two point lead. Objectivity is the name of the game, which means not playing favorites and not being a cheerleader for any team or player.

However, when it comes to Martin Luther King, Jr., I do not apologize for a lack of objectivity; I am a fan, and MLK is one of my heroes in a world with very few of them. I’d like to believe that I could be as brave as Dr. King, but I doubt I am and I doubt I ever could be; I doubt that many of his original followers were, either; a great leader does exactly that, lead and give strength to those who may not have it, and that’s what makes them unique. Without Dr. King to lead the charge, how many would have decided to join the movement?

I’ve visited the Martin Luther King center in Atlanta and I’ve visited the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. I recommend that every US Citizen does the same; I do not know how any human who feels compassion cannot visit these memorials and not be moved at the core of their being. The first time I visited MLK, I also visited the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Dr. King preached, and the church looks just as it did when he gave his sermons there. As you walk among the empty pews, daylight filters through the windows and Dr. King’s voice booms through the wood and stone, from speakers tucked away that give the effect that his voice is resonating from everywhere at once.

It is incredibly powerful.

As I stood and looked at the lectern where he stood and spoke to his flock, and heard his voice as he spoke of a world where we could live together, I realized that he did it. He did achieve his dream. Are we “there” yet? Well, no. Humans will continue to try and find ways to discriminate, but the ocean of change that has occurred since Martin Luther King’s day can be considered nothing short of resounding success.

In short, he changed the world, and not in the hyperbolic description that we love to engage in with sports, but in reality. The world is different.

So what does this have to do with basketball, or sports? Well, besides the obvious, that many African-American players could not even participate in professional leagues until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers, there’s a treasure trove of related ripples where Dr. King’s success changed the world, and here’s a few of those ripples. Some of these are juxtapositions of what once was; some are changes that were part of the wave that Dr. King joined.

1. The Renaissance Big Five – The Best Pro Team You’ve Never Heard Of

Of course you’ve heard of Jackie Robinson, and you might even know that the first African-American basketball player to be drafted in the NBA was Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton in 1950. Clifton entered the NBA with two other African-American players, Earl Lloyd and Chuck Cooper. But long before Clifton played his first game for the Knicks, the Renaissance Big Five, a.k.a. the New York Renaissance, was a dominant all-black team that played during the 1920s and 1930s in the Renaissance Casino and Ballroom in Harlem, NY.

The Big Five was loaded and regularly played all-white teams, and not scrubs. In 1925, the “Rens” beat the Original Celtics, who were the dominant white basketball team of the day. In fact, the Rens won 88 consecutive games during their 1932-33 season, and yes, you read that correctly – they won 88 in a row in one season.

The Original Celtics are not linked to today’s Boston Celtics, but they were no pushovers – during the 1923 season, the Celtics had compiled a record of 193-11-1 (you could actually have a tie in basketball in those days). To put it mildly, the Rens were not just a bunch of gym rats or weekend warriors. They were legit, but they could only prove it when they played white teams. In today’s post-MLK world, basketball players of any race have a shot at playing in the NBA, as long as they are good enough. The Rens slick passing and movement is echoed in the play on every court in existence today, no longer hidden from the mainstream sports world.

2. Washington versus the Redskins

In 1961, 14 years after Jackie Robinson stepped onto the infield for the Dodgers, the Redskins were the only professional football team without a single black player on their roster, prompting the famous quote from sportswriter Sam Lacy, who called the ‘Skins the “lone wolf in lily-whiteism.” George Marshall, the owner of the team, had never signed an African-American player and, truthfully, had no intention of ever doing so.

This prompted action from the Kennedy administration, and Stewart L. Udall, Secretary of the Interior, warned the Redskins front office that significant efforts to desegregate the team had to be made of federal prosecution could be forthcoming. Udall was emboldened by the swelling civil rights movement and went after Marshall.

Now, let’s pause a moment and consider the heavyweight of professional football that is, and was, George Marshall. He was one of the three founding fathers of the NFL along with George Halas (Bears) and Art Rooney (Steelers). He is in the Hall of Fame for some of his incredible business magic and vision concerning the game of football. After moving his team from Boston to D.C., under his hand the team won six division titles between 1937 and 1945. He invented the football championship and the player draft. He invented the halftime show. In many ways, he created much of the NFL that we know today.

He was a giant, but he was extremely racist, and very visible to an administration that had been elected on a pro-civil-rights platform, and they put pressure on Marshall to make changes. The media went after Marshall as well, especially Lacy, who stated “This column has never advocated suicide, but in GPM’s case, it would be readily forgiveable.”

However, Marshall’s stance began to lead to poor performance on the field, only winning a single game in 1960, and that also opened the door for public opinion to shift against him. In 1961, Udall determined that the stadium in D.C. that the city had been built with large amounts of public funds and therefore he issued that unless the “Paleskins” changed their ways, they would not be allowed to play in their home stadium. This caused an eruption of insults and mudslinging between Marshall and Udall, and the American Nazi Party paraded outside of the stadium with signs like “Keep Redskins White!” (an incredibly dense insult that no doubt was lost on it’s purveyors), but ultimately, after months of antagonism and embarrassment for the other owners, NFL commissioner Pet Rozelle lowered the boom on Marshall, and he relented. It’s not clear what Rozelle said to Marshall in their meeting, but to stop the steel-spined racist who’d fought civil rights his entire life in one conversation makes one wonder exactly what, and how, it was said.

Has the world changed? Yes.

3. Before Jackie Robinson Broke The Barrier, It Had To Be Built

So I’ve mentioned Jackie Robinson’s 1947 achievement a couple of times, but lost in most of sports history is the fact that Robinson wasn’t actually the first player to play alongside whites in professional sports. In the early 1920s, a few black players were on rosters of NFL teams all the way until 1933, when the owners decided to ban African-American players. But five years before Robinson, the National Basketball League had two teams, the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets and the Chicago Studebakers, who signed African-American players to fill their rosters. The league remained integrated, and when it merged with the NBA in 1950, five years before Dr. King led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the NBA also became integrated. The NBL has no relation to the current league in Australia of the same name.

The roots of the integrated NBL go deep in the current NBA. Five of the current NBA teams were originally NBL teams: The Minneapolis Lakers (now the Los Angeles Lakers), the Rochester Royals (now the Sacramento Kings), the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons (now the Detroit Pistons), the Buffalo Bisons/Tri-Cities Blackhawks (now the Atlanta Hawks), and the Syracuse Nationals (now the Philadelphia 76ers).

This isn’t to say things were all wine and roses for black players in the professional sports ranks at this time; many clubhouses were segregated and Jim Crow laws were still a blight on the country, some of the effects are still felt today. But the truth remains that African-Americans have as much right to the legacy of pro basketball as anyone, and it was the pressure of the civil rights movement that helped all of the changes that eventually came to pass. It was this environment that fostered the young reverend and created a world where he knew he had to join in and lead the charge.

There are many heroes of the civil rights movement. Average, every day citizens who fought for their own rights and demanded to be treated with justice and equality. Those heroes made it possible for the world we have today, where no one would ever consider telling a U.S. player who was African-American, Jewish, Hispanic, Asian or any other nationality or race that they couldn’t play pro sports because of their race. It’s not a perfect world. There’s still racism. But Dr. King’s dream has come a long, long way.

I’m a fan of Dr. King’s dream.

By Justin Shockley

When the first reports came out saying that the NBA lockout had been resolved, the casual basketball fan probably had very little to say other than a murmur under their breath about athletes and owners being greedy and obnoxious. For the casual fan the NBA won’t be relevant again until Christmas Day when they can actually watch a game again and even then their fervor or lack thereof for professional basketball will be even less than it has been in previous years.

The free agent market this year will not help create excitement for this year’s shortened season either most because the 2010 and 2012 classes have legitimate superstars like Lebron James in 2010 or Dwight Howard next summer. It is probably safe to assume that there will not be a prime time television special so that Marc Gasol can tell the world if he decides that he will be “taking his talents to the Garden State”. In fact, many causal basketball fans are probably content with watching college basketball when they get a craving for some hoops, and are most likely more interested in who will be on the next season of “Dancing With The Stars” than they are about this year’s free agent class.

While superstars are hard to come by in the current free agent market, this year has some really solid players including a few true centers that could help a team win a championship down the road. With the abbreviated preseason and soon to be a ticking clock for free agents, the next few weeks will teeter on interesting but definitely not be edge-of-your-seat spellbinding. Marc Gasol, Tyson Chandler, and Nene are some of the biggest names in free agency this year and also happen to be true centers with big talent.

Photo: Keith Allison/Flikr

Gasol is a superbly talented center with a wealth of experience to be only 26 years old, thanks to his extensive play internationally. With his size, passing ability, and overall skills Gasol will warrant a five or six year deal worth about 13-15 million dollars per year and can be a legitimate puzzle piece for a team hoping to win a championship soon.

Tyson Chandler is older than Gasol at 29 and his health is a bigger question mark than other available players but his emotional play, off court leadership, and unselfish team oriented nature are truly a great intangible package for a team to have. The Mavericks can attest to just how important Chandler can be because despite Dirk’s uncanny ability to be clutch, their championship hinged on Chandler’s play and presence in many ways. If the Mavericks decide not to pay big money to keep Chandler it would a mistake barring more injuries and if they don’t pay him, someone else definitely will.

Photo: Keith Allison/Flikr

As for Nene, yes, it’s true he may not be the biggest center in the NBA but his rebounding ability (when completely healthy) and wonderful offensive presence is a tremendous asset to have on a team looking to be a contender. Nene is also 29 years old and has a knee that is as rickety as an old rocking chair and he has missed way too many games the last three seasons to pay him huge money. For teams that don’t mind a gamble, Nene could be a pick up worth about 7 to 10 million a year but any kind of gamble with that much money can be unnerving. Indiana, New Jersey, and Houston could be the most likely to roll the dice.

There are other free agents in this year’s field that could have an impact on the league such as Greg Oden, Brendan Haywood, Caron Butler, DeAndre Jordan, Vince Carter (if he is waived as expected), and Josh Howard. As it stands however, the free agent market is lackluster when compared to recent and upcoming years and there is just no denying it. The biggest thing that will excite basketball fans in the near future is that possibility that Chris Paul will be traded which will get a rise out of even casual fans. Call us crazy, but no one really cares what Jason Kapono is doing this year…unless there’s a chance he is going to be on the new season of DWTS.

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By Marcus Shockley

Oh, there’s so much to talk about these days.

With the end of the lockout, you would think that the real NBA discussions wouldn’t begin until sometime after the first exhibition game tipped off; this is a sport, after all, and the primary focus is supposedly who wins and loses the games, but that’s never stopped the sports media from churning as much out of nothing as they possibly can.

One of the best formulas for creating sports stories out of thin air is what comedian Greg Proops once called the ‘What-If’ News, as in, ‘What IF Chris Paul joined the Knicks’ or ‘What IF the Celtics tried to trade Rajon Rondo?’. This, of course, is all speculation on what will happen many months from now, on the other side of a season, albeit shortened, but still rather lengthy. This is also ignoring the current free agent market that’s about to open, under the new CBA, because the current free agent market is rather dull, with the largest target possibly being Nene.

No, the discussion is lot more interesting when we talk about players like Deron Williams, Dwight Howard and Chris Paul.

With all of the first little bevy of rumors spilling out, we’ve heard already about the Nets trying to offer big deal to Howard, and how Deron Williams won’t sign an extension with them. Yesterday the rumor was that Chris Paul wanted to go to New York, but Paul rebuffed those rumors. Honestly, it’s far too early for any of this to have real credence, but there are some things that can be used as guidance on how this could shake out, and it starts on the West Coast.

The Lakers are one of the teams that really understands how to look to the future, and they have a long history of going out at the right time and putting together the next glamour team that will contend for, and usually win, a few NBA titles. The Lakers also have a solid track record of letting other NBA teams work almost as a farm system, taking risks, getting the bust draft picks, until the good players shake out and the Lakers move them to L.A.. Consider this: Wilt Chamberlain was traded to the Lakers only one year after winning the league MVP. Kareem Abdul Jabbar didn’t get drafted by the Lakers, but he retired there with the all time scoring record in his back pocket. Shaq did his young days alongside Penny Hardaway in Orlando before he teamed up with Kobe. If you want to know the big free agent moves that are about to happen, all you need to know is that the Lakers are about to transition away from Kobe into their next incarnation, and that whatever that team looks like will be one that will sell tickets and more than likely win some championships. Does that mean Chris Paul and Dwight Howard? Or Deron Williams?

What happens next summer will be driven by what the Lakers are going to do; not because everyone in the league is scared of the Lakers, but because most of the teams in the league are just bad at putting together deep, winning teams. The closest team right now that has a roster to be afraid of for the long term is Chicago, and with the Mavs and Spurs aging, the league is poised for new blood, such as the Bulls or maybe the Heat, to make a move.

The only problem is, the Lakers have seen this before. The Spurs and Mavs make good moves on their own as well, but they have a hard time competing with the deep pockets and glitz of L.A., so it’s tough to say where their long term prospects are. The Spurs draft really well but is there another Tim Duncan out there in the college ranks?

So even though I won’t be paying too much attention to all the made up and strategically ‘leaked’ free agent talk, I will be paying attention to what the Lakers do this offseason.

By Marcus Shockley

With the news breaking early Friday morning that the NBA lockout had essentially come to an end, several of the key aspects that the two sides had been battling over definitely seemed to have gotten resolved. However, one of the outstanding issues is the ‘one-and-done’ rule, which expired under the old CBA. Simply put, the rule was put in place to prevent players from jumping directly from high school right to the pros, stating that players must be at least 19 years old and one year removed from high school.

The NBA would like to see this rule expanded so that player would have to be two years removed from high school and at least 20 years of age. Many current players are opposed to this, but it’s difficult to say whether it will be enough of a sticking point to prevent the proposed deal being ratified. Where fans fall on this issue often depends on where their basketball allegiances lie; fans of NBA teams often come to the conclusion any player who can get drafted when he’s of legal working age should be able to do so. Fans of top college basketball programs, such as Kentucky, Duke, UNC and Kansas, have seen their top players leave after only one or two seasons in college, eroding their rosters, and they tend to feel ripped off by the business aspects of professional basketball. It doesn’t help when players who opt to leave early have lackluster pro careers, leaving many college fans to believe that some players leave too early for the big paychecks in the NBA.

It’s not a cut-and-dry issue, but let’s take a moment to unpack both the philosophical and business factors that weigh into this item.

First, there’s the aspect of being employable in the United States for young players. Major sports leagues have long had the ability to set an age limit for players who are drafted into their ranks, and even prior to the 2005 one-and-done rule being put in place, players still had to be at least 18 years old in order to be drafted. This also has some judicial backing, as Maurice Clarett found in his attempts to use the court system to force the NFL to allow him to be drafted. So, as it stands today, the NBA has a legal right to set its age limit as it sees is appropriate. The opposition to this comes from existing players, who actually don’t stand to benefit, and agents, who do stand to benefit. Existing players are actually helped by the age limit, as it allows veterans a better chance at staying in the league longer.

It’s also important to understand that the lifestyle of a professional athlete is a lot for adults to handle; despite the fact that they are, indeed, playing sport for large sums of money, it does not come without risks and potential for serious problems. Players are employees of teams, but unlike most employees, their salaries are widely publicized, as is their whereabouts and they are targets for many people who would like to get some of the perceived players’ wealth. The most famous of this is the groupies that follow professional sports teams, but there are many people who see the players as nothing more than millionaire marks, and many more who are simply willing to supply someone with means with anything for a price. Factor in that even players with four years of college are still exceptionally young adults and it’s no wonder so many professional athletes find themselves in trouble during their playing days and broke a few short years after their playing days are over.

This is not a cry for sympathy for professional athletes, merely pointing out that most adult players cannot handle money or the lifestyle for long, as is evidenced by the fact that 70% of NBA players are broke within 5 years of leaving the game, so including 16, 17 or 18 year olds in that equation simply increases the problems.

Secondly, there’s the problem of scouting so many players. Last year in my conversation with Ryan Blake, the NBA Director of Scouting, we talked about the realities of scouting high schoolers as well as college players for the pros and he was quite clear that the number of players that the league already has to scout is daunting, including college, D-League and overseas, and there are simply too many players to look at when you include the thousands of high school players every year. This is one of the primary problems the NBA wants to address, in that during the years where the NBA allowed high schoolers to enter the draft, the quality of league play declined dramatically, and ratings slumped.

The harsh reality is that even when high school players are eliminated from the mix, many teams don’t scout well and don’t draft well. But it’s more likely that they will get players who can play at the NBA level when they are only looking at players who are at least college-tested. David Stern knows that just because some of the NBA teams can’t figure out when not to draft a high school player, it should not bring down the quality and revenue of the entire league. The only way to prevent teams from making stupid mistakes on draft day is to not allow them too much leeway.

This is where it really starts to get into business strategy. A few years ago, the NBA was considered in real trouble in the sports marketing circles. ESPN radio talk show host Colin Cowherd stated that for a period of time he stopped discussing the NBA on his daily show simply because none of his listeners were engaged, and this was reflected across the sports media landscape. The NBA’s ratings, even for the Finals, were abysmal. Many players were drafted only to sit on the bench for a few years until their contracts expired. In order for the NBA to figure out how to fix their marketing problems, they went back to the one thing that had always worked for them in the past.

The NBA learned its current marketing strategy in the Jordan Era. Before Michael Jordan, the NBA marketed itself just as the NFL and college basketball do today; based around the teams. For example, fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers don’t stop rooting for the team when players leave; When Brett Favre was no longer a Green Bay Packer, not one Packer fan stopped rooting for the team in order to root for Favre’s new team.

But in the 80′s, a young star on a bad team showed the NBA how a player could generate revenue even when his team was atrocious. When Jordan first entered the NBA, some fans lamented the fact that Jordan would never contend for a title because the Bulls were so bad around him. Yet, he still sold tickets and sold product, ushering in the era of dazzling salary deals that we see today. Of course, Jordan did eventually get that team around him who could win a title or two (or six), but the NBA learned how to market individual players over team, and the modern era of NBA business was born. Now the NBA doesn’t market ‘Miami Heat versus the L.A. Lakers’, it’s ‘Lebron vs. Kobe’. While it merits some debate as to whether this is the best marketing strategy, since the NFL’s methods have steadily grown their revenue base to a size that dwarfs the NBA, as it stands today, that’s what works for pro basketball in the United States.

But that doesn’t work when the players entering the league are too raw to play and none of the fans have heard of them. The NBA still needs players who can make an impact in the NBA and who, ideally, have name recognition before they even enter the league. So for the NBA, the one-and-done rule has been an unmitigated success. John Wall was a star high school athlete, but he wasn’t the marketable household name he became until he had a stellar year at the University of Kentucky. John Wall went from one of the top players in the country in high school to a player that arrived on the NBA doorstep with a fan base, marketable personality and signature dance all ready for the NBA to put their own spin on. Add to this that John Wall had already played on a big stage against big time competition, making it that much more likely the NBA would be able to market around him. Would John Wall have been the number one pick in the NBA draft if he’d come straight out of high school? Possibly not. There were several big men in that same class who were considered more ‘ready’ NBA prospects, and guards already have the deck stacked against them. The NBA loves the idea that players can be filtered out through the crucible of the NCAA, which is more of an indicator of success than the D-League.

So while the one-and-done rule has allowed NBA teams to improve the quality of the product on the floor and get ratings headed back in the right direction, it stands to reason that getting players even more seasoned would eliminate the players who pit-stop in college but barely show what they are able to do before making the leap. Possibly the poster child for this is Brandan Wright, who exploded in his one year at the University of North Carolina before being drafted as the 8th overall pick in the 2007 draft. Wright looked like a future All-Star, thin but explosive and quick. Wright’s term at UNC was so short, that some Tar Heel fans said it was ‘hard to even remember he played here’, and Wright’s pro career quickly went south, as his slender frame suffered two major injuries that limited his playing time to almost nothing.

So getting players to put in at least a couple years somewhere (note that technically, this doesn’t have to mean college basketball) before the NBA gives them a look can only help filter out the players who won’t work at the pro level. No player is a guaranteed success, but if a player can perform for two solid years at a high major level in college, there’s a much better chance he’ll succeed in the NBA, and that means better basketball and more known players.

By Marcus Shockley

THE NBA LOCKOUT IS OVER.

The reports coming out late last night and early this morning are that the NBA owners and players have reached a tentative agreement. This means that while both sides have agreed in principle, the lawyers still have to iron out the details.

That’s expected to happen by December 9, which means training camp and free agency will begin on that day as long as everything goes smoothly. It also means a mad scramble for the players to get ready for a truncated season. It also means that most likely there will not be any exhibition games, but that the season will begin on Christmas, December 25.

The date was an important one for the NBA in that the Christmas games are the most watched for the NBA with the exception of the NBA Finals, and it would have meant a massive revenue loss for both sides. The current plan is to have a 66 game season.

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By Marcus Shockley

Photo: ESPN

With the NBA still in lockouts and talks scheduled to resume today, there is growing interest in what’s been happening overseas. With Deron Williams finding success with Besiktas and J.R. Smith getting into a spat with his Chinese team, the stories that might normally be surfacing during the NBA season seem to be pouring in from across the water.

The latest is that Besiktas has also reached an agreement with Los Angeles Lakers forward Lamar Odom, which means he and Williams would suddenly be teamed up as early as next week. This also means that fans here in the United States might suddenly have a lot more interest, just to see how effective Williams and Odom are together. It’s not clear if the Euroleague teams are hoping to gain market share into the United States or simply increase their local interest as high as possible during the lockout, but Besiktas is now presented with a potential game-changing opportunity. If they were able to also sign a big name, such as Chris Paul, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard or another player to play alongside Deron Williams and Lamar Odom, suddenly the interest (and ESPN coverage) would go through the roof. It wouldn’t simply be an experiment for a couple of NBA players, but a team that could rival several NBA franchises. It should be noted that this won’t be easy; Kobe Bryant, Kevin Love and Brook Lopez all turned down offers from Besiktas thus far.

Staff Reports

Kyrie Irving had a brief but spectacular college career, with only 11 games in his freshman season playing for the Duke Blue Devils. Still, he wowed the crowds and proved himself enough to get a shot at playing in the NBA – so much so that he was the number one pick in the 2011 NBA draft. We caught up with Kyrie this week to get his thoughts on the NBA lockout, what he’s doing in the meantime and what he thinks he’ll need to do to succeed in the NBA.

While it wasn’t a complete surprise that Irving was such a high draft pick, many people were not aware at how effective Irving would be at dominating the game from the point guard position. One constant about a college point guard is that if he can consistently beat the zone in a top conference and get points at the rim, he’ll almost certainly be able to do it once he takes on the man-to-man of the NBA. Chris Paul is one the best examples of this, another ACC point guard. While Kyrie still has yet to play his first pro game, we think he’ll be able to make the transition and succeed.

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By Marcus Shockley

The NCAA enacted sweeping reforms this week intended to help clean up its image and stem some of the scandals that have beset the organization over the past few years. One of the reforms is the reintroduction of a stipend to the players of up to $2,000 intended to help cover the full cost of attendance:

The board approved a measure allowing conferences to vote on providing up to $2,000 in spending money, or what the NCAA calls the full cost-of-attendance. Emmert insists it is not pay-for-play, merely the reintroduction of a stipend that existed for college athletes until 1972. He also compared it to the stipends received by other students who receive non-athletic scholarships.

While some thought the numbers should be higher, it is a step in the right direction. The new reforms also solidifying a plan that was introduced in August, in which teams scoring below 900 on the four-year average would be ineligible for postseason play, unless the team averaged 930 on the two most recent years of data. Of course, this immediately sets off a lot of speculation over certain schools in recent memory who might not have been allowed to compete in the Big Dance (or, for football teams, the BCS bowls) had these reforms been in place previously. The most noticeable example is UConn:

After posting an 826 last year, a UConn official has said this year’s mark will be approximately 975. It would give Connecticut a two-year score of 900.5 and a four-year average of 888.5 — both too low to make the basketball tourney.

While these moves are a good thing, they are merely a small step in the right direction. The concept of recruiting violations and other types of pay-for-play are unlikely to be affected by these moves; the money is just too great at certain levels to stop it with the NCAA’s own conflict of interest in this area.

It’s difficult for the NCAA to balance between enforcement of rules of amateurism while at the same time raking in massive revenue on March Madness and other television deals. The NCAA has, in recent years, pursued infractions which infringe on their revenue stream (such as the attack on Rivals, Scout and 247Sports) while not going after the very same deals at other media outlets (ESPN, CBS), perhaps because of the revenue deals the NCAA has in place with those media outlets. The problem in college sports isn’t the average athlete at a mid major school. It’s the big time players who are almost certainly destined for a pro paycheck, and the NCAA makes money off of those players just like the infamous runners, agents and shoe reps that everyone says are destroying grassroots basketball.

You have to wonder if the shoe companies, who are almost directly in opposition the NCAA (but also have revenue deals with several schools) haven’t considered their own ‘minor’ league circuit to replace the college circuit, one step above AAU. It’s not that far-fetched, and that might be the biggest concern the NCAA has on the horizon.

However, for fans of the game and who understand that for many players, this is their best shot at a college education, these reforms will likely help them, and that’s good.

See a little of what Lebron James has been up to since there’s no NBA right now.