Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your concerns, remarks and issues through this short reader study. Now, here’s Mike Sykes
Happy Friday, folks! Welcome back to Layup Lines. Thanks so much for signingupwith me today. I hope you’ve had an remarkable week.
Let’s talk a bit about Thursday’s NBA G League Ignite news. Shortly after it broke, I popped a fast explainer about the league’s choice on the Ignite group and what triggered it.
Essentially, Adam Silver and the business chose that the group didn’t have function anylonger. With NIL offers in college sports and the Overtime Elite league being another choice for young hoopers, the NBA chose it didn’t requirement a group simply to pay the gamers anylonger. That’s the reasoning behind the closure.
I’d push back a bit on that, . That was neverever actually the point of the Ignite group. Paying gamers was part of the incentive, sure. But the NBA desired to develop its own prep-to-pro pipeline that ensured more gamers were coming into the league allset to play NBA basketball.
This is still a issue in Adam Silver’s eyes — especially with American-born gamers. Ironically adequate, when he pointed to canning the G League Ignite team a coupleof months back, he stated on that specific point. The next objective for the NBA appears to be enhancing that procedure.
Some intriguing remarks from Adam Silver on the state of basketball, youth advancement and the NBA’s function in that. Is he foreshadowing some type of NBA Academy type program in the UnitedStates? Clearly, he’s not delighted with the method some Americans are gettingin the NBA. pic.twitter.com/jMWNVSiFUo
— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) February 18, 2024
“If you’re seeing now, what we’re seeing in terms of that close to 30 percent of the league, gamers born outdoors the United States, it’s clear that the advancement is extremely various in lotsof of those programs,” Silver stated. “More of a focus on practice, less of a focus on videogames, which appears to be the opposite of lotsof of the youth programs in the United States.”
Silver continued, “I think there’s an chance for us to be part of the neighborhood that’s establishing moreyouthful gamers, elite gamers.”
To me, this sounds a lot like a pivot. Instead of focusing its resources on gamers transitioning to professional, Silver appears t