On Monday night in Indianapolis, Duke's Jahlil Okafor and Justise Winslow will try to win a national championship in what almost certainly will be their final NCAA game before becoming lottery picks in the 2015 NBA draft.
If commissioner Adam Silver had his way, however, both Okafor and Winslow would return to school to try to repeat or avenge their loss.
The NBA's age limit figures to be a contentious part of the next collective bargaining agreement negotiations between the league and its players (either side can opt out of the CBA to renegotiate, and potentially initiate a work stoppage, in summer 2017).
Since taking office, Silver has made no secret of his desire to expand the current "one-and-done" arrangement and keep American players from entering the draft until two years after their high school graduation. New National Basketball Players Association president Michele Roberts has pushed back on a possible change, telling espnW.com she's "completely against it."
The age limit has been analyzed in many ways, including in my study last year that suggested players develop faster by entering the NBA rather than returning for their sophomore season. But I'm not sure anyone has addressed the question of whether it would be better for the league's talent pool to keep players in college another year, a scenario my wins above replacement player (WARP) ratings are uniquely suited to answer.
One-and-done track record
The 2006 draft was the first with the age limit in place, but because they feared a possible two-year rule, a record nine players were drafted out of high school in 2005, neutering the 2006 rookie crop. One-and-done began in earnest in 2007, when Kevin Durant (Texas) and Greg Oden (Ohio State) dominated college basketball en route to becoming the first two picks.
Since then, an average of eight freshmen per year have been drafted and made NBA rosters. Year-by-year, here's how they've performed as a group:
The big takeaway here are the WARP totals, which get to the fundamental question of whether one-and-done rookies are adding to the NBA's talent pool. WARP compares these rookies to replacement level, the type of performance we'd expect from the minor league talents who would fill their spots on NBA rosters.
In six of the eight years, one-and-done players have contributed at an above-replacement level -- three of those double-digit WARP -- and on average they've produced 5.6 wins per year the league otherwise would not have had. (Naturally, there would still be the same number of wins, but the talent level would be lower.)
More intriguing than the overall totals is the distribution of their performance compared to all NBA players during the same span. While there are one-and-done rookies who rate worse than replacement level taking up roster spots because teams anticipate they will eventually develop into quality players, the same is true of the league as a whole because most players in the NBA rate near replacement level:
Meanwhile, preventing American players from entering the NBA until two years after high school would have robbed the league of four of the seven rookie-of-the-year winners in the one-and-done era, and a handful of players who were immediate contributors. Here are the rookie WARP leaders among one-and-done players:
It's hard to imagine the NBA being a better league without these players around for their rookie seasons.
The NBA can point to the recent trend of one-and-done players struggling the past two seasons, when they have collectively contributed at a below-replacement level. At this point, that seems more like a fluke than a trend. The 2013-14 rookie class was historically poor as a group, regardless of experience level, and has improved dramatically this season. Both years also were hit by a series of injuries to prominent rookies such as Jabari Parker and Julius Randle, and while it's tempting to blame it on young players not being ready for the rigors of the NBA schedule, no such effect was evident in previous years.
By the time CBA negotiations begin in earnest during the 2016-17 season, we'll have another year's worth of data to consider. My expectation is that the crop of 2015 freshmen, led by Okafor, Winslow, Kentucky's Karl-Anthony Towns and Ohio State's D'Angelo Russell, will reverse the recent pattern and perform at an above-replacement level next season. In that case, it will be more challenging to argue that the level of play in the NBA would be better with a higher age limit.
News and notes
• The story of Easter weekend in the NBA was Paul George's return to the court a little more than eight months after he fractured the fibula and tibia in his right leg during a USA Basketball scrimmage. Coming off the bench, George scored 13 points in 15 minutes, though it took him 12 shots (and three turnovers) to get them. Considering how long it has been since he played in a competitive game, that performance has to be encouraging to the Indiana Pacers, who outscored the Miami Heat by 12 points with George on the court.
The lopsided 112-89 Pacers win moved them into a tie with Miami for ninth in the East, a game behind the Boston Celtics for the final playoff spot. Next up for the Pacers are two must-win road games against the lottery-bound New York Knicks and Detroit Pistons before they finish by hosting the Oklahoma City Thunder and Washington Wizards, and visiting the Memphis Grizzlies on the final night of the season. The schedule sets up for the Pacers to make a run, providing they play more like they did on Sunday and less like the 3-9 stretch before that.
• Usually, the NBA goes dark on the day of the NCAA title game, with the compressed post-lockout 2011-12 season the only recent exception. There is one game on tonight's schedule, alas, with the Portland Trail Blazers visiting the Brooklyn Nets in a makeup of a January game that was wiped out by fear of a New York City blizzard. That resulted in a brutal road trip for the Blazers, who must fly across the country and back to play a single game in the midst of the stretch run.
To save wear and tear, Portland decided to keep three players who have been playing through injury -- starting forwards LaMarcus Aldridge and Nicolas Batum, along with center Chris Kaman -- home in the Northwest, leaving the Blazers short-handed against a Brooklyn team that had won six games in a row before getting blown out by the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday. There are playoff implications on both sides. Despite Saturday's loss, the Nets still enter tonight's game seventh in the East, a half-game ahead of the Celtics and 1.5 games ahead of both the Pacers and Heat. Meanwhile, Portland is fighting for home-court advantage in the Western Conference.
While their Northwest Division championship (clinched on Friday) assures the Blazers no worse than the fourth seed, they aren't guaranteed home-court advantage if the fifth seed has a better record. Right now, that would be the case, but Portland is even in the loss column with both the L.A. Clippers (in fifth) and San Antonio Spurs (sixth), making tonight's result crucial for their chances of hosting a first-round series.
• The race for eighth in the West has suddenly gotten intriguing, with the Thunder losing for the fifth time in the past six games on Sunday to drop even in the loss column with the New Orleans Pelicans. Statistical projections tend to favor Oklahoma City, which has been the better team over the course of the season and has a more favorable schedule the rest of the way. (Both of the Thunder's remaining road games are against below-.500 teams, while the Pelicans still must travel to Memphis and Houston in addition to hosting the Golden State Warriors and Spurs.)
Still, Oklahoma City has played poorly enough to make things interesting, especially given that New Orleans holds the head-to-head tiebreaker by virtue of Anthony Davis' game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer of the teams' last meeting, in early February. The Thunder continue to struggle defensively without Serge Ibaka and Andre Roberson -- and with Enes Kanter playing a key role. Oklahoma City will have to get back on track to avoid the lottery.
• Weekly top five: Best one-and-done players since 2007:
1. Kevin Durant
2. Anthony Davis
3. Kevin Love
4. Derrick Rose
5. John Wall
Honorable mention: Kyrie Irving, DeAndre Jordan, Derrick Favors
Follow Kevin Pelton on Twitter @kpelton.