Spanish basketball – and throughout Europe – was left in a state of alert: what they did so many times with young African and South American stars, of tearing them out of their leagues of origin at zero cost or a much lower market value, they are now suffering. in the flesh. As American universities released last week the possibility of their players being paid for playing and can no longer only receive million-dollar sums through sponsors, an exodus of young projects has already begun, leaving Europe to finish their training in the United States, with the NBA, furthermore, like a carrot in front of their eyes.
Ismaila Diagne was born in Senegal, she is 17 years old and is 2.14 meters tall. This season he had minutes – even as a starter in a classic with Barcelona – in the powerful Real Madrid, a club he joined in 2019 to reinforce its minor divisions. However, his future will not be in the white club, where he was treated as one of his most beloved projects. Next season, Diagne will play for Gonzaga University in the NCAA.
It’s not the only one. Egor Demin is Russian, he shone as a point guard in the Trinta Moscow youth team until he was 15, when the Madrid club recruited him for their youth team. Now, at 18 years old and an incredible 2.04 meters tall to play as a point guard, he will go to Brigham Young University. Like Diagne, he has already had his baptism in the Endesa League and specialists predict a very high selection in the 2025 draft. The white club had already suffered the departures of Izan Almansa (G League Ignite) in 2021, Baba Miller (Florida State ) in 2022, and the Slovenian Jan Vide (UCLA) in 2023.
On the opposite side, Barcelona also suffers from the same phenomenon. Lithuanian point guard Kasparas Jakucionis, 18 years old and the most shining pearl of the Catalan youth teams, has already confirmed that he will go to Illinois for the next season. The consolation prize for the Catalans is that they will keep their rights in case the player decides to return to Europe after his university experience. The three games were known this week, after the NCAA announced that it will pay its athletes and that it was played in Berlin, coinciding with the Euroleague Final Four, the Adidas Next Generation Tournament, a youth competition that brought together the most talented young people in Europe.
A growing phenomenon
While it is true that the explosion of Europeans in the NBA such as the Serbian Nikola Jokic, the Slovenian Luka Doncic or this year the French Victor Wembanyama valued foreigners more and put them in another focus, the new phenomenon with the youth players of the Old Continent has another origin.
Throughout history, college athletes in the United States were not considered professionals and were prohibited from collecting money, either through a salary or through sponsors. In exchange for their talent, they received a sports scholarship and the academic training offered by their university. With millions of dollars around these young people, many of them from very low resources, cases of scams against the system became commonplace.
Four years ago, the NBA generated a project to combat this scourge and created the NBA G League Ignite, a Development League team designed to polish young talents who could earn up to $500,000. Thus, it generated an alternative for training players to paid university basketball. Jaleen Green, chosen second in the 2021 Draft, and Scoot Henderson, third in the 2023 Draft, are some of the basketball players who chose this path to later settle in the NBA.
Forced by the new scenario that threatened to take away its prominence and aware that the advertised amateurism ended up being a facade, the NCAA enabled the NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) program in 2022, which left athletes the power to negotiate their rights. name and image with the different brands. In this way, athletes could receive million-dollar sums even in their training and university years.
Of course that wasn’t enough. Many athletes began to sue the NCAA for monopolistic practices, which ended up changing the scenario. Faced with a scenario that was seen as very adverse in the courts, university sports organizations agreed last week to pay more than $2.75 billion in damages to some 14,000 past and current university athletes over a period of 10 years.
And, beyond this compensation to unblock the legal issue, the authorities of the NCAA and its five most important conferences approved allocating a fund of their resources – it is estimated that up to 20 million dollars annually for each university – to pay their new athletes.
“I know the salaries that players make in the NCAA, and what they are paying now is crazy and breaks the market. N“There is motivation for (European) clubs to continue developing young players, but this is also something that is on the table for FIBA.”Paulius Motiejunas, CEO of the Euroleague, confessed to the Spanish site Relevo during the Final Four in Berlin.
With that money on the table, the structure of sports in the United States changes. But above all, it is a real threat to European basketball, which for years enjoyed impunity to steal talent around the world and now, with more money and exposure elsewhere, is beginning to suffer it firsthand.
2024-05-30 14:11:28
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