It’s no secret that the NBA would like to have one D-League team to have an affiliate with a NBA organization and have a minor league system kind of like Major League Baseball.
With more teams, that creates more roster spots and according to David Aldridge, that could expand the NBA Draft as well.
“Once every NBA team has its own D-League team, the assumption is there will be a need for more players to fill out those rosters, and the need to expand the Draft by at least a round, maybe two,” Aldridge writes.
“If everybody’s going to have a D-League team, that’s eight more positions that everybody’s going to get,” one longtime GM said over the weekend. “Maybe you go to five (rounds) the first year to allow everybody to stock the teams, and then the next year, you go down to four.”
I’m all for this idea. Teams can now “draft and stash” but develop players within their organization, instead of them waiting years to actually play.
Also, you see a lot of these “one and done guys” who are stars in college, but once they get to the pros they just don’t live up to potential because they have flaws in their game. Teams can draft based off potential but slowly work players into the NBA. Look at Tyler Ennis. He was a first round pick based off a 10 game stretch he had during his Freshmen year at Syracuse. He has talent but is just raw and can’t get any playing time. If the NBA had a minor league system like the MLB, that would be extremely beneficial, in my opinion, for guys like Ennis to get playing time and improve their skills, instead of just riding the bench.
