Outspoken NBA coach slams NCAA, calls one-and-done rule 'racist'
Detroit Pistons head coach Stan Van Gundy, much like his brother Jeff, has never been one to shy away from speaking his mind when he feels the situation calls for it.
Van Gundy has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump and has had no problem wading into political and social debates.
While the validity of what a basketball coach has to say about politics is certainly up for debate, his thoughts on college basketball are far more significant considering that the NCAA is a direct pipeline into the NBA. To put it mildly, Van Gundy is not a fan of the NCAA.
Van Gundy tore into the college athletics institution when asked by reporters for comment about the bombshell FBI investigation alleging rampant corruption in college basketball.
“The NCAA is one of the worst organizations — maybe the worst organization — in sports. They certainly don’t care about the athletes,” Van Gundy said, according to The Detroit News. “They’re going to act now like they’re just appalled by all these things going on in college basketball? Please. It’s ridiculous.”
Van Gundy insisted that all control should go to the athletes.
“On a straightly fairness issue, I don’t understand why they have to do one year of college. I don’t like the whole process. When they’re there, I don’t like this process that they have to declare in (for the NBA Draft) and out,” Van Gundy said. “You should be able to go into the draft and if you don’t like where you’re picked, go back to school if you want.”
Despite the logistical nightmare of letting college kids basically pick and choose what NBA team they’d like to play for, Van Gundy doubled down on giving the athletes complete control.
“And while we’re on it, they should be able to transfer schools every year. The one thing I know about the NCAA is the last group of people they care about is — as they call them, the ‘student-athletes’ — which is part of their ability to promote themselves. They don’t care about them at all,” he said.
Van Gundy cited what he perceives to be an unfair double standard between college athletes and coaches. “A coach can leave in football and skip the d— bowl game and screw the kids he just coached — that’s fine, but if a kid leaves, he’s got to sit out a year? Come on, man,” he said.
Van Gundy then set his sights on the NBA’s controversial “one-and-done” rule, which stipulates that kids can’t jump straight from high school to the pros. The athletes must either go to college for a year, or, in lieu of that, play a year in an overseas league.
“I’ve always been in favor of (going straight to the NBA),” Van Gundy said. “I don’t understand why, as an industry, basketball or any other professional sport, we’re able to limit somebody’s ability to make money. I don’t get it.”
While those are all fair opinions to hold, Van Gundy took things a step further by accusing people who are against allowing athletes to jump straight from high school to the pros of being “racists.”
“I think personally — and now I’m definitely on a soapbox — the people who were against them coming out made a lot of excuses but a lot of it was racist,” he said.
Van Gundy then compared the NBA’s prospect situation to that of baseball, where prospects can go straight from high school to a pro team’s farm system.
“The reason I’m going to say that is I’ve never heard anybody go up arms about letting kids go out and play minor-league baseball or hockey,” he stated. “They’re not making big money and they’re white kids and nobody has a problem. But all of a sudden, you’ve got a black kid who wants to come out of high school and make millions — that’s a bad decision?”
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