The complicated legacy of G League Ignite

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Whenever commissioner Adam Silver steps before an NBA-branded lectern, each occasion tends to send ripples across the league. This February, once the commissioner declared during All-Star Weekend’s media availability his office was “assessing” the viability of G League Ignite, an initial expectation among figures throughout the NBA’s development league was that the association would likely shutter its club for elite, draft-eligible prospects by the end of next season. Instead, the curtain is being called at the conclusion of this very campaign, G League president Shareef Abdur-Rahim announced last week, bringing to a close a four-year experiment that brought mixed results.

To better contextualize its ending, it’s important to recall how Ignite began. The NBA launched the program in April 2020, with a commitment from top-ranked prospect Jalen Green, now the Rockets’ third-year guard who is spearheading Houston’s late-season playoff bid in the Western Conference. Ignite arrived on the heels of former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leading a group investigation into the underworld of college basketball recruiting — a shadow game that also provoked an FBI probe into sneaker company and agency payola connections within numerous major NCAA programs. The NBA, too, watched a pair of highly touted prospects, LaMelo Ball and R.J. Hampton, depart for Australia’s National Basketball League before they would enter the 2020 NBA Draft.

“We were so laser focused on how to help create a pathway,” Abdur-Rahim told Yahoo Sports on Wednesday, calling from Henderson, Nevada, where the former 12-year NBA veteran was on hand with Ignite’s staff for the final days of their final season. “We thought if kids wanted to be professionals [before entering the NBA], we felt we could have a place. We wanted to help solve a problem.”

The NBA had been conceiving its home for high school phenoms like Green and Jonathan Kuminga before the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus, of course, eliminated the possibility for Ignite’s original strategy of traveling overseas for exhibitions against rival national teams, as well…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/the-complicated-legacy-of-g-league-ignite-145455275.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-03-28 14:54:55

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