Potential Top 2021 NBA Draft Pick Jalen Green is Getting HIS OWN TEAM to Join the G League

So Jalen Green, potential No. 1 pick in next year's NBA Draft, announced he will join the NBA G League instead of attending college, becoming one of now a handful of players to do something similar. But holy hell did this kid get an unbelievable deal.

So he gets half a million in salary plus probably at least double that in a shoe deal off the bat and he gets his own damn team?! I imagine he made part of his terms that he got to play in Los Angeles rather than having to go play in Maine or Iowa and it obviously worked. As someone who loves college basketball far more than I will ever care about the NBA, this pains me to say, but if these are the deals the NBA is handing out and the NCAA remains as presently constituted, this is going to be a problem.

Sure, Duke and Kentucky are doling out cars and cash, but that's amounting to what, $100,000 per player? Go to the G League and stick it out in Sioux Falls for a few months and stark making some real cash. I do hope this remains the exception to the rule at least until the NCAA figures out a way to compensate players, though. It would really suck for college basketball to suffer because the NBA is smart while the decision makers at the NCAA continue to mess this up.

I think we're going to start to see a lot more players take advantage of this route to get the experience of a professional basketball season in advance of their NBA Draft date rather than playing a 30-game season in college, 20 of which aren't even competitive game for the guys going to top schools. The NCAA needs to figure out how to compensate players fairly or it's going to have a real problem on its hands.

Good for Jalen Green. Go get that bag, young fella.