Please get rid of one and done

There are a lot of stupid things in sports, but it’s tough to top college basketball’s one-and-done nonsense.

The rule that prevents talented high school grads from entering the NBA immediately was created, predictably, to benefit the league itself.

The obvious result is this wink-and-a-nod fraud that some exceptionally talented players are...cough...student-athletes at Kentucky or Louisville or UCLA or wherever.

The best of the bunch this year is probably Kansas’ Josh Jackson, who could walk into almost any starting lineup in the NBA.

Instead, Jackson is helping carry the Jayhawks to yet another Big 12 championship – after which he will leave Lawrence like many before him, and become a millionaire.

In the meantime, though, does anyone care what classes Jackson is taking at KU?

Is he actually a student?

Hah!

PERHAPS the utter embarrassment of this one-and-done fiasco finally has gotten to the NBA – at least if we are to believe some comments made recently by Adam Silver, the commissioner who inherited this ridiculous policy.

Silver used the spotlight of the NBA All-Star Game to tell the media that he and Michele Roberts, executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, would be looking at the rule excluding anyone under 19 from entering the league.

“It needs to be studied more,” Silver said, “and it requires that we take a new look and a new approach to the issue.”

One thing Silver and Roberts will not be studying, you can assume, is how any “new approach” might affect universities that have to borrow some unpaid professionals to stay at the top of the college game.

No, Silver is thinking about what’s best for the league and Roberts will fight for whatever current NBA players think benefits them.

And by the way, Silver and Roberts naturally have very different views on what this “study period” ought to produce.

The league would like to bump the entry age from 19 to 20. The union wants it reduced back to 18.

So these brainstorming sessions Silver is suggesting he’ll have with Roberts ought to be interesting — considering that they have absolutely opposite goals.

FRANKLY, I could live with either resolution.

Of the two options — assuming there is any change at all, and that’s no cinch — you can probably guess that I would bump the age back to 18 and let players like Josh Jackson get on with his real career instead of spending a silly year in college.

Plenty of gifted high school players have gone straight to the NBA and Hall of Fame status — including the league’s best current player, LeBron James.

As for Plan B...

I suppose TWO years at a university makes a little sense in the maturing process of a young athlete, and thus has some merit — but basketball isn’t like other pro sports, with the exception of soccer and to a lesser extent, hockey.

With hoops, there are high school seniors who are pretty close to the finished product.

Silver, meanwhile, is playing the role of commissioner the way you’d expect, making a simple issue sound complicated by asking how well the system of AAU basketball works as a proving ground, what options there are for players who ignore college for pro ball and fail, blah, blah, blah.

Bottom line, the NBA is denying 18-year-old kids the right to make a living at what they do best — and for the Josh Jacksons of the world, it’s costing them a boatload of money.

But hey, Josh is probably taking some life-changing history classes at Kansas, right?

Memo to Silver and Roberts: Fix this damn mess!

Steve Cameron is a special assignment reporter for The Press who has covered sports at all levels for more than three decades. Reach Steve at [email protected].