With allegations that Michael Beasley received improper benefits in his one season at Kansas State coming to light, CBS Sports Gary Parrish points out that the top 3 picks in the 2008 NBA Draft, all of whom spent only one season in college, might have their NCAA records retroactively erased:
GaryParrishCBS Gary ParrishSeems likely the top 3 picks in 2008 (Rose/Beasley/Mayo) will now all be retroactively ruled ineligible. That's a system problem, folks.
The 2007/2008 college basketball season, which Kansas won in a classic OT game against Derrick Rose's Memphis Tigers, was one of the finest in recent memory. The NBA's one-and-done rule had prevented the high school basketball class of 2007, perhaps the strongest class in a generation, from entering the draft.
Of the 14 lottery picks in the 2008 NBA Draft, seven were freshmen from that high school class of 2007. Within the basketball community, many were household names by the time they were high school juniors.
As Parrish points out in his column, if a system forces teenagers worth millions of dollars to accept scholarships worth thousands of dollars, they are likely to go outside of that system to receive compensation.