The NBA is messing with college basketball again.

Three top-12 high school prospects are not taking the popular one-and-done route to the NBA. They are skipping college altogether to sign with the developmental G-League, which bumped its top guaranteed salary to $125,000 in 2020 and may be raising it some more for next season, whenever that is played.

Five-star point guard Daishen Nix has de-committed from UCLA, where he was expected to start for coach Nick Cronin, and is opting for the G-League, which was renamed after its multi-million-dollar sponsorship from Gatorade. The D-League is now the G-League, get it?

Nix, who was rated No. 12 in the high school class of 2021, is the third top-tier prospect skipping college. The No. 1 high school recruit of 2021, Jalen Green, joined another top 10 talent, Isaiah Todd, in taking the jump, where money has become the root of this evil.

The old D-League once had a salary of $7,000 for five months of games, then bumped that to $25,000 and $35,000. This leap to 125K may not be the end of it, and rumors persist that big prep stars who don’t really want to go to college will get even more jack.

As we all know, the NBA Players Association put in the one-and-done rule, raising the minimum age to 19 before allowing high school studs to play in the big league. This, of course, changed the face of college basketball from A, Anthony Davis, to Z, Zion Williamson.

These kids dominated the national and local publicity while in college, and we can debate long and hard if that helped or hurt the college game. I go with the latter because one-and-dones seemed like high-priced luxury loaner cars that had great seasons but their teams struggled to win national championships when, by the end, their minds were elsewhere.

Now, the G League money will take more of them from high school, and that’s fine with me. Despite their limelight, the one-and-dones represented a small fraction of all college players. And when they are gone again, names on the front of the jerseys will still prevail.

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