Apr 17, 2020 - Sports

Jalen Green is skipping college for the NBA's G League

Kendall Baker, author of Sports

Jalen Green (R) during a game. Photo: John Jones/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Jalen Green, a consensus top-three recruit in the class of 2020 and the potential No. 1 pick in the 2021 NBA draft, is skipping college and taking his talents to the G League.

Driving the news: Green will be the centerpiece of a new one-year developmental program designed to prepare young players for life in the NBA, per multiple reports.

  • He will earn $500,000, a substantial increase from the $125,000 salary the league was offering to high school players last year, plus a full scholarship if he wants to work toward his college degree in the future.
  • Green will join a "select team" based in Los Angeles that will play a reduced schedule. The team has no affiliation with an NBA franchise and will have the flexibility to compete against international teams and global NBA academies.

What they're saying: After two top recruits in the 2019 class (LaMelo Ball and R.J. Hampton) chose to play professionally in Australia over the G League, the NBA sweetened the pot to lure players uninterested in college basketball.

"We have kids leaving the United States ... to go around the world to play, and our NBA community has to travel there to scout them. That's counterintuitive. The NBA is the best development system in the world, and those players shouldn't have to go somewhere else to develop for a year. They should be in our development system."
— Shareef Abdur-Rahim, G League president, via ESPN

What to watch: Isaiah Todd (below), a five-star recruit once committed to Michigan, is expected to sign with the G League and join this same "select team."

The bottom line: The game just changed. We'll explore this further on Monday.

Go deeper: Inside the 2020 recruiting class

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