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You're making me defend the NCAA which is something I don't really feel comfortable with but you have to see the other side of the coin.
If you follow European soccer or basketball, you'll see that their system is riddled with players who wash out. Once they identify talented players at 13 or 14, they put them in these Sports academies where they barely go to school and play sports all day.
For every Giannis or Tony Parker, there are hundreds of players who never played Big Time European ball or in the NBA, and they're just 18 and 19 year olds with 8th grade education.
There is no professional system that doesn't leave collateral damage. The NCAA has plenty of faults, it's exploitative and corrupt but the other systems of grooming Pro players aren't much better.
You don’t even know what you’re arguing at this point.
You made a definitive statement about Dame Liliard, Draymond Green becoming great NBA players because they stayed in college. My point is for every Dame or Dray there are plenty of guys that don’t become credible NBA players.
There is no definite path to being a serviceable NBA player. So you can’t try to say Gelo could’ve been served well staying at UCLA his full ride just because of Dame or Dray.
For all we know he can get picked up by the Spurs, get turned into a decent role player. And then what?