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I agree with that. Early entry to the NBA and the other semi pro leagues were really cutting into the college basketball talent. Now that kids are getting paid some will stay instead of trying to latch onto an NBA team on a 2 way or bouncing around the G league, players can move around now, and the NBA not liking traditional bigs has made the talent and top teams better than it was.I'd agree with that, though I think that's offset by the players being able to move to teams better suited to their level. Guys like Rahsool Diggins or Brendan Adams would have hung around for 4 years previously and would have been able to contribute on good teams their senior year as role players, but got to move down and become main options at mid majors more suited to their talent level
I just look at some of those teams that didn't even win it all when I was younger like the UNC team that beat the Rip UConn team the year before we won the championship with junior year Antawn Jamison, junior Vince Carter, senior Shammond Williams, sophomore Ed Cota, freshman Brendan Haywood and I think they would wreck the top teams today. Houston 40+ years ago had junior Drexler, sophomore Akeem, senior Larry Micheaux, senior Michael Young and they didn't even win the whole thing. They would murder the current Houston team and any other team in college basketball today IMO.
Even with Kobe, Garnett, McGrady, Amare Stoudemire etc. skipping college in the late 90's you still had big time studs leading really good teams in college. Just look at the year Kobe was drafted you had Ray Allen, Camby, Kittles, Iverson leading the local teams. Tim Duncan at Wake, that stacked Pitino Kentucky team that won it all with Antoine Walker, Ron Mercer, Derek Anderson, Delk etc., Abdur-Rahim, Marbury, Nash and Van Horn out west. The 90's all-America teams were stacked and there were some great college teams then, same into the early 2000's. From 2010 until last year college basketball was weak IMO. There's finally some star power again and teams are better than they were more recently because of the things we talked about but the marketing just isn't there.