NBA Teams Looking To Buy D-League Teams
The 2012-13 season for the NBA Development League is off to a terrific start both on and off the court. NBA teams are using their affiliates more and more and interest in the league is increasing rapidly. HOOPSWORLD spoke to Dan Reed, the president of the D-League, recently about their great start and what’s next for the growing league.
“We’ve seen a real maturation of our development system and affiliation system,” Reed said to HOOPSWORLD. “There’s over 25 percent of the 2012 draft class has already been sent to play in the development league and that will continue to grow. If you look historically over a third of all draft picks since 2005 have played in the NBA D-League. We expect we’ll beat that this year. That’s been really exciting I think for a couple of reasons. I think the new Collective Bargaining Agreement rules allow for more flexibility. All NBA players can be assigned, players in their first three years can be assigned an unlimited amount of times. I think you’re seeing the result of that here. More NBA teams now manage their own D-League teams. 11 of our 16 teams now are managed by a NBA team, they’re totally bought in and really using the system the way it was meant to be. You’re going to see this a lot more moving forward.
“We’re going to continue to see NBA teams buy into the development league. There’s several teams interested in purchasing their own team or entering into a hybrid model with an existing team. You’re going to see that continue to grow, you’re going to see more assignments, which will result in more nba players with D-League experience. I expect at the end of this year 30 percent of NBA players will have experience playing in our league, which is a little bit of a milestone for us. I think you’re going to see us continue to promote the league as having the top prospects playing in our league, make sure that Rockets fans can see Scott Machado play here and they understand how his development is progressing, and do that with all NBA team’s players as well as top prospects that are essentially free agents like a Jeff Adrien (editor’s note: Adrien was called up by the Charlotte Bobcats shortly after this interview) for example. Making sure fans understand that this is the place to go to see the best basketball in the world outside of the NBA, and see future NBA impact players, future Jeremy Lins if you will, before they hit the big time.”
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