As a college basketball fan, you probably weren’t following along too closely with the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) discussions that the NBA and their NBPA were having. You probably should have.
The infamous ”one and done” rule that prevents players from going straight to the NBA was a result of an addition to the CBA back in 2005. We’ve gotten so used to it that it’s easy to forget that there were players who used to just go straight to the NBA out of high school. But for every LeBron James that was successful, there was a Kwame Brown that wasn’t.