Bill Self explains why Kansas won't be impacted by a change in the NBA's one-and-done policy

The NBA and NBAPA have reportedly been in talks and are soon expected to agree on lowering the NBA Draft age of eligibility from 19 years old to 18 as soon as 2024, which would effectively allow high school prospects to make the jump straight to the NBA for the first time since the rule was changed in 2005. Kansas head basketball coach Bill Self was asked about the expected rule change and how it could potentially impact recruiting in the future.

“Well it will certainly affect recruiting, but I’m not sure it’ll affect the majority of us recruiting,” Self said. “I mean we haven’t recruited very many one-and-done’s of late, I guess Josh (Jackson) was the last one, but we’ve done a really nice job of recruiting.”

Blue blood programs like Kansas, Duke, and Kentucky have never had a problem in recruiting, and are often associated with having one-and-done players regularly, but that hasn’t been the case as of late for the defending National Champion Jayhawks.

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“But over time in the 20 years we’ve been here we’ve recruited, I think, nine one-and-done’s, which is still a high number but it’s not l like were recruiting to live off of those guys to be our leading scorer or leading rebounder their freshman year so I don’t know if that’ll affect us a ton,” Self said.

The NBA Draft age rule change may not impact the Jayhawks in regards to one-and-done players within their own program, but it will impact recruiting in regards to evaluating, projecting, and developing prospects respective to the talent pools of the future according to Self.

“I think obviously the best programs will still get the best guys, hardest workers still get the best guys, but being able to evaluate and project will be more important now than ever because it’s not as hard to evaluate and protect the number one picks’ gonna be a really good player for your program,” Self said. “But you get past those top 10 or 12 or whatever guys there is, it’s gonna be a lot more development at least with those type of guys than maybe what is has been here recently.”

Changes in regard to the NIL and the transfer portal have already had a strong impact on college sports, especially in football and basketball, and it will definitely be fascinating to see how the inevitable changes to NBA Draft eligibility will influence the college hoops landscape in the upcoming years.