Sonny Vaccaro, the former shoe executive who is best known for convincing Nike to sign a young point guard from North Carolina named Michael Jordan, is now on a crusade against the NCAA and NBA.
Vaccaro, 69, is trying to strike down the 2005 NBA rule that forced American high school players to wait at least one year before joining the league.
"Completely and totally un-American; add to that, anti-free market," he says of the NBA age limit.
Vaccaro's workaround is to establish a pipeline to send top prep players to Europe instead of the NBA. It started last year with Brandon Jennings, a McDonald's All-American who was an Arizona Wildcat signee.
Instead, Jennings ended in Rome with Virtus Roma of the Italian League, a deal that runs three years for roughly $1.5 million. It contains an opt-out clause Jennings will probably use after this season.
Jennings is averaging 8.2 points and 1.2 assists as a reserve, but he's getting paid to play against grown men, which Vaccaro believes will improve his draft-ability.
Vaccaro's hope is that if enough kids go to play professionally in Europe, the NBA will drop its rule.
"The whole idea of kids like Brandon being forced to go to college when they are ready to make millions of dollars, that's just terrible!" Vaccaro told Kurt Streeter of the Los Angeles Times. "And we are going to have more kids this year seriously considering Europe. This is just the start."
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