Four players from this season’s G-League Ignite team are expected to be drafted in June, including two likely lottery picks (Matas Buzelis and Ron Holland).
However, the landscape of college basketball has changed since the league founded the Ignite just four years ago. With players now able to collect NIL money in college, the need for the Ignite as another path to the league is gone.
That’s why the NBA announced this will be the final season for the Ignite, they are shutting the program down.
“Four years ago, we started Ignite to fill a void in the basketball landscape, and I’m proud of the contributions we were able to make to that ecosystem,” NBA G League President Shareef Abdur-Rahim said in a statement. “With the changing environment across youth and collegiate basketball, now is the right time to take this step.”
This news isn’t a surprise; it echoes what NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said during All-Star weekend this year.
“I think we are in the process of reassessing Team Ignite,” Silver said in Indianapolis. “Now some of those same players who didn’t want to be one-and-done players because they felt it was unfair and they wanted the ability not just to earn a living playing basketball but to do commercial deals that weren’t available to them at college, to hire professional agents, an opportunity that wasn’t available to them at college, they now — all of those same opportunities have become available to them [in college]. I’m not sure what the future of Team Ignite will be, because before there was a hole in the marketplace that we thought we were filling before doing that, and now my focus is turning to earlier development of those players.”
Before this June’s draft adds to the number, 10 players from the Ignite have been drafted into the league, four of them in the top 10. That includes stars such as Jalen Green (Houston), Jonathan Kuminga (Warriors), and Scoot Henderson (Trail Blazers). The league feels the program has run its course, but there were concerns from some agents that the mix of trying to win games and develop players did not always go smoothly.
The G-League will still have 30 teams — one affiliated with each NBA squad — but the league’s hand-crafted developmental team will cease to exist.
