If the NBA wants to promote the D League, they should start streaming games so that fans can build up some familiarity and loyalty toward the teams.
Do that "free" for a couple of years and see what happens.
How about D-League apps?
If there were a D-League channel on Roku - even if there were commercials - I would definitely check it out when the NCAA is out of season. About now I'm jonesing for basketball.
They could also help raise interest if the teams tended to concentrate schools or conferences on their rosters. Let's face it, I would definitely watch a D team with several of my favorite UNC players on it - perhaps supplemented by other ACC players. Another team could concentrate Big 10 players or SEC players. That would be great fun.
Use ex-players for color, let college journalism (or whatever) students apprentice as broadcasters. Spend halftime discussing recruiting. They could do this on the cheap and still have a pretty good product.
Yeah, allowing them to play in the summer league would as well help, additional exposure and summer league games are now getting on ESPN as well as the NBA channel. When you look at the crazy money going to individual players in the NBA, you would think they owners would be smart enough to take just a little of that and put toward the NBADL, Maybe some of that will be discussed in the next CBA.
But as I said, I would LOVE to see this become reality, so these one & done players would by pass college and what the college game would get would be more guys that realize they need to work on their game and want to be in the college game and not thinking NBA right now.
And I am going to tell you right now, these schools that today depend on the one & done players to out talent opponents are in trouble if those one & done guys do not elect to go to college. These kids play follow the leader, once a big name takes the NBADL path, others wil follow. When the bigger names began bypassing college a few years back and entering the draft out of high school we saw follow the leader and 10 or so entered the last draft before the one & done was put in place. You wil see the same thing occur with the NBADL once the money gets up a little bit and the "advisors" begin to realize they can strike a shoe deal for the kid right out of high school that can pay big time now and not have to risk what a college coach will do with their cash cow meal ticket.
I would say in about 3yrs the entire landscape of the college game will change from what we see it as now. The one & done is dominating the college game for now, I strongly believe that will go away, if not by rule then by the players themselves banding together, as we see them doing now with the package deal thing, and clusters of them elect to take another path, either NBADL or Europe.
