Mark Cuban Says College Basketball Is Horrible And Ridiculous
DALLAS – The “horrible” state of college basketball is hurting the NBA, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said.
Cuban said he doesn’t enjoy watching the college game, but his bigger concern is that the physical, slow-down style that has become common in the NCAA results in prospects who are poorly prepared to jump to the NBA.
“If they want to keep kids in school and keep them from being pro players, they’re doing it the exact right way by having the 35-second shot clock and having the game look and officiated the way it is,” Cuban said Wednesday night. “Just because kids don’t know how to play a full game of basketball.
“You’ve got three kids passing on the perimeter. With 10 seconds on the shot clock, they try to make something happen and two other kids stand around. They don’t look for anything and then run back on defense, so there’s no transition game because two out of five or three out of five or in some cases four out of five kids aren’t involved in the play.
“It’s uglier than ugly, and it’s evidenced by the scoring going down. When the NBA went through that, we changed things.”
“It’s horrible. It’s ridiculous,” Cuban said. “It’s worse than high school. You’ve got 20 to 25 seconds of passing on the perimeter and then somebody goes and tries to make a play and do something stupid, and scoring’s gone down.
“The referees couldn’t manage a White Castle. Seriously, the college game is more physical than the NBA game, and the variation in how it’s called from game to game [is a problem]. Hell, they don’t even have standards on balls. They use different balls. One team’s got one ball, the other team’s got another ball. There are so many things that are ridiculous.”
Man, does NCAA basketball have a sign on it’s chest that says BULLY ME this week or something? Just getting punked and stuffed into lockers every time they turn around. First Geno, now Mark Cuban. Bet they didn’t see that coming in late March/early April which is their time to shine, the time when their sport is at its highest point and the country is in love with it. But the fact is, as awesome as the tournament was because of the classic games we got, it also put a spotlight on the huge problems of the game.
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I mean not a single thing Cuban said here is wrong. I agree with it all 100%. I also agreed with the majority of what Geno said, or at least the spirit of it (only thing I shit on him for was using the word “joke” and saying how uncompetitive it is…while coaching a women’s team that wins the championship by double digits literally every single year). As much as I love college hoops and March Madness, the game itself could be infinitely better. Getting rid of these absurd ticky tack touch fouls and shortening the shot clock are brutally obvious moves that would help immediately. Using NBA 3 point lines is a no brainer as well. I’m sure Cuban’s got like 25 other genius ideas in that mogul brain of his too. And the good news is, if there’s one thing the NCAA is good at it, it’s caving to public pressure, so if big shots like this keep coming after them, I got a good feeling about actually seeing these changes.