@twoinanddone “a lot of them want to play in college”
If the NCAA and NBA believed that, they would simply allow any 17 or 18 year old to enter the draft. There would be no reason to forbid it. Some top baseball recruits do like the idea of playing for a college and they forego being drafted out of high school. But the ones who want to devote their time to baseball and not academics choose the draft.
I don’t see any reason why there is a clear pathway for a baseball player or tennis player to forego college without losing any of their market value, while basketball players do not have this. A one in a million talent basketball player’s interest in academics can be absolutely zero, but any advisor who told them to go to Europe instead of playing for one of the many colleges begging him to attend would be doing that student a huge disservice. And the reason for going to college has nothing to do with the sham academic experience those athletes are likely to have, but because there is no equivalent way to showcase their talents and raise their profile.
(I say sham not because those athletes are not capable of doing the academic work in college, but because their priority is expected to be athletics and their best chance professionally is to make their priority athletics and not let academics get in the way of their pursuit of excellence in athletics. Getting on a dean’s list won’t make a player a higher draft pick but practicing to get their three-point shooting percentage extraordinarily high will).