NCAA Change Dumb to Some : Basketball: New rule that allows undergraduates to return to school after testing NBA draft stirs controversy.

So, Utah Coach Rick Majerus, tell us how you really feel about the new NCAA rule that allows undergraduates to test the NBA draft, but then return to school if they’re unhappy with the outcome:

“You can tell it was done by the NCAA and not the NBA,” said Majerus, a former assistant coach with the Milwaukee Bucks. “Because the NCAA doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing. The ramifications of this rule are mind-boggling.”

Majerus isn’t flying solo on this trip. Mike Tranghese, Big East Conference commissioner, calls it “absolutely, in my view, one of the worst rules ever adopted.”

Jerry Reynolds, director of player personnel of the Sacramento Kings, says the NCAA “meant well, but they made a bad rule.”

Pat Williams, general manager of the Orlando Magic, simply asks, “What did this accomplish?”

Good question. Only six months old and the pet project of highly respected North Carolina Coach Dean Smith, no less, NCAA Rule 12.2.4.2.1 has created a debate that will rage well beyond Wednesday’s NBA draft.

Supporters say the new rule deserves a pat on the back. Critics suggest a slap in the face. Coaches and athletic administrators from such powerful conferences as the Big Ten, the Big East and the Pacific 10 say they won’t be happy until the rule is amended or rescinded altogether.

Enacted at last January’s NCAA convention, the rule was well- intentioned. In short form, it says a player can become available for the NBA draft, with the option of regaining his college eligibility within 30 days of the pick. As always, there are strings attached.

For instance, a player is allowed to take advantage of the rule only once during his career. He is also allowed to receive negotiating advice from parents, legal guardians, coaches, a school’s professional sports counseling panel and even an agent, but only if that player doesn’t hire the agent as his official representative. Nor is a player allowed to participate in league- or team-sponsored tryouts. To hire an agent or attend a tryout would cost the player his NCAA eligibility.

“This benefits the guy who doesn’t make a good decision, who overestimates his value to the NBA,” said Jan Hubbard of the NBA.

The perfect example: Sean Higgins, a reserve forward on Michigan’s 1989 national championship team and a starter on a 1990 Wolverine team that finished 23-8 and was eliminated in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Higgins, the fourth-leading scorer on the team, forfeited his senior season when he declared himself eligible for the draft. He was sure he was going to be taken in the first round, perhaps even be a lottery pick.

Instead, Higgins was the last player selected in the second round. He lasted a little more than one season, was waived by the San Antonio Spurs and now plays professionally in Greece.

“I knew, I tried,” said Michigan Coach Steve Fisher. “I knew he was making a grave mistake.”

Had the new rule been in place, Fisher said, Higgins would have returned to Michigan and completed his final year of school. But with no such option available, Higgins became a casualty of an NBA dream and NCAA inflexibility. Maybe that’s why Fisher now supports, in a tepid way, the idea of offering players another chance.

“The thought is good,” Fisher said of the new rule. “Why they did it is good. Now they need to find a way not to make it so cumbersome.”

The rule gives undergraduates a safety net, but it also creates undeniable problems and legal loopholes. And yes, the NCAA’s heart might have been in the right place, said Orlando’s Williams, but where was its mind?

“I’m not sure they thought this all through,” he said.

At issue is the NCAA contention that the rule benefits the student-athlete. According to the NBA, which opposes the rule, the new legislation might do more harm than good.

To begin with, the NBA provided itself with a nifty safety net. While an undergraduate can return to school after the draft, there is a price. There, in the fine print, is a provision that allows an NBA team to retain the draft rights of a player for a full year after his college career is completed.

For example, say Minnesota junior guard Voshon Lenard, who has declared himself eligible for the draft, isn’t selected until the 25th pick in the first round. Then what?

Under the new NCAA rule, Lenard could return to Minnesota for his senior season, but the NBA team that chooses him would retain his rights until the 1996 NBA draft. Like it or not, Lenard probably would receive a contract based on his place in the 1994 draft, not on his playing status if he signed a year later.

Being one of the 54 picks guarantees nothing. Only seven of the 19 players who left school early for the 1993 draft are in the NBA. In the two previous seasons, 28 undergraduates made themselves available. Only nine are in the league.

This time, 13 undergraduates have made themselves available for the draft. Players such as Purdue junior Glenn Robinson, California sophomore Jason Kidd and Connecticut junior Donyell Marshall are all but guaranteed to go in the top five. The draft-day fates of Lenard, Louisville’s Clifford Rozier and Cincinnati’s Dontonio Wingfield, who declared after his freshman season, are less clear.

“Everyone sees everybody make $10 million, so they think they’re going to make it,” Reynolds said. “Hey, a lot of them should be serious about their school.”

But even if a player decides to return to school, a scholarship might not be waiting. What happens if a coach has to decide between offering a place to the nation’s No. 1 high school recruit, or to a returning letterman who tested the draft and wasn’t picked? What happens if a coach couldn’t wait until the player finds out where he’ll go in the draft?

As for loopholes, the rule isn’t without its share. The most glaring involves free agency.

Majerus said he told Utah freshman forward Keith Van Horn of Diamond Bar to declare himself eligible for the draft without claiming the right to return to Utah. That way, if Van Horn isn’t selected, he will become a true free agent, able to make his own deal with any team.

“That’s what I would do if I were him,” Majerus said. “Of course, (the NCAA) hasn’t considered that at all.”

The possibility exists for other players, including high school seniors and college freshmen, to try for free agency--and right now there’s not a thing the NCAA and the NBA can do about it.

Also disturbing is this possible scenario: A player is selected in the second round and chooses to return to school. Nine months later, as the NCAA tournament approaches and it is apparent the player has reached an entirely different level of play--i.e.--Connecticut’s Marshall as a sophomore vs. his junior year--he receives a phone call. The team that drafted him the previous June has suffered a series of injuries and is willing to take a chance.

Sign here and you can be in an NBA uniform tomorrow.

“That’s not good,” said John MacLeod, who spent 18 seasons coaching in the NBA before accepting the Notre Dame job in 1991. “There’s the downside. But do you really think that youngster could come right out of college ball and make a difference? The adjustment is so different.”

The point is, say critics of the rule, it could happen.

Listening in amazement to the criticism is New Orleans Athletic Director Ron Maestri, who is chairperson of the NCAA Professional Sports Liaison Committee. It was the Liaison Committee that first took up the cause 12 years ago of giving a player a second chance. It was also the Liaison Committee, said Maestri, that supposedly had the support of the coaches for such legislation.

Now this.

“I think I’m shocked,” Maestri said. “All of a sudden we’re having some coaches say, ‘I don’t know what it’s all about.’ ”

Maestri disputes almost every point made by those in favor of repealing the rule. He said the new rule will not cause a widespread exodus of undergraduates, nor will it cripple programs.

“I think what it will do is this: let all those guys come out and see what happens. It might drive those kids back. They’ll go back to school and they’ll stay in school those four years. It will rid them of those delusions of grandeur.”

The only possible gray area, he said, involves the role of agents. The NCAA rule allows an agent to serve as “an adviser,” but how do you prevent the adviser from crossing the line?

“It might be splitting hairs,” Maestri said.

Orlando’s Williams was more blunt.

“How’s (a player) going to figure anything out without an agent?” he asked. “A kid’s going to come in and hammer out a whole deal? I think not.”

Coaches such as Smith, who gave his blessings to Michael Jordan, James Worthy, J.R. Reid and Bob McAdoo to leave North Carolina early, and Kansas’ Roy Williams maintain it isn’t that hard for a player to determine his likely salary after the draft. Players and salaries are often slotted by NBA teams and in most cases the estimated earnings will be equal or up to 10% more than what a draftee received the previous year. And as usual, undergraduates can rely on their coaches and the NBA players’ association to help obtain salary figures.

More importantly, Notre Dame’s MacLeod said, a player actually has an option to return to school. Before, it was NBA or bust.

Option or no option, commissioners such as Tranghese say they have a mandate from their coaches to change the rule. If all goes as planned, Tranghese said, a Big East member school will sponsor such legislation in time for the 1995 NCAA convention next January.

“It’s a well-founded idea, but when you try to deal with it in practical terms, it just doesn’t work,” he said.

A disappointed Maestri said the Liaison Committee will meet again next month in July and plans to review the rule’s future.

“I’ve always been of the opinion that nothing’s set in stone,” he said. “If we find out this is a bad rule, I’m sure our committee would resolve that.”

To listen to the rule’s detractors, the sooner, the better.