CJ McCollum thinks LaVar Ball's JBA is 'a good idea' but sees problems (original) (raw)

C.J. McCollum wasn’t as close to the NCAA’s problems as some during his four years at Lehigh, but the Portland Trail Blazers guard is smart and savvy enough to see potential solutions to the influence peddling that’s run rampant through college basketball. To that end, McCollum sees potential in the Junior Basketball Association, but has reservations about the ability of LaVar Ball’s Big Baller Brand-sponsored league to attract the financial wherewithal to do battle with basketball’s bogeymen.

“I think it’s a good idea,” McCollum told RollingOut.com’s Rashad Milligan. “I don’t know how he’s going to go about doing it in terms of bringing in sponsorship, bringing in money.”

The Triple Bs are signed on to sponsor the JBA’s apparel, but with LaVar behind both of those enterprises, that amounts to him pulling money out of one pocket so he can fill the other.

But the bigger issue, as McCollum envisions it, is the salaries that will be on offer in the league. Previous reports pegged monthly pay between 3,000and3,000 and 3,000and10,000. According to McCollum, even the high end of that range can’t compete with the payments some players are already getting under the table.

“So is it worth it to go play in a league that doesn’t have any leverage, that doesn’t have a lot of prior success?” he asked. “Or you go to a big school and you get paid anyway, you play in college for a semester then you go pro.”

For McCollum, the JBA’s success in both sustaining itself as a viable league and furthering its mission to give teenagers an opportunity to make money while preparing for their next step in basketball and life in general will depend on the Ball family’s ability to get “the right support around it.”

How difficult that task turns out to be will depend largely on the results of the JBA’s inaugural season. If the league puts out a decent product over the summer, when basketball is at its scarcest, and manages to launch some of its players onto bigger and better stages, the requisite support will rally around it in due course.

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