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Calipari, NBPA met to discuss potential one-and-done rule changes

Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

If the one-and-done rule - the requirement that an amateur basketball player must be a year removed from high school or 19 years old to join the NBA - is to change, Kentucky coach John Calipari wants to ensure players are protected from poor guidance and their own overeagerness.

Calipari said he recently met with the National Basketball Players Association and discussed the possibility of developing a combine to help screen players who have the potential to make the jump straight to the pros. That way, he reckons, those who aren't ready would be less likely to forgo a university education in chase of NBA riches.

"The players and the families need to know - here are the ones who should be thinking about the NBA and here are the ones who should not," Calipari said, according to the Star-Telegram's Mac Engel. "That's why you need a combine."

In addition to screening measures, Calipari floated the idea of education funds for players who make the jump from high school to the G League.

"There are unintended consequences here for these kids and their families if you completely remove the one-and-done rule, Calipari said. "Don't encourage eighth, ninth, and 10th graders to forgo education just to go to the G League. If you did, how many do you think would do just that?"

"If they choose to do that, that's fine," Calipari added, "but why don't we make sure if they don't make it in, they at least have a chance at a guaranteed education."

It's an interesting development from the college coach most closely associated with the one-and-done rule. If not for the restrictions put in place by the NBA and NBPA in 2007, it's quite possible that many of Calipari's program-defining players of the past decade - John Wall, Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Eric Bledsoe - may have never set foot on Kentucky's campus in the first place. To his end, Calipari said the Wildcats are "going to be fine" regardless of rule changes.

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