Calipari: If one-and-done ends NBA should pay for G league players' college

Kentucky head coach John Calipari supports the removal of the one-and-done rule so that high school athletes can skip college and head straight to the NBA.

However, he believes there should be educational compensation for those who can't secure a guaranteed contract and are forced to settle for the NBA's developmental league.

"I've got the solution. The NBA, you want these kids in the G League, you want to do all this? Everyone that goes in the G League is guaranteed eight semesters of college education if you don't make it," Calipari said, according to ESPN's Jeff Borzello. "You give them a signing bonus, you pay them. And then if they don't make it after two years, the NBA pays to have them on my campus. They have to sit out their first year, to prove they really want to be in college."

With abolishing one-and-done players in college basketball seeming inevitable, Calipari remains concerned that players will shift their focus to making a salary as opposed to getting an education, even if that paycheck comes from the not-so-well compensated G League.

"If they're trying to encourage them to go to the G League, I think it's wrong," the three-time Naismith Coach of the Year winner said. "Instead of encouraging academic success and learning and a life of learning, just go chase basketball. They can't do that at 14, 15, 16 years old.

"More than half the G League is going to be high school kids that are trying to make it. I hope I'm wrong. I absolutely hope I'm wrong."

Calipari has developed some of the best players in basketball since joining the Wildcats in 2009. Several have been selected in the first round and are among the NBA's elite, including DeMarcus Cousins, John Wall, Anthony Davis, and Karl-Anthony Towns.