NCAA Didn't Inform USA Basketball, NBA Of Changes To Policy, Rules: Report

Top NBA and USA Basketball officials were reportedly unaware of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) amendments and rule changes that involve the sport's young prospects.

As a result of an FBI investigation into bribery in college basketball last year, with coaches persuading players to join certain schools for example, the NCAA adopted multiple changes Wednesday in an effort to clean up the sport.

Some of these changes involve:

• Elite high school basketball recruits and college players being able to be represented by NCAA-certified agents.
• Eligible underclassmen being eligible to enter the NBA draft and return to school if undrafted.
• Stronger penalties for schools and individuals who break the rules.
• School presidents, chancellors and athletic department members must contractually comply with all investigations.

"These changes will promote integrity in the game, strengthen accountability and prioritize the interest of student-athletes over every other factor," NCAA president Mark Emmert said in a statement. "It’s on us to restore the integrity of college basketball and continue to improve the interests of all student-athletes. They deserve nothing less."

However, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reports that many top officials were blindsided by these changes. For example, USA Basketball is to bear responsibility for selecting elite senior high school prospects who will be allowed to sign with registered agents.

"USA Basketball doesn't have the infrastructure, nor interest in accepting the role of evaluating the nation's top prospects for a yet-to-be-determined number of players who'll annually be allowed to sign with agents at the end of their junior years, sources told ESPN."

While the NBA, USA Basketball and the NCAA did meet to discuss the process of the selection of high school prospects, the former two do not believe there was a consensus on how they would "move forward together on the issues" with the NCAA.

And with the rule changes that were announced Wednesday, many NBA officials were also "surprised over the presumptive and premature nature of the NCAA's rules changes, which assumed that the NBA and NBPA [Players' Association] will abandon the one-and-done college rule and allow high school players into the NBA draft."

"We will review the NCAA's planned reforms and continue to assess, along with our Players' Association, the potential for any related NBA rules changes," NBA spokesman Tim Frank said.

Those particular changes though, may not happen at least until the 2022 NBA Draft, as University of Kentucky coach John Calipari spoke about the rule changes on "Sportscenter."

"None of this goes into effect until the NBA and the Players Association come up with something, and I'm hearing it won't be until 2022 so we're probably wasting our breath dealing with the ins and outs of this," Calipari said.

"I'll give you an example: I'm here in the Bahamas, and the CEO of USA Basketball, Jim Tooley, is here and he's saying 'Wait a minute. We deal with one of the one-percenters. We don't deal with foreign players. We're not in a position to try to say who gets an agent and who does not.' There's a lot of stuff that needs to be worked out. I hope as we go through all this stuff that we're thinking about is what it will do to all of these young people."