Its been two months since my last post, so I think its time to start this up again.
There hasn’t been a lot of coverage of this story, but it was recently announced that Latavious Williams will become the first high school player to go directly from high school to the NBA D-League rather than going to college. Brandon Jennings did this last year by opting for a big pay day in Italy, but no one had yet decided to use the D-league as a springboard. I agree with this article’s analysis that this new trend could be good for all parties involved, but my question is why does the NBA still call its developmental league “The D-League?”
For everything the NBA does well, I think it has screwed up this name pretty badly. Sure the name makes it very clear that the league is intended to develope talent for NBA teams, but shortening the name to “D-Leauge” has the connotation that these players are near failures. I would be pretty pissed off if I got a D in school, so when I hear the term D league, I automatically think that the quality of play must be pretty bad. Why not try another name? MLB as a AAA league which has connotations of “A” being good (e.g. grade a beef, A+ in school, AAA bonds…). Even the worst MLB league is still called single A, which sounds way better than D league ball. I’m pretty sure that I would automatically be suspicious of anywhere that promoted itself as “D.”
How about some of these names:
- NBADL (NBA Developmental League)
- P-Leage (Pre-NBA, Prospect League)
- NBA 1 (another version of the NBA)
There are a lot of things that have better connotations then D-Leage.
