NEW YORK — The G League Ignite won’t play after this season.
The league made the announcement Thursday, saying it was shutting down the Henderson, Nevada-based Ignite due to “the altering basketball panorama, together with the NCAA’s Identify, Picture and Likeness (NIL) coverage and the appearance of collectives and the switch portal” as its main causes.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver urged this might occur final month on the All-Star Sport, saying then that the league was “reassessing” the Ignite program. It was began by the NBA to present gamers who aren’t but eligible for the draft — however who did not need to go to school — an opportunity to primarily play skilled basketball and put together for the draft as a part of a developmental however nonetheless aggressive program.
“4 years in the past, we began Ignite to fill a void within the basketball panorama, and I am happy with the contributions we have been in a position to make to that ecosystem,” G League president Shareef Abdur-Rahim mentioned. “With the altering setting throughout youth and collegiate basketball, now’s the fitting time to take this step.”
The modifications in school basketball, significantly these permitting athletes to money in by way of NIL offers, made the school expertise extra engaging to the forms of gamers that the Ignite initially focused.
“A few of those self same gamers that did not need to be one-and-done gamers as a result of they felt it was unfair and so they needed the flexibility to not simply earn a residing taking part in basketball however to do industrial offers that weren’t accessible to them in school … now all those self same skills have change into accessible to them,” Silver mentioned final month.
This season’s Ignite roster has projected high NBA draft picks Matas Buzelis and Ron Holland. There are 9 Ignite veterans at present on NBA rosters, together with Scoot Henderson, Jalen Inexperienced, Dyson Daniels and Jonathan Kuminga.
The Ignite will play its last sport on March 28 towards the Ontario Clippers.
