Welcome into Jonathan Gavoni, ESPN's NBA draft analyst.

And Jonathan, this is a significant story you have been reporting on and broke today

about Jalen Green, who's the number one high school player in the country, deciding to pass on college

and go to what is essentially a hybrid of the NBA G League for a salary that's going to be

over $500,000 a year and a structure and kind of a season before he goes to the NBA draft a year from now

that won't have him playing in Fort Wayne or Maine or in one of the typical G-League outposts for a traditional G-League team,

but will have him playing in a very controlled developmental

environment. Well, there'll be some exhibition games against various G-League teams or

international teams, but really one year of professional basketball indoctrination and training.

And this, Jonathan, has the potential to be a game changer for the elite American player

who decides he doesn't want to go to college.

How did this come together?

Well, it started in October of 2018 when we broke this first story about the G-League

select contract. They were calling it then the professional pathway. That was a contract for

$125,000 and they were going to place a player without any real input from him onto one of the G-League teams in a

complicated format.

They never really fully fleshed out.

And the goal was for them to have this start in the 2019-2020 season.

Unfortunately, they were unable to secure any players.

You know, the former G-League president

that put this together, Malcolm Turner, he moved on to become the athletic director at Vanderbilt.

Sharif Abdurrahim took his spot. And right away, I think he understood that this is not going to work

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