Well, as a coach in the NBA, getting a lot of these young guys that were just one year removed from high school, I should say.

I guarantee you most coaches across the board would say that as extremely talented and athletic as these young guys were,

they still weren't ready to play. There were still some pieces that were missing because they didn't get the experience that most of us did that you

get when you go through four years of college.

That's the voice of Coach Brian Shaw on what happens when young basketball stars do just

one year of college and then struggle when they go pro.

But now Shaw is coaching a new G-League team.

That's also an experiment with elite prospects right out of high school.

And ESPN's top draft analyst got an exclusive up-close look at how it's threatening

to reroute the pipeline of top talent to the NBA.

I'm Pablo Torre. It's Thursday, January 28th. This is ESPN Day.

Mike, thank you for joining me today.

Pablo, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Mike Schmitz travels the world to scout potential NBA draft picks for ESPN.

So the G-League Ignite concept is this sort of grand experiment, Mike, that the NBA is undertaking right now, and it seeks to answer at least one big key question. How would you describe what

that question is? What is the best development for an elite prospect during their draft eligible

year? I think from the league's standpoint, you know, they were starting to see players like

Lamello Ball and R.J. Hampton, you know, go out to New Zealand and Australia and go that

route as opposed to college.

So I think the league wanted to find a way to make sure that the top prospects who don't want to go to college

route can stay home and be kind of under the NBA umbrella with NBA coaching, NBA development,

and just make sure that they enter the league as prepared as possible.

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