MAJOR BLOGS - www.majorblogs.net - Boca Raton, FLA. - OPINION - The NBA D-League concluded its draft last week and, for much of America, the burning question was:

The NBA still has a minor league?

Sadly that is the point-of-view of most pro hoops fans. After 9 years, the D-League has improved by leaps and bounds, and is gaining ground in regional markets.  The mass-media NBA hype machine has not been turned on, though, full-steam to let Joe Fan know about it, or build much excitement for players on the move to the major league.

Many college players need a bit more seasoning or coaching to bring their game up to the NBA level. The D-League has demonstrated that it can do that to the tune of filling about 15% of NBA benches last season with players that it developed. It has been as high as 33%+.

Why, then, is the league more of an afterthought in basketball fan's mind? The problem is seven letters long and nine letters wide: The NCAA & NBA Owners.

Uncollegial Behavior

The colleges get along generally peacably with hockey and baseball, but niether are big revenue streams for Big U. Basketball and football, though, are the cash cows of college comfort.  The D-League is not popular because it is viewed as a threat to the NCAA's dominance of the developmental side of basketball.

It is a bogus argument from those in the college crowd who make it. There are a lot of colleges that feed the NBA, with far too many players to ever make it.  There are a percentage that can rise through the current draft but so many more who are talented and yet don't put all of the pieces together while they are at the U. of their choice.

Low D-I and high Division II schools, in the recruiting system in particular,  should kiss the feet of the NBA for putting together the D-League. It gives players from Oral Roberts to Southeastern Methodist a huge doorway to the major leagues for players in systems that have long either been largely ignored or considered sub-par sources for NBA talent.

There are just as many players in prestige programs from Duke to Syracuse, though, who can benefit from learning in a stepped-up game with a more elite corps of players between the college and the NBA level.

Where's the Beef?

Owners have been reluctant to jump on board because of the cost, and the lack of one-to-one affiliation. Pat Riley was the loudest voice against the D-League with a reason. Why put his players out someplace hours away on a bench being shared by two other clubs, with limited playing time?

Some NBA clubs, like the Lakers, own their D-League club outright, and even house it in their major league building, having the D-Fenders play before the major league team.

Rolling out the rest of the D-League to hit that one-to-one major-to-minor ratio is critical to making the league as developmental as the big "D" suggests.  There are towns in range of most of the NBA cities that can support a D-League franchise.  The Heat could host a club in their building, as the Lakers have done, or set up at the Hard Rock Live in nearby Hollywood, Florida, or go about two hours west to Estero, the home of the former NBDL Florida Flame.

Putting Some Air Back in the Draft

The process of recruiting players for the D-League needs a BIG overhaul.

The NBA does not yet conduct a unified draft. There is the NBA draft and the D-League draft months later.

It would add huge street cred and continuity to have all of the players drafted by the major league clubs, and then assigned to their minor league teams. Yet the D-League continues to run its draft in November, in the middle of the other drafts conducted by the CBA and other leagues that usually get the left-overs after the D-League makes its call.

The NBA's minor league draft is pretty weak for method. It is a mix of emerging college talent and veteran D-Leaguers.

"[P]layers with NBA D-League experience who are not specifically tagged by a team as a 'Returning Player' (based on where they played the previous year) or an 'Allocation Player' (based on local significance to the team's market) are automatically entered into the draft pool and are eligible to play for any of our 16 teams," says NBA D-League spokesperson Joanna Shapiro.

So the 8th nod in the first round was Tierre Brown, a player who has been in and out of the D-League since SZ did a feature story on his days with the Charleston Low Gators in 2004.

For a draft, bringing a guy like Brown into the first round is a ZZZZZZZZ....

It says many things about the draft process that our readers have voiced like "retreads," "tired," and "second-rate."

The D-League draft serves up the necessary role as a roster-filler, but it is a positive buzz-kill when it veers from new quality lower D-I and largely unknown D-II players who need more promotion to the general public to veterans who probably will be big names on their bench in Iowa or Albuquerque, but who aren't really on the move to the NBA.

It is a bit like using your 2003 model sports car to sell the 2009 line.

In a draft, I want the sizzle, not the re-fizzed fizzle.

One thing about both the baseball and hockey leagues' farm-systems, aside from their developmental benefits, are the excitement that they generate if there are real prospects in the system, not just replacement players for the other end of the bench.

The D-League has cobbled together the best elements of Triple-A minor league ball. Whether they have played before hundreds or thousands, the players, coaches, and owners of the league have generated enough success for the NBA to be worthy of wearing the major league's development colors. So now it is time for the NBA to man-up and pay its farm system the respect which it has earned.

The NBA needs to integrate, not separate the D-League operations. The CBA got more respect, back in its day, than the home-brew D often does. There is no reason that NBA coverage can't sneak more looks at players coming up from an Albuquerque or an Erie or an Idaho, or give more props to the players who have made it beyond their cup of coffee. For an NBA PR department that literally reshaped the world around Michael Jordan, and has taken some players who should be doing hard time instead of show time and turned them into celebrities, it should be a no-brainer to generate more excitement out of the D-League with the proper prospects seeded into the system.

The investment is rewarded by the many fans in the local markets who pick up NBA-TV to continue following players, and by the safety check on marketability that minor league venues give major league clubs who are auditioning the next round of great stars.  Or would you rather continue paying super-star prices for unproven college kids?

The D has no apologies for what it has produced. Enough "building years" have gone by. As the league closes out its first decade, leaving it out there in limbo is not fair to the fans, players, coaches or owners who have put so much into making it as successful as it has been.  It is time for the NBA to bring the D-League online at full-power, and go one-to-one with the franchises.

To all the NBA clubs who already "get it:" Thank you.

To those who don't: Get with the program.