College basketball was at the forefront of the discussion surrounding the NBA draft, with 28 college players selected in the first round, the most since 2012.
NBC Sports broadcaster John Fanta spoke to Front Office Sports about the draft and what it says about the state of college basketball. Plus, Fanta shares his thoughts on NIL, NCAA tournament expansion, and recaps his first year at NBC. Some of the Q&A below have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Front Office Sports: You tweeted Tuesday night that the college basketball product has never been better. Why is that?
John Fanta: First and foremost, if you look at any analytics, we’ve never seen teams playing at the level that they’ve been performing at. That’s led us to the last two years of Final Fours that have just featured historically great teams.
When you combine that with the draft, and that was the biggest reason why I tweeted it the other night, there’s fewer and fewer fringe decisions in the NBA draft needing to be made. If you’re thinking about it and you’re uncertain of what your NBA future holds, you should be going back to college because there’s a solid to good chance you could make more money in that one year of college than you’re ever going to be guaranteed in the NBA.
