I was reading about the Portal and came across this: "A remarkable 1,815 basketball players entered the transfer portal in 2023, but more than 800 had not landed with another program by mid-August." Article from FloHoops.
I see the same thing this year. A lot of these kids going in the portal have no stats that would attract attention from another school.
The learning curve for the current NIL/transfer landscape is real and ongoing.
I don't fault kids for being this way and I definitely don't group everyone in this category, but the ability to see others immediately improve their situation (whether playing time or monetary) definitely creates a false dichotomy.
The transfer portal will be made up of certain percentages of each:
- players good enough to warrant more money
- players good enough to warrant more playing time and a little more money
- players good enough to warrant more playing time
- players good enough to play at a higher level
- players that want some NIL money since they may not make money going the pro route
- players that need to play at a lower level for more minutes
- players that want a change of scenery (due to coaching or personal reasons)
- players that think they warrant more playing time and/or money, but are overvaluing their abilities
The percentage that falls in that last category is way higher than it should be. I'd like to think it will level off, but it's really hard to tell since the focus group is constantly cycling through.