No. 1 Basketball Prospect in 2020 Class Jalen Green Chooses G League and Deals NCAA Another Major Blow

While the NCAA deals with rampant uncertainty surrounding the start dates of their 2020-2021 football and basketball seasons, a familiar form of catastrophe hit their world on Thursday morning.

Following in the footsteps of the likes of LaMelo Ball and RJ Hampton, the No. 1 prospect in the class of 2020, Jalen Green, has opted for an alternate route to the pros, shirking college basketball's restrictive policies. Instead of spending a single year at an NCAA powerhouse, he'll go straight to the NBA G League.

Green's taken official visits to Kentucky, Auburn, Oregon, and received offers from other powerhouses like Arizona and UConn. However, he's instead opting for a path that's been fruitful in recent years, and gets him in a more professionally-oriented environment from Day 1.

After all, though prospects at top-tier college basketball programs do enjoy many of the spoils of the Good Life, they're also consistently under the NCAA's microscope. Top recruit James Wiseman's tenure at Memphis last season lays out the whole story fairly seamlessly -- his status as a No. 1 pick contender did not prevent the NCAA from chasing him down for a disallowed "gift" of housing from his high school coach Penny Hardaway several years in his past.

With eligibility constantly teetering at the collegiate level, and players who traveled overseas like Ball still ranking near the top of the 2020 NBA Draft board, it's hard to begrudge Green for wanting to move on to the next level as swiftly as possible.