Staying back in school to become elite basketball prospects

And it's kind of a different animal, but something very similar happens with many football players in Texas. The difference is that they get held back in high school if they don't look like they're going to be super elite, that way, maybe they can 1) play another year of high school football and be big man on campus; 2) possibly improve or look good enough to get a scholarship elsewhere, be it low D1 or D2 or whatever. 

IMO, it's absolutely ridiculous. Even with the fact that for many of these kids, sports is a way out and maximizing their sport potential is probably their best option, teaching them to cut corners and take the easier path short term will teach them terrible life lessons down the road. I'm sure for many it works out well short term, they get recognized and get free schooling and maybe even become pro potential when they otherwise wouldn't have, but I don't believe in the grand scheme of things it's having an overall positive impact on these kids' lives.

It is true that kids who are old for their age group tend to have more success as athletes.  If you look at kids born shortly after the cut off between 2 grades, they tend to fare much better than those kids born just before the cut off.   By being bigger and more developed you play more, get more coach attention, and probably have more fun so you work harder.  Just the way everything works and if you want your kid to earn a college schollarship I can't really blame someone from doing that.  There are far worse things that parents do to screw up their kid's lives.

It happens in football also..Wilton Speight did this also. His reason was due to an injury but the motive is the same.

I'm too lazy to search for the info, but I thought I remember hearing that.

NBA guys do look at age when drafting prospects though and evaluate accordingly.

You get dinged for being too old for your grade.

...this has been going on for years in CA in football and baseball since I was in high school 20 years ago...basketball is a different animal because it more important how tall you are v. how old. The Collins brothers played on my varsity team as 7th graders because they were 6'8 and 6'7...and dominated against seniors a juniors that earned D1 schollies...like a QB...a point guard or an athletic swing player may benefit more from an extra year. Read the book Outliers...it explains all of this.

It's no surprise that when artificial and arbitrary boundaries are created (the NBA requiring rookies to be at least one year out of high school), people will find ways to get around them (players starting high school earlier).

Here's a question, though: the NBA requires U.S. players to be at least one year removed from the graduation of their high school class before being drafted.  How would they approach people like Spike, who took a post-graduate year?  Would they permit Spike to be drafted after his post-graduate high school year, since it's a year after his original high school class graduated?  Or would he have to wait a year after his post-graduate year?

I think that answers your question.

My cousins held both their sons back before enrolling them in Kindergarten and that was in the late 70's!  They did it specifically for sports, although it is true that boys can take a little longer to develop than girls both academically and physically.

Kids and or their parents who decide to do this are cowards. They are afraid their kid can't compete with kids in their own grade/age, so they hold them back so they can dominate smaller, younger players. Simple as that. Thats the mindset-trying to look more dominate I order to attract collage scholarships.

As it becomes a more common and known practice, increasingly marginal prospects will do it to get an edge, so instead of Andrew Wiggins doing it, it will be lower tier D1 players, etc... until guys that are not even NCAA calibur players will be doing it because they think they are good enough, or are encouraged by AAU coaches, family, whomever to do it, and then they graduate and are just an extra old kid who didnt get an athletic scholarship, and possibly didnt value education enough to get an academic scholarship, and they basically wasted a year of their life in 7th grade reducing their earning potential in whatever career they get into by 1 year. Once this starts happening the NCAA will have to step in and do something. 

Good pickup by to OP on the video, looking forward to watching

If marginal value of last year of school for older kids (due to bigger bodies, etc) is enough to make a difference on the playing field (court, whatever) all other things (talent brains, etc) being equal, then by all means I would as a coach go for older kids over younger ones for a marginal scholarship. I just think that difference is pretty small once you hit the late teens for both hoops and FB. I suppose another year of good coaching in HS can help prepare for college, but that coaching would have to be pretty good to ensure no bad habits persist/get worse. 

If I were a college coach and thought all the other programs were either looking past age or targeting people old for their year, I would try and go the opposite route, especially if I was confident in my coaching abilities and that of the staff. Isn't that what (McGary nonwithstanding) Beilein is doing?

I wonder what effect repeating a grade in middle school has on a kid's academics. It's easy to see how they could pick up some bad habits. Going into a school year knowing you are going to repeat it or repeating classes you have already passed isn't conducive to taking schoolwork seriously, especially with the implied message that sports are more important than playing school.

I posted a thread about this a few years ago when my son's team played another in a basketball tournament.  There was some bad sportsmanship that went down and a parent from the opposing team was so embarassed she felt the need to apologize for the actions of their coach.  She explained how all the starters had been held back in 5th grade and the point guard had actually been held back in an earlier grade as well.

It explained why this teams is a perennial power.  A few of the kids have given up basketball and only play baseball now.  one just accepted an offer from Wake Forest and another has a Pit offer.  Both are sophomores and the team just won a state title.

I was looking at various middle and high school leagues and their rules on it, and I came across the UIL (University Interscholastic League) in Texas, which actually has rules regarding having middle school students repeating for athletic purposes. In a nutshell, it basically says that they would lose one year of eligibility (their last typically) in high school by doing this. Section 445 in their book, if you're curious. It goes further to say that anyone held back two years would lose two years of eligibility in high school.

I wonder if similar rules exist in various places and I wonder if reclassifying or switching schools is basically the way to make sure that the loss of eligibility is not an issue where such restrictions exist. I could be wrong, but I am curious as to whether the practice allows players to skirt potential eligibility concerns at the high school level like that. 

This is something I've become very familiar with since I've been coaching D1 AAU bball since 2010. Our first year as a program at the 6th grade nationals, one of the coaches who's team had finished top 10 the prior year told me directly "if you don't have any grade exemptions, you won't win this". Grade exemptions, of course, referred to kids who were older but still in 6th grade so they were allowed to play. As the week went on, I realized just how right he was. Unfortunately for my team we didnt have one single grade exemption. But the teams that did absolutely dominated play.

Now it's becoming more and more popular that kids "reclassify" to increase their chances of being one of the better kids in the younger age group. The most surprising part of it all is that a lot of parents actually agree to it. For some it pays off but for others, not so much. In reality, middle school rankings don't mean much because there will be a completely different set of kids atop said rankings by 11th grade when the other kids catch up in speed/athleticism.