Mick Cronin blasts NBA over Daishen Nix G League Ignite ‘recruitment’

UCLA Bruins head coach Mick Cronin expressed his displeasure with the National Basketball Association and its G League after he said the G League Ignite recruited Daishen Nix - who Cronin said had already signed with his program - to play instead for the developmental team affiliated with the league.

Cronin, a Cincinnati native who played at La Salle High School and coached the Cincinnati Bearcats as an assistant from 1996 to 2001 and head coach from 2006 to 2019, shared his thoughts on "The Field of 68" with Jeff Goodman and Rob Dauster.

"(Nix) was signed. And the NBA - trust me - they know my displeasure," Cronin said. "But trust me they don't care either. There's a fallacy out there that there's a partnership, and there's not. College basketball has been a free minor-league system for the NBA for 40 years. And that's what you do to your ... now you want to steal our market share for ESPN ... it's a business decision. Look, they're in this business to make money. They're a business. So I don't begrudge them. But let's not act like it's something different. There is a systematic approach to what they're trying to accomplish. And taking the market share away from college basketball. And they actively recruited a signed player, which they said they were not going to do. So that is what it is. But yeah, that didn't help."