Mark Cuban says 'horrible' state of college basketball hurting NBA

DALLAS -- The "horrible" state of college basketball is hurting the NBA, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said.

Cuban said he doesn't enjoy watching the college game, but his bigger concern is that the physical, slow-down style that has become common in the NCAA results in prospects who are poorly prepared to jump to the NBA.

"If they want to keep kids in school and keep them from being pro players, they're doing it the exact right way by having the 35-second shot clock and having the game look and officiated the way it is," Cuban said Wednesday night. "Just because kids don't know how to play a full game of basketball.

"You've got three kids passing on the perimeter. With 10 seconds on the shot clock, they try to make something happen and two other kids stand around. They don't look for anything and then run back on defense, so there's no transition game because two out of five or three out of five or in some cases four out of five kids aren't involved in the play.

"It's uglier than ugly, and it's evidenced by the scoring going down. When the NBA went through that, we changed things."

Cuban, an Indiana alumnus often asked by disgruntled Hoosiers to buy out coach Tom Crean's contract, said he is actually a fan of Crean because he coaches a faster-paced, freer-flowing offense than the vast majority of his NCAA counterparts.

Cuban hopes that the NCAA's rules and officiating style change to allow faster offenses to succeed instead of rewarding teams that milk the clock and play boring basketball.

"It's horrible. It's ridiculous," Cuban said. "It's worse than high school. You've got 20 to 25 seconds of passing on the perimeter and then somebody goes and tries to make a play and do something stupid, and scoring's gone down.

"The referees couldn't manage a White Castle. Seriously, the college game is more physical than the NBA game, and the variation in how it's called from game to game [is a problem]. Hell, they don't even have standards on balls. They use different balls. One team's got one ball, the other team's got another ball. There are so many things that are ridiculous."