Anthony Davis Reflects on How NIL Has Affected 'Integrity' of College Basketball

Before he was a game-wrecking pro, Dallas Mavericks forward Anthony Davis was one of the most formidable college talents of the 21st century at Kentucky.

In 2012, he averaged 14.2 points, 10.4 rebounds and a Division I-leading 4.7 blocks per game for a Wildcats team that won the national championship. He was the consensus best player in the country and a celebrity before he set foot on an NBA court. However, because he played before the NIL era, he never made a legal dime off his services.

On Wednesday, as he sat down with Sports Illustrated to discuss a recent collaboration with top moisturizer brand CeraVe, Davis reflected on how the advent of player NIL rights has changed the college game.

"It's tough, because obviously they didn't have that when I was in college," Davis said. "It kinda takes away from the game a little bit because of—and I'm not hating—it takes away from the integrity in the sense of players are only going to certain schools because of the money."

To Davis, once the nation's consensus No. 1 recruit out of Chicago's Englewood neighborhood, NIL considerations have altered the entire framework of recruiting.

"College basketball is still competitive, but the recruitment of it has kinda gotten a little wacky, especially when player can leave and enter the (transfer) portal and go anywhere. It just gets a little tricky," Davis said. "The coaches either a) have to be more strategic with their recruiting, or b) if you don't have a lot of money for NIL, that kind of takes away your school, your program, as far as being a top recruiter for some of these players."

The forward seemed to echo a common complaint of fans everywhere: that college basketball, while still vibrant and entertaining, has lost something in the full-throated embrace of commercialism that has followed the NCAA's streak of court losses.

The era Davis knew at Kentucky—where a handful of holdovers anchored endless streams of successful one-and-done freshmen—seems unlikely to return.

"Because one guy can leave the next year, transfer—it gets tough, when you start talking about culture," Davis said. "That kind of goes out the window, in my opinion."