That's pretty much the only way the NCAA will be able to combat the NBA if the NBA really decides to put some effort into developing their own talent.
We're all college basketball fans here, but the reality is that college basketball (and football, really) are unnatural. The NBA and the NFL are the only 2 professional sports leagues on the planet that rely on colleges to develop players, and that happened only because the college versions of those sports were popular before the professional versions, with the professional versions actually being created expressly to profit from the popularity of the college versions. Baseball never had that, because the professional version of the game preceded the college version.
All of that was a long, long time ago now, though, and the reality is that the NFL and the NBA don't really need the college game any more. Especially the NBA, because of the limited roster size needed for a team. The truth is that dozens of the best players every year would gladly skip college entirely if they could make 100K a year for 2-3 years in an NBA developmental program. Spending 5-10 million dollars a year to run a minor league franchise would be pocket change for any NBA team, and honestly, if they went whole-hog into it, maybe made it mainly a summer thing, they could very possibly turn a profit.
College basketball needs to stop fighting reality. If college basketball is still going to be a good place for future professionals to develop, they need to stop throwing up so many ridiculous roadblocks based on the asinine "student-athlete" concept.
While I agree with this for the most part, here lies the problem. College Basketball and College Football are more popular than the minor leagues, for a couple of reasons. One is college based fans. Those are the 2 biggest sports in college, and honestly most of the fans will continue to watch those teams regardless of what players are on them. The minor leagues in other sports work, because they are paying salaries comparable to what the G-League is paying now, so not much. Most of them give away a bunch of tickets and do a lot of stuff on the side just to get people to attend the games. The G-League will be the same way, only it appears that Silver thinks the salaries could go much higher. The thing I don't think Silver realizes is that there will be almost no market for the G-League. Where will the fans come from?? The kids that didn't go to college won't bring any extra fans with them, and the great ones that have followings will be in the real league. I would also expect after 8-10 years, once most of the college alums are out of the NBA, a lot will quit following. There is a good percentage of fans that follow the NBA just to keep up with players that played for their college. You will lose that. NFL isn't going to do something like that, because their minor league system will pale in comparison to college football. I expect that Silver will find out that minor league basketball will as well.
In all, I actually don't think Silver wants to have the league drafting straight out of HS. I think he is promoting this idea, hoping to leverage changes at the college level, and quite possible strike a deal between the NBA and the NCAA. College basketball has the following the NBA would love to have for it's development league, and the NBA holds the cards for the talent going to college. In the end, I could see a deal where the NBA gets a profit center from the NCAA, while the NCAA gets a chance to keep many of the players that aren't NBA ready yet in return.