Calipari: Players should be drafted out of high school if NBA pays them fairly

John Calipari is fine with a change to the NBA's one-and-done rule, as long as the league compensates its young players fairly.

The Kentucky bench boss said he'd be fine if the league adopted the MLB's draft system, where athletes are eligible to be drafted from both high school and college.

"I'm good with the baseball rule," Calipari said during the SEC coaches' summer teleconference. "As long as they're going directly to the NBA, they're paying them what they deserve to be paid, and then it's on them to look after these kids and give them a gap year if they think they can do that in the NBA."

While Calipari is in favor of a change, he admits that the NCAA has done a good job of educating many of the SEC's one-and-done athletes.

"Very rarely do I speak highly of the NCAA, but in this case what it did is challenged a generation of kids to do better academically, to be on point, to get themselves where they need to go," he said. "The NCAA this year reported we had the highest graduation rate in men's basketball for African-Americans ever. Ever."

NBA commissioner Adam Silver said last month that the NBA is considering altering the one-and-done rule.