I'm just speaking to the trends happening with the chalky tournament we've had thus far and with places like St John's and Pitino saying he's largely going to prioritize recruiting the portal over high school students because you have a better chance of proven college players, even from mid-major levels, excelling and giving valuable production to a team than you do from most players as freshmen.

If you have the choice between paying big NIL dollars for a highly touted high school player or a proven high producing college player from another team, even from a mid-major team, chances are many coaches are going to opt for the latter. Exceptions would be for guys like AJ and other top 10 high school prospects.

If you're not a player at the caliber of AJ, but still a top 100 high school player, it might make more sense to accept a lesser NIL deal at a mid-major type of school where you probably have a better chance at getting more minutes on the court and leveraging that into an even bigger deal with a big school a year or two later than you would've had out of high school only to ride the bench for a year or two.

And if more and more coaches at big brand schools prioritize portal recruits over high school kids, high school kids may have no choice but to take offers from mid-majors and try to climb from there. And it will be the big brands with the most money to spend on NIL that will be paying for proven, productive, and experienced college players from other schools to build there rosters with year to year rather than taking chances on unproven high school kids that may or may not have already hit their ceiling as high school kids.