Barack Obama spoke for an hour at the MIT Sloan Analytics Conference last Friday. The talk was off-the-record but some of his comments have since leaked.

Obama stated he believes the NBA would benefit from a junior league "so that the NCAA is not serving as a farm system for the NBA with a bunch of kids who are unpaid but are under enormous financial pressure."

“It’s not solely the NBA, but—the need to create a well-structured D-league, so that the NCAA is not serving as a farm system for the NBA with a bunch of kids who are unpaid but are under enormous financial pressure," said Obama. "It’s just not a sustainable way of doing business. And then when everybody acts shocked that some kid from extraordinarily poor circumstances who’s got potentially 5 or 10 or 15 million dollars waiting for him is going to be circled by everybody, in a context in which people are making billions of dollars... That won’t solve all the problems, but what it will do is reduce the hypocrisy, and the likelihood of people being like Claude Rains in Casablanca walking in and saying “I’m shocked that there’s gambling going on in here!” and these kids who generally don’t have a lot of resources are able to help their families.”

Stan Van Gundy was critical of both the NCAA and the NBA's one-and-done rule that prohibits American-born basketball players from entering the NBA directly from high school.

“People that were against (players) coming out (of high school) made a lot of excuses, but I think a lot of it was racist," said Van Gundy. "I’ve never heard anybody go up in arms about (minor-league baseball or hockey)."

Van Gundy's comments came in response to allegations that money was funneled to college basketball players with the assistance of several coaches.

“The NCAA is one of the worst organizations – maybe the worst organization – in sports. They certainly don’t care about the athlete.”