Why not 6th? It’s just great other sports manage, but somehow basketball needs a few year head start to “get ahead”. Some fans are about the kids well being over the school getting ahead.
Majors, you are wasting your energy on this issue. I think most everyone agrees that, IDEALLY, kids shouldn't be a part of the recruiting game until the last year or two of high school. Kids aren't kids nearly long enough anymore, and that's too bad.
But it stopped being like that in the early 80s, and even the majority of the kids and their parents seem fully to EXPECT to be conspicuously watched at events, and evaluated by "experts," and written/talked about and constantly wooed like they're God's gifts to basketball. If they're not, they feel slighted.
Any coaching staff who decides to make a stand against early recruiting and stop having any contact with young phenoms until they are well into high school will become the coaching staff who will likely end up being relentlessly raked over the coals by their fanbases for being such poor recruiters that they can't seem to land any great players.
It is what it is.