Is it legal to ask prospective employees this question? A few years ago a VP at my company shut down conversation that even hinted that a prospective manager might be a single mother because he said we weren't allowed to ask that question (or similar questions). He said we shouldn't even talk about it casually (which is how it was being talked about).
The reason it even came up was because one person wondered how committed to the job she might be, moving her family etc. I can see why it might not be appropriate, but also see how it could be relevant.
BTW she got the job.
Yeah, these types of questions are illegal in a job interview. You can’t even ask if a person is married.
I can only speculate that predraft interviews don’t have to follow the same rules. And you can certainly understand why personal questions would matter with regard to selecting someone for your organization.
I'm far from one of the legal minds here, but I don't believe it's actually illegal to ask those questions, it's just illegal to discriminate based on the answers to those questions, so most companies have a policy forbidding to ask anyone those questions in a job interview. But we're not talking about some low level office worker here, we're talking about players teams are contemplating investing millions of dollars in.
Personally, I think these type of questions can be useful for such huge investments. Could possibly help to judge things like character, composer, confidence, etc.
Tell a player you have proof that they just failed a drug test, have a baby, cheated on a test, didn't go to class, took money from boosters, said something racist/homophobic, sexually/physically assaulted someone, etc. How do they react? Do they confess it's a possibility, do they outright deny it in a calm manner, do they become combative, do they deny it but their body language says they're lying?
If I was looking to invest millions of dollars in a college age kid, where the better he becomes, the more his life will be under a microscope, I'd definitely be asking some unusual questions trying to figure out the person beyond the basketball skills.