Starting 5 Rush For Exit

After Title Run, the Starting 5 Rush for the Exit

By PETE THAMEL and GREG BISHOP, NY Times
Published: April 3, 2012

NEW ORLEANS — Rarely has a national title seemed to yield so little to celebrate. The starting five for the champion Kentucky Wildcats — a mix of freshmen and sophomores — are expected to enter theN.B.A. draft, and never again play for the college they ever so briefly attended.

Mark Emmert, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, had already expressed regret that the N.B.A.’s so-called “one-and-done” rule allows universities to recruit athletes who show little interest in getting an education. That said, Emmert was not going to be forfeiting any of the tens of millions of dollars his organization made as a result of the tournament the Kentucky team was so spectacular in winning.

For his part, John Calipari, the Kentucky coach, said he did not like the state of affairs, either. But he said he nonetheless was going to hit the recruiting trail this week to seal deals with the best high school players in the country, and see if he could repeat the feat: persuade talented teenagers to spend seven months or so with him in pursuit of a college title and maybe National Basketball Association riches.

The confetti inside the Louisiana Superdome on Monday night, then, showered a remarkable basketball team, but also fell with a certain joylessness on a college sport many believe has been cynically compromised.

“John Calipari is doing what the system allows him to do,” said David Ridpath, an assistant professor of sport administration at Ohio University. “I guess in that sense, congratulations. Anyone who thinks that this has anything to do with the collegiate or educational model is flat-out wrong.”

Calipari is not the first coach to recruit and win with freshmen so talented that the minute they step on campus, it is assumed they will stay only one season. Syracuse, for instance, won the 2003 men’s basketball national title behind the freshman Carmelo Anthony, who promptly left for the N.B.A.

Yet Calipari has become synonymous with the phrase “one-and-done,” in the same way Tom Izzo’s Michigan State teams are known for playing formidable defense or Mike Krzyzewski is known for populating Duke’s roster with great shooters. (Duke guard Austin Rivers, the son of Boston Celtics Coach Doc Rivers, will also leave college for the N.B.A. after just one season.)

The rule is actually enforced by the N.B.A., which has no plans to change it. It was put in place in 2005 as part of the league’s collective bargaining agreement, after teams spent years investing in athletic but unproven teenagers who were jumping straight to the N.B.A. from high school. Some, like Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett, turned into stars. Others flopped.

Technically, the rule does not force talented players like Kentucky’s Anthony Davis to go to college, but it states that they must be one year removed from their graduating high school class to be eligible for the N.B.A. draft. Academics have criticized the rule and the N.C.A.A. has complained, but neither had the power to make any changes. Even a former Kentucky president, Lee T. Todd Jr., has expressed uneasiness with the situation, one which can give players little incentive to attend class, let alone excel academically, after a certain point in the season.

“If you don’t recruit them, you’ll play against them very likely,” Todd told The Herald-Leader in 2010. “It’s a system problem, I think.”

N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern told The associated Press on Tuesday that while he would like to see star players return after their freshman season, he was happy that the rule has kept N.B.A. scouts away from high school gyms.
Calipari, who throughout the tournament cited his team’s grade point average, refuses to apologize for how he built the team that earned him his first national title. He has complained about the rule in the past, but has no problem utilizing it to build top-ranked teams.

“I don’t think it’s a good rule,” Calipari said Monday night. “I hope we can change it before this week’s out so all these guys have to come back.”

Louisville Coach Rick Pitino, a longtime Calipari rival whose team lost to Kentucky in the semifinals, said he marveled at the way Calipari operated at Kentucky. But he added: “I couldn’t do it. I can’t say hello and goodbye in seven months. It’s just not me.”

Few could argue the on-court benefits of Calipari’s approach. Six of his last seven teams at Memphis and at Kentucky advanced at least to the regional final of the N.C.A.A. tournament, among the final eight teams remaining. The seventh, Memphis in 2009, lost in the regional semifinals. (Two teams that Calipari led to the Final Four — Memphis in 2008 and Massachusetts in 1996 — later had their victories vacated by the N.C.A.A., although Calipari was never implicated in any wrongdoing.)

Calipari has also had 13 players selected in the first round of the N.B.A. draft, with Derrick Rose and John Wall being selected first over all. Davis, the most outstanding player in this Final Four, is expected to be taken first over all in this summer’s draft.

That history, in turn, will help Calipari recruit another round of fabulous freshmen for next season and the season after that, for as long as Calipari chooses to remain in the college ranks.

Calipari rankled basketball purists when he said that the day in 2010 when five of his players were picked in the draft’s first round ranked among the greatest in the history of the storied Kentucky program. Up to six of his players from this year’s team could be drafted, including the senior Darius Miller, who started a few games early in the season.

During the Final Four, Calipari mocked the notion that players going to school for just a year undermined the educational mission of the university, invoking the names of famous college dropouts like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

“The integrity of their schools were at stake when they left,” Calipari said. “They should have stayed and not changed the world.”
Ridpath, a member of the Drake Group, a network of professors who lobby for academic integrity in college sports, and the author of “Tainted Glory: Marshall University, the NCAA and One Man’s Fight for Justice,” does not blame Calipari. Nor does he blame the players. Nor the N.B.A., which essentially benefits from a free farm system.

He blames the N.C.A.A.

“The one and done is not about an education,” Ridpath said.

Calipari has been able to determine how his players can do the minimum amount of work so Kentucky’s Academic Progress Rate, the metric used by N.C.A.A. to measure how well universities are educating their athletes, is not adversely affected.

“I think he represents the refinement of the system, that’s what he does,” William C. Friday, the former president of the University of North Carolina, said of Calipari. “If we’re going to be perfectly open and honest about it, we know what we’re doing is acting as a farm club for the commercial advancement of the N.C.A.A.”

Ridpath recommended adopting the model used in baseball, in which players who do not enter the draft directly out of high school and choose to attend college are not eligible again until after they turn 21 or complete their junior season.

For years, basketball stars skipped college altogether, Ridpath noted, and college basketball thrived anyway. Until then, Ridpath said: “Calipari will have another team loaded with freshmen next year, and they’ll do a darn good job. It’s an excellent business model but a travesty on all sides. Everybody knows it’s a complete facade.”

Your avatar is huge.

Haven't a clue how to fix it. Sent Best two messages and he must have got it because it's fixed now.

So who do you think is gone? About two months ago I thought we would lose Davis, MKG, Jones, and Miller. Now I think Teague and Lamb are probably gone also.

That leaves Wiltjer as "the experienced one", not counting Harrow's time at NCState.
Hopefully, that is all Shabazz and Nerlens is waiting on before becoming a Cat.

thumbs up

Hood?

Californication wrote:Hood?

I would love to see Jon Hood explode on to the scene next year, but I won't get my expectations up.