It began as a joke, turned into an alleged ultimatum and is now a full-fledged game of he said/she said. But let the record show that I believe Ohio State walk-on Mark Titus, mostly because it's more fun to believe him. And if the NBA truly was upset that Titus was mocking its system by entering the draft (as Titus alleges), then I have a simple solution: Change the stupid system!
"I do screw around a lot with the blog and have been known to sarcastically fabricate things from time to time," Titus told me this weekend via e-mail. "But this is not one of those times."
|
|
| Mark Titus' joke should inspire change to the NBA Draft system. (Photo: Courtesy Ohio State University) |
Long story short, Titus declared April 9.
He was perfectly within his right to do so.
Which is why he was surprised when, according to Titus, NBA officials called the OSU staff and first encouraged, then demanded he withdraw. Titus said he was told the NBA believed he was "making a mockery" of the process, which, of course, he was. The NBA does not like being mocked, in case you didn't know. So with a push and a shove, Titus formally withdrew last Thursday, then explained the situation in his blog.
"Withdrawing my name from the draft has a nice little story to it," Titus wrote. "And by nice, I mean completely uncool."
Several media outlets picked up on the story, and NBA spokesman Tim Frank addressed it with a website. Frank denied the NBA ever asked Titus to withdraw, but he acknowledged the league does speak with institutions about players who "have little chance to be drafted and are potentially choosing to renounce their remaining collegiate eligibility."
Translation: The NBA absolutely spoke with Ohio State about Titus, but the NBA won't admit to playing a role in his withdrawal. Naturally, I don't believe the NBA. The reason is because one thing I've learned in life is that you're usually wise to believe folks who have no reason to lie. In this case, Titus and the OSU coaches have no reason to lie, but the NBA sure would look silly trying to bully a walk-on out of the draft, particularly one who is obviously smart enough to know what he's doing.
Also, there's this: The NBA's official list of early entrants was not released until minutes -- literally minutes -- after Titus faxed his withdrawal letter to the league office last Thursday. "This could be coincidence," Titus wrote in an e-mail. "But it's much more fun for me to think that they honestly delayed releasing the list because my name was still on it."
Clearly, there is now only one thing to do: All walk-ons must unite!
(This aggression will not stand, man.)
And that's why I'm using this column to not only tell Titus' story, but to encourage every walk-on sophomore who will be a walk-on junior next season to apply for early entry into the 2010 NBA Draft. As we are reminded each time a Luke Harangody, Tyler Smith or Jonathan Tavernari declares, there is literally no downside to doing it as long as you maintain your amateur status and withdraw by the deadline. So I'm for all walk-on juniors declaring next year, and if enough of them actually follow through then perhaps the NBA and NCAA will be forced to get together and develop a more reasonable way to go about this process, one that isn't so easily mocked.
My suggestion?
It's simple, really.
Let anybody who wants to declare for the draft declare for the draft as long as they are either a high school graduate or 18 years old. Let them declare after their senior year of high school or sophomore year of college; doesn't matter to me. But once they declare, they're in and immediately banned from ever playing college basketball again because there is no testing the waters or turning back.
And let's not worry about the "kids" who make bad decisions.
Why should we care?
People make bad decisions in this country all the time, yet we don't spend much energy trying to prevent them from doing it. There are people who finish high school and head straight to Hollywood to act even though they can't act. There are people who drop out of college to be professional gamblers even though they can't gamble. There are people who move to New York to be singers even though they can't sing, people who empty their savings accounts to start businesses even though they're terrible businesspeople and people who get married who have no reason to get married.
All of this happens every day in this country.
And guess what?
We don't try to stop it. Instead, we simply trust that most young people will be guided properly by a mixture of parents and common sense, and if there are some who lack both parents and common sense, well, those people probably had no chance in life to begin with. Either way, institutions aren't consumed with preventing inadequate young people from trying to be professional actors or professional gamblers or professional singers or professional anythings.
So why we need the NBA and NCAA consumed with preventing inadequate young people from trying to be professional basketball players is something I've never grasped, and if that really was the point of the NBA calling Ohio State, then why didn't the NBA call and get Paul Quinn College's Ronald Ogoke out of the draft? Or Tennessee Tech's Darnell Lindsay? Or Texas-Arlington's Rogér Guignard?
Those guys are just as certain to go undrafted as Titus.
But their names are still right there on the official list of early entrants.
That's more of a mockery of the system than anything Titus did, because Titus was very clearly laughing at himself while these other clowns really do think there's something to be gained, as if averaging 3.8 points for an NAIA team (like Ogoke) somehow intrigues NBA franchises. It's comical, sad and everything in between. But according to the rules of the NBA and NCAA, Ogoke has every right to enter the draft and still return to college if he chooses, because that's the system they created.
Mark Titus, with his own agenda, tried to take advantage of this same system.
Nothing more, nothing less.
But the NBA allegedly forced Titus out and let people like Ogoke and Lindsay and Guignard remain in -- all of which seems to prove that the NBA doesn't have a problem with players making jokes of themselves, just a problem with a walk-on turning the NBA and its draft process into a national punchline.
