Five for the Weekend: Assessing futures of Barnes, Romar
And the No. 1 pick in the 2012 NBA Draft will be ...
You'll find out in my Five for the Weekend column.
1. The 2011 NBA Draft is in the books. Which college player will be the top pick next year?
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| UW coach Lorenzo Romar says he's not interested in a job with the Timberwolves. (Getty Images) |
So I'd take Barnes No. 1 next year.
He's the future face of an NBA franchise.
But right now he's the face of the Tar Heels.
2. Should Washington's Lorenzo Romar, if offered, take the Minnesota Timberwolves job?
I don't know that I can say what Romar should do with his career, because what I want and what he wants might be two totally different things. What's too good to pass up for one man sometimes isn't good enough for another, and vice versa. So I try to avoid telling people what they ought to do with their lives and careers because I wouldn't want somebody telling me what to do with my life and career. Advice? Sure, I'll take it. But ultimately, everybody has to do what they think is best for them. And, ultimately, that's what Romar will do if this gets to the point where he has to make a decision.
3. OK. Forget what Romar should do. What would you do?
If I'm Romar and I'm offered and the money is right, honestly, I probably do it. He got surprised late on the recruiting trail last year by Terrence Jones, got burned by Venoy Overton last season and again recently when police essentially charged the former Washington standout with being a pimp, and Romar also just lost his best player early to the NBA Draft because his best player decided he'd rather be the 60th pick than a senior at Washington. So if anybody has the right to be disenchanted with the college game, it's Lorenzo Romar. But whether he is, nobody but him could say for sure.
4. But college coaches fail in the NBA. Why would Romar want to go coach for two years in that league and get fired like every college coach who does it?
College coaches don't fail in the NBA. Coaches with bad rosters fail in the NBA -- whether they come from college, another franchise or another planet. Give Larry Brown a great roster and he'll win you a championship with the Pistons. Give him a bad roster and he'll lose 59 games with the Knicks. That's the way that league works. So the reason college coaches have consistently failed in the NBA -- though Brown is a notable exception, it should be noted -- is they've almost always walked into bad situations where almost anybody would fail. Trying to make it out to be more than that is simple and wrong.
5. So would Romar fail at Minnesota?
Yeah, probably, because most guys fail unless they're named Gregg Popovich, Jerry Sloan or Phil Jackson. But maybe not. Though the Timberwolves are run in a pretty comical way, that roster now features Ricky Rubio, Derrick Williams and Kevin Love. And if Rubio develops into one of the league's better point guards and Williams develops into the star some project, well, this could be an opportunity for Romar to take charge of a roster built to win in the future, and that's why I think he probably owes it to himself to at least take a serious look at Minnesota -- provided Minnesota takes a serious look at him.
