Good to see Coach K has his own self interest at heart
By Gary Parrish | CBS SportsLine.com Senior Writer Follow GaryEight high school players skipped college to be selected in the 2004 NBA Draft. Mike Krzyzewski's reaction at the time?
"We're losing our brand."
No high school players skipped college to be selected in the 2006 NBA Draft, thanks to the new age limit. Mike Krzyzewski's reaction this week?
|
|
| The reason Mike Krzyzewski didn't recruit players like LeBron James: he didn't have to. (Getty Images) |
So it's official.
Coach K is a flip-flopper.
Cue the Swift Boat ads!
Both quotes come courtesy of the Charlotte Observer, and they couldn't be more opposite. If I were judging, I would award Krzyzewski, at best, a bronze medal in consistency. It could hang in his trophy case, right next to the one from the FIBA World Championship.
Still, I understand the reason for the switch. This isn't hard to figure out. After all, if the NBA's age limit was incidentally supplying rival programs with superior talent and threatening your dynasty, you'd probably flip-flop, too.
Pick and choose
Duke has everything.
Great tradition.
Great academics.
Great exposure.
Great fans.
The list of positives is long and convincing, and it's the reason Krzyzewski has pretty much been able to handpick recruits while staying out of the rat race run year after year by the majority of his colleagues. That's what other coaches will tell you, by the way. That the Blue Devils don't really have to recruit like everybody else. Instead, it's often a simple, four-part process.
- They observe.
- They identify a target.
- They offer a scholarship.
- They gain a commitment.
More times than not, things are that easy. It's the ultimate sign of greatness, a testament to what Krzyzewski has created. And the three-year period preceding the age-limit provided a perfect example of how his philosophy was executed.
In 2003, 2004 and 2005, what Duke did was target the best player in each class most likely to attend college. In other words, they focused on Luol Deng and not LeBron James, Shaun Livingston and not Dwight Howard, Josh McRoberts and not Gerald Green. And though Livingston turned pro and never attended Duke, understand that when the Blue Devils actually committed the talented point guard, hardly anybody expected he would eventually bypass college.
But he did.
By no coincidence, that's also when Krzyzewski described prospects shunning the NCAA as a huge problem, right after Livingston left him with eight scholarship players. Krzyzewski's first quote from above -- "We're losing our brand" -- came during that same offseason. Then a year later, the NBA put into place a rule prohibiting Americans from entering the draft until one year after their high school class graduates, and Coach K was a happy man with his wish granted, right?
You'd think so. But that's actually where the problems began for Duke, because it made staying above the fray no longer a viable option.
Before, the Blue Devils didn't really have to deal with wild recruiting sagas featuring the likes of Sebastian Telfair and Kendrick Perkins. They would instead focus on more stable situations -- fewer posses, fewer AAU ties, fewer problems -- and let others battle for the elite talents who might or might not ever enroll. Consequently, Duke usually got its clean-cut McDonald's All-Americans into school without worries while just about everybody else -- Arkansas, Louisville, Mississippi State, Arizona, etc. -- had to sweat the process.
Sometimes it worked out (Rudy Gay enrolled at Connecticut).
Sometimes it did not (Andrew Bynum bypassed Connecticut).
Either way, it was a necessary gamble. Because without it, there are no Final Four dreams.
But fast-forward to today, and things have changed -- even if Duke has not. The Blue Devils still stay above the fray, mostly recruiting well-rounded prospects with little baggage, meaning they'd never touch O.J. Mayo or Derrick Rose. And though in the past that would be fine considering those types of guys probably weren't going to college anyway, now it's a hindrance because both Mayo and Rose -- and another half-dozen elite players just like them -- should indeed be wearing some school's colors for at least a year, therefore making Duke's quest to pile ACC and NCAA titles much more difficult.
But don't take my word for it.
Just look at the facts.
Question: Counting the Classes of 2006 and 2007, how many commitments has Duke gained from prospects who would go directly to the NBA if not for the age-limit?
Answer: Zero.
Meanwhile, Ohio State got Greg Oden, Texas got Kevin Durant, Georgia Tech got Thaddeus Young and North Carolina got Brandan Wright. Next year, Kansas State will have Michael Beasley, and somebody not named Duke will have Mayo, Rose, Bill Walker and Eric Gordon.
Bottom line, lots of schools are benefiting from the age limit. Yet Duke is not one of them.
So yeah, Coach K flip-flopped this week.
But seriously, can you blame him?
