Stephen Curry announced that he would stay for his junior year at Davidson after leading the 10th-seeded Wildcats into this year’s Great Eight and nearly into the Final Four. Some would say that he has nothing left to play for and that he’s only risking an injury that might end his hopes of playing in the NBA - after all, he was the Most Outstanding Player in the Midwest regional despite not playing for the region’s champion, and he was selected to the All-American second team with the likes of Indiana’s D.J. White and Georgetown’s Roy Hibbert (a pre-season first team selection).
But Curry himself says that he’s not ready - and that’s a pretty mature thing to say for a kid who averaged almost 26 points per game in the regular season and more than 34 points per game in this year’s NCAAs. Not only is it mature, it’s refreshing. They’ll call him undersized at 6’3” and 185 - but he shot 48% from the field and 43% from the 3-point line in the regular season and 46% from the field and 44% from behind the arc in the tournament. Granted, he’s not a dunker (is he?) and hasn’t cut a rap record (has he?), so the NBA might not want him - but he can play pro ball. Right now. And he chooses to come back for another year of school.
Are you listening, Eric Gordon? I know...you came to Indiana to play for Kelvin Sampson, and they took him away from you - but life goes on. You play for whoever is the head coach - not just the head coach you wanted to play for. If your pro stock drops any lower, David Stern is going to walk up to the podium this summer and announce that whichever team picked you has just selected Bear Sterns, from Indiana University.
The Indiana basketball program is reeling at the moment, and you have a unique opportunity to stanch some of that bleeding by staying in school for another year and bringing some small amount of stability to a program that is being turned down by coaches who haven’t even been offered the job yet (Washington State’s Tony Bennett). I don’t know if your staying one more year makes Indiana a national title contender, but it will keep the Hoosiers near the top of a Big Ten that Purdue is going to own next year - and there’s always a chance that the guy they name as the new head coach might just be the kind of superstar coach you signed up to play for when you came to Indiana.
If that’s not enough to consider, however, chew on this - the Indiana Pacers, the most embarrassing organization in all of American sports not involving stock cars, are going to have a high first round pick; and if you’re still on the board when their number comes up, they’’ll take you. Why? Because it’s a bad decision, and the only thing the Pacers are even remotely respectable at is making bad decisions. If one more Pacers player gets arrested, the Simons are going to rename the team the Cincinnati Bengals. You’ll want to play anywhere but here, of course - because the Sampson situation has left a bad taste in your mouth - and you’ll become the next Jeff George.
That pesky NBA draft lottery makes it hard to peg, with any real degree of accuracy, where the Pacers will draft this summer - but if the draft went by team record alone, they would draft no higher than 6th and no lower than 17th. Ever seen the Range Game on The Price Is Right? Twenty years ago, Donnie Walsh was smart enough not to pick the Indiana kid and instead take a chance on a wiry guy from UCLA; but the temptation to make the Indiana mistake will be greater this time around, because you will actually have an NBA career; and the possibility of the Indiana mistake being made this year is greater than it was twenty years ago because Larry Bird is calling the shots now. If there were a contest between Larry Bird and George W. Bush to see who has had the least success in their current job, I’m not sure who would win.
Stepehn Curry has the right idea, and I really hope that it works out for him - and for Davidson. College basketball may be doomed to the role of being a minor league for the National Bone Thugs Association, and the power conferences and their power schools may always dominate the recruiting classes and the national polls and the postseason tournaments - but every now and then you get to see a class program and a class kid shine in the national spotlight at the end of March. There is nothing in sports that compares with the greatness of the NCAA tournament - and guys like Stephen Curry (and schools like Davidson) are the reason that that statement is true.
(For a really good story about college basketball in its purest and least commercial form, go find a copy of The Last Amateurs, by John Feinstein - and spend a season with the gutty competitors in the Patriot League.)
5 comments:
just a couple things real quick.
1. As i think I said before, Stephen Curry was an AMC crew member of mine in Charlotte.
2. New IU coach will be Tom Crean from Marquette. been to a Final Four, averages 23 wins a season in the best conference in the country, and is a Big 10 guy as he was Izzo's top assistant for 6 years before the Marquette gig. Oh, and no skeletons in the closet, i.e he knows how and when to operate a cell phone. Great hire.
3. NBA is probably going to go to a 2 year out of high school rule. Might take another year to get through the collective bargaining, but most owners and players like the idea.
4. best thing for Indiana is for Eric Gordon to leave. Great player? Maybe, but he single handedly lost more games for us than he won, and he has been rumored to be near un-coachable. he is a guy that I think Knight would've stayed away from, for that very reason. I don't want guys that think they are fowled on every dumb ass drive to the bucket with 3 of their teammates open. Peace out, and don't let the door hit ya.
5. Another fond farwell to fellow malcontents Armond Bassett and JaMarcus Ellis. We will better before whatever teams you transfer to, so way to be mature you fucking pussies.
6. We'll be back, and sooner than most people think. This year might even surprise some people.
Scoot may have something with Crean, the sites I check also state the same. Then again, they also said IU was in talks with Bennett and that proved false. He would be a good replacement with Big 10 experience.
Silly Eric Gordon. He will learn soon enough that leaving now is a huge mistake.
Greenspan actually did talk to Bennett, but no offer was made. He told Greenspan that he did not want to be considered for the job. From the Terry Hutchens Star article Monday.
Off topic, but Scott - what do you think of Jutchens?
John - don't really remember much about Hutchens, to be honest with you. However, that might be a good thing. I do remember guys like Kravitz, and the dude with the letter in his name, and that is mostly because they are idiots, or at least say idiotic things a lot of the time. That being said, I guess this means that Hutchens never said anything that offended me, so I guess he's ok.
I can't say how happy I am with this hiring.
If The Brawl had never happened and Reggie got his ring (a good possibility that year, from what folks were saying at the time) would you still say that about Larry Bird?
Coudla, shoulda, woulda, I know. But the Pacers (from what very little attention I give them) seem to be plagued by constant injuries and off-court stupidity. Does the team manager really deserve to be labeled badly because of that?
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