Irving, Barnes Have Tough Decisions to Make

It’s officially hand-wringing season for the majority of college basketball fans… the month-or-so between your favorite team’s last game and the deadline to declare for the NBA draft.  It’s the time of year that controls how a fan views the off-season.  Will you be in a deep depression, sitting silently by yourself looking down at the replica jersey of your favorite early-entry defection trying to remember the good times you had watching them play while not wanting to imagine how life can go on without them?  Or will you be celebrating the return of your team’s savior by saving a place on the wall to add one more framed national championship Sports Illustrated cover next April?  It’s the Groundhog Day of college basketball … if your superstar underclassman sees his NBA shadow and is frightened back into his dorm room for another year, it means two more weeks of car flags flying proudly around town.  Despite the fact that there are as many champions who lost key players to the draft the previous year as there are champions who returned all of their superstars, it’s one of the most intriguing times of year for all fans.

In this area, there are five key figures to keep an eye on … Kyrie Irving and Mason Plumlee from Duke, and Harrison Barnes, John Henson and Tyler Zeller from UNC.  At this moment, the general consensus is that Kyrie has finished his collegiate career, Mason Plumlee is undecided, and the entire trio of Tarheels will return for 2011-12.  Also at this moment, no one outside of those five individuals, their families and their coaches have any idea what they’re going to do – and potentially they don’t know either.  The news on Irving stems from one person, ESPN’s Chad Ford.  Ford stated in an ESPN insider article that Irving was “one foot out of the door” while Mason Plumlee was “50/50”.  The context of the article was Ford’s opinion, and was not based on any conversations he’d had with the players themselves.  Since then, CBS, Yahoo, and numerous mainstream blogs have picked up the story with “ESPN reporting that Irving is going pro” as the backbone of their articles.  This, in a nutshell, is how journalists cover this time of year. 

On the UNC side of things, the story gets a little more humorous.  Apparently the rumors of Zeller, Barnes and Henson’s package decision to return stems from a report from a student who claims to have been at Tyler Zeller’s apartment when Barnes and Henson came over to hang out.  Allegedly, Henson said “It’s time to talk about this decision, bra” and the three retired to Zeller’s bedroom to talk things over.  Unfortunately, we don’t have any more information because the storyteller “couldn’t hear too well because they were in Tyler’s room”, which led to him lamenting over what could have been when he said “I could have been an IC (www.insidecarolina.com) legend.”  Unfortunately, we will not be getting any further information out of the Chi O’s this weekend as they’ve asked their sorority sisters not to ask Kendall Marshall, Harrison Barnes and John Henson about their NBA plans at their formal this weekend.  This leads to another bit of speculation to ponder … why was Tyler Zeller not invited to the party?

Having said all of that, it’s my OPINION that Kyrie Irving will declare for the NBA draft, and that Plumlee, Barnes, Zeller and Henson will all return next season.  I will further clarify by stating that my OPINION is based entirely on the OPINIONS of others.  Cue the Duke fans freaking out about having Kyrie Irving for 11 games while Roy Williams was able to swindle money from Ty Lawson and Raymond Felton by hotboxing them into staying for three seasons, and cue the rosterbation from UNC fans looking through a lineup of 11 NBA players and planning their celebration of their 6th or 7th title (depending on which Tarheel fan you talk to).  As the decisions start being made public, two more hilarious items from this silly-season rear their ugly heads: the overnight change in player evaluation from fans, and the onslaught of early entry rule ideas.

So here’s how this is going to play out … if you ask a UNC fan today to evaluate Harrison Barnes, he’s a poor man’s Sean Elliot who needs to stay in college to become more than just a jumpshooter.  Duke fans think he’s a dynamic talent who should be a top 3 pick and would be absolutely foolish not to go take his place as the next Kevin Durant.  UNC fans feel like Kyrie Irving is the next Derrick Rose, while Duke fans have concerns about how Kyrie will hold up over an NBA season being so small and so out of shape from not playing.  If Barnes comes back, UNC fans are already polishing his Naismith Trophy while Duke fans are taking bets to see who from Roy Williams’ deep bench will transfer first.  Likewise if Irving returns, UNC fans become immediately concerned about Austin Rivers being able to get enough touches to make him happy while Duke fans are writing blog posts about the greatest backcourts in basketball history (coming to this site soon should Kyrie come back to Duke).  It’s the hilarious dance that fans do during this time of year.

And don’t get me started on the early entry opinions that will be thrown around ad nauseam following the conclusion of the championship game.  From the “baseball model” to the “hockey model” to the LeBron/Howard/Garnett model … ideas will be thrown around left and right.  Most of them not even feasible, all of them entirely uninformed and extremely biased.  The only fact you need to know about the early entry debate is this … it’s the NBA’s decision to make, and the decision will ALWAYS be what’s in the best interest of the NBA.  Talk all you’d like about how one-and-dones kill college basketball, or how “high school straight to the NBA” detracts young athletes from pursuing education.  It doesn’t matter.

Personally, I want to see as many kids stay for four years as possible because I like college basketball.  Specifically this season when the NBA is facing a likely work-stoppage, this could be college basketball’s time to shine.  If every underclassmen returned to school for the 2011-12 college season, you’d likely see three of the best teams ever assembled with the talent that Kentucky, UNC and Duke would have on their rosters.  The depth of talent would be legendary.  The worst part about college basketball these days is that we know the above scenario would never play out with all of those players returning.  The best part about college basketball these days … if it DID happen, it wouldn’t be shocking in the slightest if the championship was won by someone other than those three powerhouses.  So while you’re sitting on the edge of your seats over the next few weeks, living and dying with every rumor that gets posted, just remember the games still have to be played next year.  And for every ‘super-team’ that’s ever won a championship, there are two or three champions who came from nowhere to win.

The DevilWolf vs. The Black Falcon

If you’re short for time, I’m going to give you the quick summary of the following post in two short statements.  Harrison Barnes is an elite basketball talent.  He is also a fake.  A phony.  A comic book superhero whose story starts with a tear-jerking, inspirational Nike commercial celebrating the end of his famed career and works its way backwards to present day allowing Harrison to follow his plot line-by-contrived-line.  The hero’s name … The Black Falcon.  Or more accurately, The Black Fugazy.

During the Fall of his senior year at Ames High School, Harrison Barnes conducted one of the most intriguing recruiting sagas in college basketball history.  It had everything … the methodical creation of the Harrison Barnes persona, carefully crafted statements and deliberately placed false clues, twists and turns that are typically reserved for top football recruits to orchestrate their signing day spectacle.  Each word, each action, entirely premeditated.  Let’s be honest here, Duke, UNC, Kansas and Iowa State were never recruiting Harrison Barnes.  Harrison Barnes was recruiting all of us.

From both perspectives, Barnes was not the most important recruit for Duke or for UNC.  Roy Williams had collected enough front-court talent to not only survive the package-deal transfer of the Wear twins, but to provide his Tarheels with a legitimate strength against each and every opponent UNC faced this season.  At Duke, Mike Krzyzewski was returning Nolan Smith but likely losing Kyle Singler to the NBA, but had the depth at the wing position to fill Singler’s shoes with productive minutes from transfer Seth Curry and a Sophomore Andre Dawkins.  Both teams were in dire need of a point guard as Roy Williams was never able to fill the void left behind by Ty Lawson, and Duke had been running a two-year point guard by committee.  Looking from strictly a need-based viewpoint, Kendall Marshall and Kyrie Irving were the two most important pieces to the Duke & UNC puzzles.

But there sat Barnes, the #1 overall recruit in the entire class.  Widely considered to be a Duke lock, fans were touting Barnes as the next Shane Battier … the guy who was going to bring Duke back to the top of the college basketball mountain.  Roy Williams’ Tarheels were already perched atop that peak coming off of their 2008-09 NCAA championship, and Barnes was being talked about by UNC fans as a “luxury recruit”.  Perception said that Duke needed Barnes in the worst way to even have a chance to compete with UNC.  The recruiting stories were legendary, and what’s true and what’s fake at this point is both impossible to determine and completely irrelevant.  From stories of Barnes throwing a UNC t-shirt into a trashcan to him sneaking off to call Roy Williams from the bathroom while on his official visit to Duke, the fish tales were coming fast and furious.  Allegedly Barnes told K during the last in home visit “Save #40 for me, Coach”, and then later that night posed for pictures with Roy Williams in his UNC #40 jersey during a secret in home visit.  There was the famous story of the waiter in Chapel Hill who witnessed Coach K get a phone call from Harrison before hanging up in anger.  No one knew if any of this was ever real, but when a reporter asked Harrison Barnes what he thought of the stories, he broke character for a brief second to show us his laugh as if to say “I have all of you exactly where I want you.”

Harrison wasn’t picking a school based on basketball.  He said as much in his press conference as he spoke of building his brand.  Which team was it going to be in that Nike commercial 20 years from now?  Kansas?  The birthplace of college basketball?  Duke?  The model program and America’s “bad guy”?  Or North Carolina.  The house that Jordan built.  Which was going to be the best story?  In those terms, the UNC Tarheels were too good to pass up.

“They said I was going to be the next Jordan … (cue old highlights of Jordan during his UNC years playing along side of Harrison Barnes highlights) … they said I was going to be the next [insert name here of whatever superstar played for whichever team Barnes plays for in the NBA] … (cue superstar highlights along side NBA Harrison Barnes highlights) … instead, I was the first Harrison Barnes … who’s next?” … (cue the kids playing in the park or in their school gym, each saying “I’m next”, cut to the Black Falcon logo with the “Who’s next?” tagline) … and, cut.

That’s the exciting conclusion to the Harrison Barnes story.  His entire life working backwards from that 30 second TV ad.  That’s all you need to know about Harrison Barnes.  Each and every one of us is just a character in that commercial to him, a future customer.  If you don’t believe me on that, well, you’ve just fallen for his sales pitch harder than I have.  Buyer beware.

It’s easy to say that this is all just sour grapes that he didn’t pick the team I wanted him to pick on that Friday the 13th when he Skyped his commitment to Roy Williams.  Part of it certainly is, as Harrison Barnes would have been a tremendous addition to this year’s Duke team.  As a Duke fan, it was like a punch to the gut watching the press conference, confused when he stepped up to the podium and began dialing Roy Williams’ office.  Even more insulting was knowing that Coach K and his staff found out about Barnes’ decision the same way that I did … sitting in front of a computer, watching the press conference, waiting to see which team he chose.  And it wasn’t enough to put on a hat, or to pick up a card in front of him.  He had scheduled a Skype session with Coach Williams and the entire UNC team in one final orchestrated side show to end the saga of his recruitment.  The smug look on Roy’s face, the false surprise of being the coach Barnes’ would select, it was everything short of Coach Williams waving to the camera with “Hi Mike” written with a marker on his palm.  Here was a kid who, one second, was giving you his selfless, introspective side, giving such kind comments about each school in the running for his services, and the next showing his need for attention and his “all eyes on me” approach to living his life.  Duke has lost more recruits than its signed, and it never was painful to get the news of Boynton choosing Florida or even Wright choosing North Carolina.  Barnes knew the path to becoming a legend at UNC was to become hated at Duke.  For that moment, he succeeded.  He was an important recruit to begin with, but his commitment served as a death blow to Duke and as a validation of North Carolina as the king of Tobacco Road.  He rode the momentum of his charade of a decision making process through the summer All-star circuit and onto the First Team Pre-season All-America team, the first freshman ever to do so.  Barnes was the most hyped player coming into the 2010-11 basketball season, not based on success on the basketball court, but based on his successful conquest of the national basketball media.

To look at Harrison Barnes as a person and not as a basketball player is only telling half of the story.  Barnes struggled to live up to expectations at the start of the season, little of which had to do with his actual ability as a basketball player.  The hype was simply too much to overcome, but it was not a battle that Barnes would have to fight on his own.  Basketball pundits battled each other for the chance to explain away how they’d all been duped by an 18-year-old, the most laughable being Jay Bilas’ diatribe on “What if Harrison Barnes made one more shot each game?”  Complete with an ESPN graphic and all, Bilas angrily attacked those who dared to doubt Barnes’ ability (translation: Bilas’ ability to analyze talent) by proving that if Harrison Barnes was better, he’d be better.  As the freshman gained his legs and caught up to the speed of the college game, he played remarkably well on the offensive side of the ball.  A key to Barnes’ success was the emergence of Kendall Marshall, a fellow freshman who thrives on putting the spotlight on others versus a Junior Larry Drew who was determined to inexplicably keep the spotlight on himself.  Barnes began to hit big shots, game winning shots, and grew his persona as a player who lives for heroics.  Looking back to Harrison Barnes as a person, that’s not surprising that he has a real talent for hitting clutch shots … those are commercial moments.  No one remembers a shot in the first half, but everyone remembers the shot to win the game.

As a player, Barnes is an accurate shooter when he takes good shots and has a strong ability to finish around the rim.  When driven to, he’s a hard worker, and doesn’t shy away from personal challenges.  He’s got good size for a wing player and struggles to create his own shot off of the dribble except for a step back jump shot which can be deadly if you don’t know it’s coming.  He’d be a high draft pick right now, and he’ll continue to get better.

This brings us to the decision that Barnes, like all underclassmen, has to face right now.  Does he go to the NBA, which is the destination that his pre-written story ultimately takes him?  Or does he stay at North Carolina?  There is no doubt in my mind that he’ll be back for his sophomore season, and he’ll do it for the one reason that no one will talk about.  We’ll hear stories of how much he loves North Carolina, how he wants to win a championship, how he’s not ready to leave his teammates.  We’ll hear about how committed he is to academics, how he wants to grow as a leader.  Harrison Barnes will be back for one reason, and one reason only … there are many stars in the NBA, there are a handful in college basketball.  Barnes needs to be talked about.  He needs more highlights.  He needs more material for his biography.  He needs more stories about him dribbling alone for hours in the dark, vowing to never miss the shot again that he missed against Kentucky.  He needs more customers.  Barnes never was playing for an NBA contract, he’s playing for endorsements.  He’s playing for stock prices.  He’s playing for the love of the game, but that game is not basketball.  If he does decide to go to the NBA, it will be because he feels like his brand has matured enough to go to the next level.  It will not be because he’s always dreamed of playing in the NBA, or because he wants to win a ring.  Can Harrison Barnes move more units from the family store, or is it time to go public?  That’s what it comes down to.  What’s the next scene scheduled to be filmed?

And most of you are going to continue to fall for it, and you’ll line up in droves to buy what he’s selling.  Me?  I don’t buy fake merchandise.