HERTZEL COLUMN: Alexander had tough decision

By Bob Hertzel

MORGANTOWN — A million or so years ago, back when both the earth and I were young, there was a high school baseball player named Dave Seddon.

At the time, he was maybe the best player in the state of New Jersey, good enough for the Boston Red Sox to offerehim $50,000 to sign after high school … and this was when $50,000 was a lot of money.

Dave Seddon said no. He was going to join his former high school coach at Colby College in Maine.

A year later he was no longer a prospect, his ankle badly broken, his dream of a major league career over, the money gone.

This story is brought up at this time not to lament the decision a friend from long ago and far away made, but to emphasis just how fragile our lives and goals can be. It is brought up at this time because there’s another athlete, one who made the opposite decision, whose career now hangs in the balance.

You know this athlete.

His name is Joe Alexander.

Three years ago Bob Huggins came to Morgantown and inherited Alexander from John Beilein. He let him out of Beilein’s doghouse and found him a room in the penthouse. He built him up physically, gave him the basketball and turned him loose.

A year later he was looking at millions of dollars as an NBA lottery pick.

He also had a year at West Virginia left.

Say what you will, that is a tough decision. If Joe Alexander had played at WVU last year, the Mountaineers probably would have gotten past the first round of the NCAA Tournament. They might have won the Big East, maybe the NCAA.

We'll never know.

Or Joe Alexander could have passed up the money that came with being the eighth pick of the NBA draft by the Milwaukee Bucks and maybe been injured while at WVU, just as he now is.

The injury, a hamstring tear that might keep him sidelined for as long as three months, is not necessarily a career-ending injury but it has become a contract-ending injury.

The Bucks announced this week they would not pick up the $2.76 million option on his contract.

That, in effect, will make him an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season, a free agent who sufferied through a trying first NBA season for which he was clearly not prepared and an injury-plagued second season.

You must understand it was not a common decision to let a first-round lottery pick go a week into his second season, especially as the situation presented itself.

Alexander was the first draft pick ever made by John Hammond as general manager of the Bucks after replacing Larry Harris. That would seem to make such a decision more difficult for Hammond, but he was looking at a Monday deadline and had seen nothing to make him think Alexander would be a contributor worthy of gambling two-and-three-quarter million dollars on.

Alexander missed time in his first camp, last year, with a groin injury, played only 59 games last season and averaged only 4.7 points and 1.9 rebounds.

This year he injured the right hamstring in an informal camp in September, then aggravated it on Oct. 22 this year, leaving him inactive for eight to 12 weeks.

Hammond really had no choice.

"We believe Joe can be a good NBA player, but his latest injury had hampered our ability to further assess his progress," Hammond said in a statement. "Joe has missed valuable on-court development opportunities due to injury."

And so, at the end of this season, Alexander becomes an unrestricted free agent, a player who has a history of injury and no record of NBA success.

This, of course, makes you ask the dreaded "what if" questions.

What if …

What if Joe Alexander had rolled the dice, had come back to West Virginia for another year of development, another year of success?

Would it be a gamble? Certainly, a gamble with the bonus he received as a lottery pick, a gamble with what has proved to be fragile legs that just as easily could have betrayed him on Huggins’ treadmill as on an NBA practice floor.

Or would he have matured even more, gotten in a full healthy senior season in college, enjoyed the college life for another year before going off to the NBA wars, perhaps as a lottery pick, perhaps not?

There is no judgment being made here. Joe Alexander’s dreams were answered. He became a millionaire, he played in the NBA, he still may develop into the player Milwaukee had in mind when it drafted him.

Or, he may someday just be telling tales of what might have been.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.