The Times West Virginian

WVU Sports

June 26, 2010

HERTZEL COLUMN: Early entries hurt college basketball

By Bob Hertzel For the Times West Virginian

MORGANTOWN — Having spent the past hour trying to think up a clever way to get to the point we plan to offer up this morning, we have decided that the best approach is the most direct one, and if someone doesn’t like it, too bad.

It’s time for college basketball to arch its back and begin protecting its product and the people who support that product, the fans.

Nowhere else on earth is an investment made into a business with less long-term security than in college basketball. That the sport has flourished as it has over the years borderlines on the unbelievable, considering that its greatest asset — its players — come and go within a year or two, if they decide to play college ball at all.

Perhaps the best way to demonstrate what we mean is to look today at Da’Sean Butler and Devin Ebanks, who on Thursday night became the first Mountaineers to ever go in the first two rounds of the same NBA draft. Butler, injured knee and all, was selected with the draft’s 42nd pick by the Miami Heat and Ebanks with the 43rd pick by the champion Los Angeles Lakers.

The difference? Butler had finished his fourth year of college and had a degree, Ebanks his second year.

Butler gave what he had to West Virginia, did things the right way, which was also the best way for him.

Ebanks? I don’t know.

Certainly he leaves WVU an incomplete player, one relying strictly upon his natural ability and will match it up against people who are bigger, stronger and certainly better shooters than he is.

Is he ready for the NBA?

Maybe.

Maybe not?

Think of it in these terms.

After their second seasons, Butler and Ebanks were similar players. Butler averaged 6.6 rebounds to 8.1 for Ebanks and he averaged 12.9 points a game to 12.0 for Ebanks.

Neither was a star at that point.

Over the next two years, Butler developed into a super nova (ask Villanova), his scoring average soaring to 17.2 points a game while his rebounds remained the same, even though he was far more a guard than a forward.

This year Butler would have been a first-round pick, save for the knee injury, his salary probably $2 million more a year.

There’s no reason to think Ebanks also wouldn’t have become a first-round pick had he waited until he had completed at least three years, maybe four.

But again, this isn’t about Ebanks.

It’s about your state university and other state universities. It’s about you, the fan, and yes, it’s about Bob Huggins or John Calipari or Jim Boeheim or Jim Calhoun, whoever it is spending his life constantly having to build a team without solid, committed, experienced players.

The draft takes advantage of kids like Ebanks, who certainly left after having been made to believe he would be a first-round pick by his agent, by whatever hangers-on were there to leech off of him, and perhaps by the teams, who all are conducting a charade.

As it was, Ebanks worked out for 13 teams, obviously thinking one of them would swallow him whole in the first round. Instead, he was drafted by Los Angeles, a team that never worked him out. He went for that second round money, which is $460,000 and isn’t guaranteed.

Oh, he was happy. He didn’t have any choice but to be happy because his college career was over.

“I just wanted to be picked,” Ebanks said on a conference call. “But I’m really happy. I don’t have too many words (to describe this).”

Would he have been happier had he returned to college and played out his eligibility?

The guess here is, yes.

And here’s Huggins, who has done his job, gotten another player to the NBA, but who has a hole to fill on his team. And next year it will be the same, for Kevin Jones surely will go after his third season, probably more prepared for what lies ahead than was Ebanks.

And Calipari, he has to replace his entire team, whereas had he been able to keep them around just one more year he probably would have had a team that made college basketball history of some kind.

It’s time for the college game to strike out at the professionals in some regard, to cut their access to their players, to do what they can do to see that they get at least three years out of a recruit after he comes to a school, which allows them to develop such a player, to merge him with a team, to give their fans a chance to become attached to the star players and, most of all, to give those players the best chance to make it at the next level.

The NBA can wait. How old would Devin Ebanks be if he waited until he graduated or until after he finished his third year … 21, 22?

That leaves plenty of time for the NBA.

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

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