I heard about this guy that played till his senior year once. All he could really do was shoot and hustle. Maybe pass a little. He had a terrible freshman year. About as bad as possible actually. Very low ceiling due to a low level of athleticism. There were probably freshman that year that projected better than him. He was player of the year, but still. Worked out though. I think his name was Larry something.
C'mon... different era. That's lazy. Players played longer back then. It was common. Less money on the table. More accepted. These days, with multi million dollar contracts on the line, essentially every player who can get a guaranteed contract will leave before their senior year. And actually, when they were able to jump straight from high school, the ones with the talent/potential to be drafted high would skip College entirely. There's very few 4-year seniors drafted over the past decade to make an all-star team. And the ones that do are usually flukey instances where the guy vastly exceeded expectations after being drafted late. And because all the top peers jump ship for the pros well before Senior year, it gives an even greater advantage to fringe talent who stay all four years. It's how you get guys like Jimmer and Hield dominating as Seniors. Doesn't always translate to the pros.
Isn't that exactly why all the College bball fanatics want to see the NBA add an age limit?... because the level of competition sucks these days with all the best players jumping after Freshman season?
Maybe Hield/Dunn still end up being really good players. But I totally understand why some are skeptical and the consensus seems to be they will peak out as role players.
Are you saying Bird would have been drafted as a freshman today?
Loaded question Eja. Short answer is: There's no way he'd play until he was a Senior.
Here's my attempt at a long answer. It was an entirely different era. Bird in high school averaged 31 points, 21 rebounds, and 4 assists. He was a phenom in high school. He got a scholarship to play for Indiana. He was a 5 star recruit in every sense:
By his senior year Bird had grown four inches. Almost overnight he had become an impressive physical specimen while retaining his agility and hustle. His senior year he averaged 30.6 points and 20 rebounds per game, and college scouts from all over the East flocked to see him play. He was actively pursued by a number of universities, but he decided to stay in state, entering Indiana University (of Bobby Knight fame) in the fall of 1974.
It's well known he only lasted 24 days there, partially because he was broke and partially because he found the situation overwhelming. He famously took odd jobs, enrolled in a Junior college and dropped out of there as well before being convinced to join Indiana State. But don't misconstrue this grand story of Bird with the reality of how he would have been handled in 2016.
Indiana State was a weak school that had gone 12-14, 12-14 and 13-12 the three years prior to the arrival of Bird.
Bird at his first year at Indiana State, he lead them to a 29-3 record while averaging 32.8 points, 13.3 rebounds, 4.4 assists with 54% shooting. He lead them to the NIT tourney for the first time in their history.
Are you freakin kidding me? The dude was dominant immediately on a level few had seen.
He stayed two more seasons putting up roughly the same amount of statistics and in his final season lead them to a 33-1 record and the National Championship game.
Step back a second and have some perspective. Back then, it was pretty common practice for players to stay until they were Seniors. It's just what you did. In-fact, in order to leave College early for the pros, players had to prove financial hardship. That's how a select few were able to jump from high school to the pros in the 70s. It was a different landscape, though.
In 1978, after Bird's second season at Indiana State, the Indiana Pacers had the top pick and wanted to take Bird. They failed to convince him to come out early. They then traded the #1 pick to Portland who also failed to convince Bird to come out early. Boston later took him 6th despite knowing they'd need to wait a year and could risk losing him. Bird became the highest paid rookie in the history of the game getting a 5-year 3.2mil contract.
So I totally understand how you'd see that and say "Obviously Bird was adamant about finishing College."... and I get that point, though I'd argue that it's a garbage example since Bird was such a unique character with an unprecedented situation that has jack squat to do with Buddy Hield... but I'm still going to say he would leave early in modern times.
Here's why... if Bird was playing in the modern era, he would be on the radar of scouts when he was 13 years old. They probably would have pinpointed him early and convinced him to attend some basketball boot camp high school like Oak HIll Academy or something. He'd be travelling on national tours with his team sponsored by large shoe companies like Nike, so it's unlikely he would be growing up in the insular world of French Lick. His family was dirt poor in the 70s. His parents divorced while he was in high school and his father killed himself in 1975 when Bird was a teenager. These day, kids from broken/poor families with basketball aspirations have their families put all their eggs in the kid's basket. So many superstar players come from families that were poor. The difference is, the families rally around their budding star meal ticket with hopes of financial windfalls down the line. I suspect it would have been similar for Bird. He'd have agents and handlers reaching out to him in high school.
We're not talking about being paid in the thousands like they were in the 1970s. We're talking about the potential for a 25 million dollar guaranteed rookie contract and a shoe contract that potentially would pay him 100 million before even stepping foot in the NBA. A player of Bird's caliber... millions would be on the line. If he was coming out in the early 00s, they probably would have convinced him to skip College entirely (be mindful that this alt-universe Larry Bird has been traveling nationally with his high school class for years with the support of his desperate family). If his grades were a concern, some bullcrap college program that doesn't actually put their basketball students through an academic curriculum would recruit him. Bird wouldn't need to take odd jobs to eat since these scholarships now include a meal program. During his one nonsense season of College basketball, where it's widely accepted for players to leave early, he'd be receiving massive pressure to be a one-and-done prospect with the guarantee that he'd be selected as the consensus #1 pick. He wouldn't turn down a multi million dollar payday. His family wouldn't let him.
Alternatively, he might get an agent immediately out of College and go play a season overseas for a single season so he could immediately have a pay day - then inevitably come over to the pros.
But it's safe to say that Larry Bird of the modern era does not stick around for 3 years of College basketball.
Don't confuse Bird's situation with a guy like HIeld who wasn't good enough to be drafted in the lotto until his Senior year. Bird was a phenom. Phenoms in the modern era aren't handled the same way Phenoms in the mid 70s were handled. There's too much money at stake in this industry right now.
Bottom line is, this discussion would be more valid if we were talking about Ben Simmons staying 3 more years of College basketball. If the consensus top 2 pick decided to stick around for 4 years in spite of 50+ million dollars on the table, then obviously we'd judge that 4 year Senior accordingly. But a Senior in the modern era is a different beast. Hield stayed, because he wasn't very good as a Freshman. By staying, he put himself at an advantage since these days all the top prospects bail - so he's playing against a weak competition level made up of leftovers and talented freshman who are still transitioning from high school. If other guys from Hield's Freshman class, like Ben McLemore, had stuck around for 4 years, they'd have likely have seen their stats jump as well. Obviously, Hield has improved his game. I just totally understand why people don't trust stats from Seniors. And you know what, maybe Hield's 3 additional years of development on the College level have made him a better player than McLemore's 3 additional years of development on the NBA level... McLemore seems to have stayed pretty stagnant in his development. Maybe despite McLemore being better than Hield as a Freshman, Hield has far surpassed him. Or maybe not. It's not clear. Last guy we saw in the modern era put up these kind of stats as a Senior was Jimmer Fredette and it didn't work out that well for him.
Topic: Buddy Hield, per source, hit 85 of 100 3's in front of Celtics brass today (Read 24553 times)