Kentucky basketball makes for an easy villain.
John Calipari looks like a mafia capo. Wildcat fans turn Twitter into a wasteland. The coach the team’s stadium is named after, Adolph Rupp, was the racist antagonist in Glory Road, a movie about the first team with an all-black starting lineup in college basketball history.
Most of all though, people hate the one-and-done system. People hate athletes privileged enough to spurn years of free college and go straight to the NBA. People hate Calipari for pitching to recruits what basically amounts to an NBA prep school that happens to be built on Kentucky’s campus, undermining the “spirit” of college basketball and student-athletes.
That hatred needs to stop.
There is nothing morally wrong with a player holding NBA aspirations planning to play only one season in college. It is merely an evolution of basketball and carries real risk to all parties involved.
We have this image of basketball players sauntering through classes without a care, knowing their GPA won’t eventually come back to haunt them. The refrains were particularly malicious after Aaron Harrison shot a dagger through Wisconsin’s heart, when fans attempted to rationalize a moral superiority over the one-and-done-system. This was despite Kentucky’s basketball team having a higher Academic Progress Rate score than Wisconsin’s in the 2013-’14 season.
It comes down to fans viewing a player as an athlete, not a person. They don’t see the player’s struggles or background. They don’t see the stupidity of the NCAA rules imposed on the player’s life. They just see him as a guy in a jersey who can dunk all over someone’s face.
If I came up to you during your freshman year and said “Hey sparky, I’ll give you a $3 million contract in your dream job, you just have to drop out of college,” what would you choose? If your easy answer is “stay in school,” congratulations, you likely have wealthy parents.
Let’s also talk about how Calipari is apparently cheating the system by bringing in a legion of five-star recruits. In case you didn’t know, it is very, very hard to convince a collective group of high school stars that your system is the best for them, especially when they wouldn’t get the playing time they would if they signed with a less stacked program.
If it’s so easy to sell a bunch of elite recruits on playing for one year, then move onto the NBA, why can’t any other coaches do it?
Oh wait, some other schools kind of did it last year, with Kansas relying on Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid and Wayne Selden Jr. while Duke ran everything through Jabari Parker. Neither team made it to the Sweet Sixteen. Meanwhile, Kentucky did, well… you know.
Sure, Calipari has a history of NCAA violations, but he’s been clean since reaching Lexington (as far as we know). If something comes out of the woodwork, I’m sure it’s not going to be too hard for us all to pass judgement.
Recruiting five-stars at this scale is a skill and succeeding year after year (obvious Robert Morris exception, but with a Nerlens Noel injury caveat) with only freshmen is impressive.
It seemed like this year would be different for Kentucky, relying instead on junior Willie Cauley-Stein and sophomores like the Harrison twins and Dakari Johnson. Then Karl-Anthony Towns turned out to be a Top 3 NBA Draft prospect while Devin Booker turned out to be the best shooter in the SEC and we all get to have this fun conversation again.
Staying in school is a difficult choice, and good players choosing to stay in school is great for college basketball and usually elates a fanbase that will get to root for an NBA-level player for another year.
Players who choose to move on and begin making money their family could need should not be treated as greedy or with contempt, because given that choice, a lot of people would make the same decision in their shoes.
