Originally posted by clamdyp:
missing the point on Cal.. and what makes him the anti-Dean Smith. He gets all those recruits by being a willing thrall to the middlemen and handlers and is a dependable pipeline to the agents, etc. He is part of a conspiracy to keep the parasites that already have their hooks into these kids there long after they have become young men. Individual players who are mature and free to decide for themselves independently or as part of an independent family decision are just as likely to go with UNC or Duke or .... than ever, but those who are under the sway of some skeezy weasel like WWW or BrianCliftonofJohnWallFame get channeled to coaches that can be counted on never to rock the boat of indentured servitude. The real crime will be when these guys retire or get hurt or find they are not NBA studs as they had supposed and can't carry the frieght for all these parasites and hangers-on..... then they will wish for a Roy or a K or a Dean Smith, who would have had their personal and their families' best interests first and foremost, irrespective of where the shoe money comes from or which agent's runner gets the score, etc. Cal is not running a collegiate program, imho, but a D-league team, period. jmho sad
Exacrly ^^^
I want to speak to this theroy that that fans of Kal love to put forward, "yeah but you guys program recruit the same kids, you would love to get comits from those kids, you are jealous that we get them and not your coach". Yeah, Roy recruits some of the same kids, not all but for sure some of them and yes again, UNC fans, this one included for sure, would love to get many of those kids. But the difference is we may want one or 2 of those kids from any given class but we do not want to load up our program with one & dones, the occasional one & done makes us very happy, watching 4 or 5 of them comit and then skip off after one season does NOT make us happy.
Speaking just for myself, while I love the occasional one & done, it is hard for me to see guys like Marvin or Brandan Wright as full fledged Tar Heels because they just were not there long enough for us to really enjoy the game they really had inside them, the game that comes out of sophs & jR players after they have developed. I love that Marvin helped us win a natty but I never saw his real ability in a UNC uniform, what I saw was the rawness of a freshman rather than the play of a kid that was one of the finalists for a Wooden Award (which I speculate would have occurred had he stayed for another season or 2). I look at Hansbourgh, who to me was not as talented as either Marvin or Brandan but I saw Tyler give us his all for 4 years and for that his jersey is forever retired and hangs up there for all that walk in to the dome to see forever, in time the names of Marvin or Brandan will be met with who was he again to some young person, the name of Tyler Hansbourgh will not be forgotten, even by those that never saw him play a single college game.
Yes, I admit, I am old school, yes I admit, I want it to be about the school, about the program, more so than about the coach or what the coach is willing to do that must be hidden from the NCAA. Basketball is a team sport and IMO there is or should be no better reflection of just that than college basketball. But the sport is morphing in to a individual game with 4 other guys that wear the same color jersey on the court with you. That is not the game I love, I don't want to see a season of McDonald AA games, heck the one is hard enough to watch. I sure as heck don't want to see posses & back room managers with more control over players than the coach. I want to see kids comit to UNC because they want to be part of our history, I want to see them develope over time, I want to see them master the game at this level before they move on, I am fine if the occasional kid leaves after one season but I do not want to see a mass exodus every single season.
Ya know, it was kinda funny to me, Kal began this season with a hockey line substitution plan but in doing so in my mind his sub pattern reflected that program as a whole under Kal, a mass of players in turn around and a mass leaving, a revolving door of in & out but never being far from the door? Kal & Ky are the poster kids for this because Kal knows it is what he has to do to win, it is sad to see that now even K has taken his duke program in that direction. Sad that now both have found their way in to the COLLEGE basketball hall of fame when both by their catering to the one & done is dumbing down the game to the extent that it is quickly becoming just like the NBA and the NBA has lost its luster to me and many others because for most NBA teams it is all about the individual players more than about the team itself. Yet the one NBA team that works to be more about the team than the individual players in San Antionio is an annual contender for the NBA crown.
Yeah, I am a bit jealous that Ky gets a individual player, I am not jealous that they get 4 or 5 or more of those in a single season because I do not want UNC to ever do that and I especially do not want to see that HAVE TO HAPPEN EVERY SINGLE YEAR! Kal & K have mortgaged the future for the present to the extent that if they don't hit big time gold on multiple fronts every single recruiting season that their program will fall totally apart. If K does not score big in this recruiting class and now that it looks a lot like he may lose those 3 big time freshmen he had this season those duke fans will get to see how a team without a PG really looks, they could be lucky to even get to the NIT unless K can find a way to keep at very least Ty Jones for another season or steal some other already committed PG from another program. I get uneasy when UNC gets more than 3 comits a year because they tend to all leave about the same time as those they come in with. You bring in 5 recruits in a season and you may enjoy it now but it usually forces some real problems to occur when those 5 all leave in mass. Could not help but laugh at kal calling those 6 kids entering that draft as the best time in Ky history, I gurantee ya Ky fans enjoy winning Nattys a heck of a lot more than how many guys they see leave their program every season. If anything, watching all those big time talents leave before you got to see them develope for more than 1 season is more of a downer than it is the best of times.
