A UM roster without early NBA departures.
The NBA teams on TV last night and tonight included 4 former UM players who should still be in school. Would they have stayed if not for the NCAA prohibitions on student pay? What would have happened with McGary if the NCAA hadn’t pushed him out the door while unable to perform but positive for a non-PED which is now legal or decriminalized in at least 14 states?
Whatever the answers, UM’s early NBA departures do seriously question the NCAA’s stated intent to promote equity. While UM now misses 4 otherwise eligible NBA departures, the B1G favorite, Wisconsin, misses none. It keeps 80% of its 4th or 5th year starters---including the B1G POY favorite, Frank Kaminsky. Similarly, MSU loses only one otherwise eligible player.
Of course, UM's early departures are an indication of the program's greater strength.. But I can’t help wondering what the roster would be if all the eligible UM players stayed. In addition to the current players (assuming no attrition and the same recruiting classes, my roster would include:
Trey Burke (Sr) NCAA national POY, B1G POY, NBA lottery pick, NBA fresh-so All star
Nick Stauskas (Jr) B1G POY, NBA lottery pick
Mitch McGary (Jr) NBA first rounder
Glenn Robinson III (Jr) NBA draftee
And Caris Levert (Jr) current B1G POY/Wooden award candidate.
FOOTNOTE: My reserves would include
Zak Irvin (So) five star recruit, Parade All American, Indiana’s Mr BB
Derrick Walton (So) Parade All American, most first place votes for Michigan’s Mr BB.
Kam Chatman, five star Scout, US national under-18 training camp roster
Spike Albrecht (Jr), who scored 17pts in an NCAA championship game and tweeted Kate Upton.
and Max Bielfeldt (Sr).
I include Max over others not because he buries 3 pointers. Admittedly, he looks less coordinated than Donnal, is small for a 5, and—in other ways also-- has a lower ceiling. Nonetheless, I include Max because he is, literally, an inspiration.
After careful research (?) >/sarcasm, rolling eyes, (-: I have concluded that he inspired the creation of Max at Bielfeld University (?sp). Max is an artificially intelligent machine with human communication abilities. He "understands" what we want him to do and can take on the role of a social partner. Ok, as you’ll see from the link, he’s not exactly a party animal. He looks a bit stiff. He blinks a lot, which could impair his long range shooting. But should the real Max be injured, it would be easy to change his digital purple color into maize and blue. And if we did insert him into the lineup, he demonstrates an admirable degree of self-control, which would help him resist taunting about size from other bigs.
November 19th, 2014 at 4:43 PM ^
"Glenn Hardaway Jr"
November 19th, 2014 at 4:45 PM ^
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November 19th, 2014 at 4:52 PM ^
(Although the Zowie it's Maui swimsuit cover later that year perked my youthful interest).
I also like Tim Robinson III
November 19th, 2014 at 8:14 PM ^
November 19th, 2014 at 4:56 PM ^
When I first saw that in the OP, my first thought was legitimately "Yes, I think I remember that being his name, but I thought his initials/nickname used to roll off the tongue a lot easier than it does now..."
November 19th, 2014 at 5:03 PM ^
my bad
November 19th, 2014 at 4:48 PM ^
Promote equity?
November 19th, 2014 at 5:02 PM ^
One is having teams with a similar level of talent. In court, the NCAA implied that keeping student athletes unpaid would promote that kind of equity. (an argument that the judge did not buy)
The one I am talking about relates to the level of experience: ie players with 0-1 years experience playing vs. those with 3-4.
November 19th, 2014 at 4:53 PM ^
Kentucky or Louiville?
November 19th, 2014 at 5:08 PM ^
but the fact that we are competitive with them says a lot about how far the program has come.
Also, if players had to stay in school four years but could go pro out of HI, I wonder how many of the Ky or Louisville players would have gone pro.
November 19th, 2014 at 5:33 PM ^
who is a top 10 nba player, so it would be disgusting with him and 4 scrubs around him.
November 19th, 2014 at 5:00 PM ^
November 19th, 2014 at 5:00 PM ^
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November 19th, 2014 at 5:21 PM ^
he never should have been suspended an entire year.
Maybe I should have titled the post: "A UM roster without having NCAA policies that push players out of school". But that would have been long and confusing.
November 19th, 2014 at 5:38 PM ^
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November 19th, 2014 at 6:24 PM ^
Colleges, of course could not currently compete with NBA $$. But IMO, student athletes admitted to degree granting colleges should be there to get a degree. We should not have one and done schools like Louisville and Kentucky. The NCAA needs to do a better job to ensure that kids who want to go to college actually do so. Even though they do not have NBA $$, it's not like they are exactly bankrupt.
Perhaps it is not realistic to think that the NCAA will provide sufficient incentives or that schools could retain students for reasons other than money. But is it not regrettable that we are in the predicament where colleges need to even think about competing with the NBA?
November 19th, 2014 at 6:48 PM ^
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November 19th, 2014 at 9:19 PM ^
There is no predicament where colleges are thinking about competing with the NBA. I have no idea why you think there is. Trey Burke is getting $5M for the two years he could have stayed at Michigan. It's pointless to think about ways to keep players like him from leaving early.
I also have no idea what your complaint is with the NCAA regarding one and dones. Assuming they could do something to stop it, who would that benefit? A degree is a backup plan for most big time college prospects, whether they're one and done or not. There's absolutely nothing the NCAA can do to change that.
November 19th, 2014 at 9:09 PM ^
Suggesting someone "move on" is as dumb as the notion that fans shouldn't "look ahead." We have no outcome on anything, really. We are fans, it's what we do. Speculate, think of scenarios that help our teams, bitch about officiating, etc.
Why should we move on? Don't you watch old highlights of your favorite players? I watch highlights of our last two tourney runs because they were so damn fun
November 19th, 2014 at 10:15 PM ^
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November 19th, 2014 at 8:57 PM ^
November 19th, 2014 at 5:01 PM ^
Oh for the days when the NCAA required all basketball players to stay in school for four years...
November 19th, 2014 at 5:18 PM ^
November 19th, 2014 at 5:20 PM ^
Would they have stayed if not for the NCAA prohibitions on student pay?No. Any NCAA pay would basically be a stipend compared to NBA money. They'd probably all still be gone.
November 19th, 2014 at 5:27 PM ^
if all they got was a stipend. I know that is all the NCAA wants or intends to provide.
But that may be far less than what the courts will eventually decide that players deserve.
Granted, that day may be far off.
November 19th, 2014 at 5:37 PM ^
they have one player (kaminksy) who is a great college baller but has mediocre prospects in the nba, and another player who underperformed last year (dekker) but is still a good player...pretty much like us getting an extra year from thj.
November 19th, 2014 at 7:19 PM ^
Nigel Hayes is also a sweet player. But the main thing is they had a Caris LeVert transformation out of Kaminsky but unlike Caris his NBA prospects are not "potential lottery pick". You could see that vs UK last year, as when he faced NBA type athletic bigs he struggled. Wisconsin this year is alot like MSU last year in that they have a lot of experienced guys who at most programs would have already left for the NBA (Payne) or are just not good to do so (Brandon Dawson or Appling), combined with some nice higher end underclassmen.
Our guys on the other hand seem to be cooked quick enough to be ready to go in 2 years except for guys who came out of nowhere like Caris. Geez it is going to be nice to have a team one day (maybe) with multiple upperclassmen starting.
November 19th, 2014 at 10:49 PM ^
after all MSU would be national champions every year if not for injuries. Not important if your players go to the NBA. Only if you are robbed of what is rightfully yours by bad referees and injuries. Better if the sports announcers buy into it.
November 20th, 2014 at 10:04 AM ^
If you accept the premise that the typical Parade or McDonald's All-American level player's goal is the NBA, and if the feedback the young man receives after, say, his sophomore year all says he's ready, then a four-year college player of that caliber will remain a rare exception. And who can blame them?
Back when I had Crisler tickets and watched Chris Webber play, even the untrained eye (mine) saw that he was at a skill level considerably above other players, and that included Juwan and Jalen. Even had Chris stayed beyond his sophomore year his skill level would have only increased marginally --- not nearly enough to justify a year of lost NBA income. The same could be said about Trey, Nick, and GRIII. THJr stayed an extra year in all likelihood because his father and others told him he needed it to improve his draft status. And your point about Kaminsky is probably correct --- all the signals he received said stay in school another year. Jordan Morgan was probably in the same boat.
As long as top-level college BB programs continue as NBA farm teams, we'll continue to see the "one and done" and "two and done" player. Those highly touted players who stay in school an extra year or two will stay for the most part only because the NBA tells them to stay.
But hey --- Max Bielfeldt will graduate with a UM degree and maybe play in Europe or somewhere for awhile but will ultimately have a fine, non-BB career. So college BB has room for those guys as well.
November 20th, 2014 at 8:24 AM ^
I honestly thought we got really lucky when Stauskas was a freshman. At that point he seemed like he was going to be a really good 4 year college basketball player that would get drafted after his 4 years at the school, sort of like a JJ Redick. That was before his breakout sophomore year. I'm happy he got that much better and was able to go to the NBA though, he put in the work and deserved it.
November 19th, 2014 at 6:23 PM ^
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November 19th, 2014 at 6:36 PM ^
November 19th, 2014 at 6:43 PM ^
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November 19th, 2014 at 6:57 PM ^
paying players likely would have very little impact on decisions of players--including Michigan players--to go pro. The amount they would receive in college would be a pittance of what they would receive as a first round pick. As much as I hate the NCAA--and I really hate it--this "problem" lies principally with the NBA. It is the NBA who dictates that it will not take players until after their first year of college (with age tweaks). The MLB, in contrast, supports the right -from-high school or wait until after year three in college rule.
November 19th, 2014 at 8:21 PM ^
I reread the NBA policy. Apparently, the "one year removed from HS" rule originally came out of an NBA collecitve bargaining agreement. Stern stated "the rules were business-related and not a "social program", citing the need to see players perform against higher competition before they are evaluated for valuable draft picks." So, colleges now often provide a one or two year pay-free training ground for the NBA. And the colleges apparently had no voice in authorizing that. Apparently, the NBA sees college scholarships as free training money
I wonder if the colleges or the NCAA have any negotiating leverage here, either directly or indirectly. Honestly, I don't know. But I suspect that the reason the NCAA does not use its leverage is because of their own greed. They don't want to give up the revenue generated by star players.
Also, given the profits that star players bring in and the large salaries for coaches and ADs, I still wonder whether a motivated NCAA could in theory provide enough financial security to make many kids want to stay to get a degree. Many talented kids do not end up staying in the NBA for very long. There are a lot of sad stories about what happens to them after the NBA discards them. Also, some kids and their parents may still value a college degree. And I don't think that the NBA provides that.
November 19th, 2014 at 9:51 PM ^
I wonder if the colleges or the NCAA have any negotiating leverage here, either directly or indirectly. Honestly, I don't know. But I suspect that the reason the NCAA does not use its leverage is because of their own greed. They don't want to give up the revenue generated by star players.
You could at least try to suggest a way that the NCAA could use their negotiating leverage. I'll be surprised if you can come up with a reasonable idea. I've never heard one from anyone else. So far as I know, the NCAA hasn't been a part of any negotiations with the NBA on the subject. Those have been conducted between the league and the players union.
When you say the NCAA doesn't want to give up their star players, you're implying that they shouldn't let them into school at all. I don't think there's any legal way of doing that.
If the NCAA wanted to, they could punish the teams whose players left early. They could prevent them from replacing players until their four years has elapsed. They could punish schools on their APR and make them ineligible for the post-season. I can't see how that would really help anybody, but it would lead to a lot of hard feelings when players did leave.
November 20th, 2014 at 12:23 AM ^
by including detailed solutions to complex problems?
But FWIW here are my initial thoughts about how to decrease incentives to leave school early.
One indirect method would be not to give scholarships to kids who clearly are not in school for the right reasons--like Cardale Jones of Ohio, who tweeted that he was in school to play football, not go to classes. Schools could have limits given to the number of scholarships given to kids who are highly unlikely to graduate. Some players at UNC, for example, had reading tests at a 3rd grade to Jr HS level. A method used by the Ivy league schools is to require schools to maintain average GPA/SAT/ACT scores that are close to the school average (say, within ten percent). That enables a school to make some exceptions (eg if an otherwise great and talented kid has a cultural or learning deficiency). But schools cannot go too far when admitting students for reasons other than education. Schools could not guarantee a free ride for the NBA in order to develop and evaluate purely athletic talent.
Another method would be to alter the language of athletic scholarships. If a student were to leave early just to get a big NBA payday, he would have to return some of the scholarship money to the school (unless there were certain specified extenuating circumstances). At first glance, that might seem unfair. But it would be money they could give to a kid who really needed it. Also, if applied to every such student, the students would know the requirement in advance and could include that amount in the NBA salary negotiations. That's often what happens when schools pick up all or part of the buy-out for a coach who breaks his contract prematurely. Also, if the NBA can afford to paying a kid $5-10 million to leave school, maybe it can afford to retroactively pay for his scholarship. After all, the school has trained him and provided a way for them to evaluate his talent.
I am not saying either method would solve all the problems or that they would not have drawbacks. Since I have thought about the matter for only 15 minutes, I also do not doubt that someone with more time and expertise can come up with far better ideas. But these are my initial thoughts.
November 19th, 2014 at 7:30 PM ^
C'mon man. We could do this thought exercise for every team. If we did... well, we'd be just one of many very competitve and deep teams.
November 19th, 2014 at 8:16 PM ^
But who in the B1G lost as many players who would now still be eligible? Certainly not the league favorite, Wisc. Not MSU. I do think we would have the best team in the B1G if players stayed, and the B1G is probably still the top conference in the nation.
November 19th, 2014 at 7:56 PM ^
Very difficult to do have a realistic discussion about this type of roster in the current college BB environment - especially when it comes to predicting your reserves. For example, does Walton commit here if he knows Burke is a four year player?
November 19th, 2014 at 8:13 PM ^
You could argue that the best recruits would not have come to a school if its top players were not leaving for the NBA early. But that would be true of many of the best teams, who were serious competitors for top recruits. And usually, a top recruit commits even when there is considerable uncertainty about whether or not a player will leave for the NBA.
November 19th, 2014 at 8:31 PM ^
Fair enough. I think loaded rosters tend to experience a certain amount of attrition - transfers, dismissals, etc. - if players can't break into the rotation.
I'm old enough to remember elite four-year players, but I can't recall many super-teams (for whatever reason), post Wooden-era UCLA until UNLV in the 80's or the Fab 5 roster. However, we didn't have the internet or social media to feed hype.
November 19th, 2014 at 8:16 PM ^
November 19th, 2014 at 8:20 PM ^
McGary, of course is still injured. Stauskas played 19 minutes, if I remember correctly. Trey scored 17 with 9 assists. THJ scored 24.
November 19th, 2014 at 9:45 PM ^
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November 19th, 2014 at 11:20 PM ^
November 19th, 2014 at 10:38 PM ^
November 19th, 2014 at 10:53 PM ^
...he wanted to come back and they took him away. THOSE BASTARD! They took him from us! DIE NCAA!
