While LeBron James has been cruising around Ohio in his limousine, listening to billion dollar pitches from NBA teams, members of the Penn basketball team have spent the summer doing what a basketball player should be doing in the offseason — you know, playing basketball.
Some might say it’s difficult to compare the environments of the NBA and NCAA, but now more than ever the two worlds are converging.
That is, college basketball, or at least the large majority of it, has become the minor league system of the NBA, a breeding ground and one-stop shop for professional talent.
Sure, that’s been the case for several years now, but things reached a boiling point in my mind during the most recent NBA draft. That night, Kentucky coach John Calipari declared June 24 “the biggest day in the history of Kentucky’s program,” as five Wildcats were selected in the first round.
That’s right, getting five players drafted, including four freshmen, trumps Kentucky’s seven national championships in Calipari’s delusional mind.
Calipari’s gaffe highlights what many feared when kids started making the jump straight from high school to the league or, more recently, staying in college for a single year: the NBA has infected college basketball — greed, narcissism and all. It’s scary to think where this is heading, considering that the Association enabled James and fellow stars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to make a spectacle of their free agency this summer that will mercifully culminate tonight with LeBron’s ESPN Decision 2010 Special.
Just like in the NBA, where the free agent frenzy managed to overshadow the twelfth installment of the Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals, the college game has become as much about off-the-court drama as on-the-court action.
The recruiting system in college basketball is getting more flawed and corrupt by the year. Premier coaches like current NBA assistant Kelvin Sampson, who was cited for violations at both Oklahoma and Indiana and ultimately left those major programs, and Calipari, who has made the one-and-done freshman star an annual tradition, routinely cheat the system — and usually get away with it.
But the point of this column is not to beat that dead horse. It’s to encourage Quakers fans and Ivy Leaguers around the country to embrace what we have here in the Ancient Eight: good, clean basketball being played by hardworking and intelligent athletes.
The players in the Ivy League aren’t pampered from a young age by AAU coaches and shady businessmen. It’s an accomplishment for them just to play college ball, while getting an Ivy League education, no less.
With no scholarships offered in the Ivies, players do not come in with a big ego or sense of entitlement. There is no ‘Chosen One,’ as James has been dubbed. Players’ decisions on where to play aren’t aired on national television, as is the case with many of the top high school recruits, and now James.
In fact, on the night Steve Donahue should have been bemoaning his team’s sole in-conference defeat this past February, the then-Cornell coach instead praised the league for the brand of basketball it plays.
“It’s a great league,” he said after the Quakers’ upset of the Big Red. “The thing you’ve got to realize is the kids are so well-coached in this league, but it has very little to do with the coaching. It has to do with the type of kids you get. Those [Penn] kids wanted to win and they were gonna do everything. It’s not like somebody has a different agenda, worrying about getting into the NBA.”
The student-athletes in the Ivy League play college basketball because they love the game. Not for money, fame, endorsement deals or a boosted draft stock. That may seem to be a cliché or corny point, but it cannot be understated given the current circumstances that exist in the basketball universe.
Yes, I realize that it was a great year in NCAA hoops, with Butler representing Cinderella schools everywhere in the NCAA Championship game. But even the Bulldogs’ baby-faced star Gordon Hayward left the school after his sophomore season, while his draft stock was highest. A mere five seniors were taken in this year’s first round.
And increasingly, the smaller schools and conferences are being swept into the NBA’s web of influence. The ninth and 10th picks from the 2010 draft, Hayward and Fresno State’s Paul George, came from the Horizon League and Western Athletic Conference.
The Ivy League’s NBA representation this year comes from Cornell’s Ryan Wittman and Harvard’s Jeremy Lin, who were invited to play for summer league teams. Both graduated from their respective schools and have excellent makeups and fundamentally sound games. In other words, they’re shining examples of what makes their conference great.
The Ivies’ lack of NBA exposure is usually considered a knock on its talent level. Instead, I would like to suggest that it only makes the league more appealing. There are no ulterior motives or scandals. Substance rules over flash.
Quite simply, the Ivy League may be the purest form of basketball competition there is today.
BRIAN KOTLOFF is a rising College junior from Elkins Park, Pa.
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